(LifeSiteNews) — In what represents a new low for the exchange of views over abortion in Australia, the Queensland Premier David Crisafulli, leader of the right-wing Liberal National Party, has banned debate about abortion laws in the Queensland parliament for the next four years. The gag was rushed through the parliament without notice, with only half an hour set aside for consideration of the issue.
The move was mainly designed to block any opportunity for MP Robbie Katter, who represents the minority Katter Australian party, to reintroduce the “babies born alive” bill, which sought “to enshrine in legislation the protections for babies born as a result of a termination of pregnancy procedure.”
Katter had said before the election that his first step in the new parliament would be to re-introduce a private member’s bill to protect babies born breathing during an abortion attempt. He said the bill would ensure newborns are “not thrown in waste bins, and that they’re not left to die on a table with no warmth or care.”
Crisafulli, who said during the election campaign that he is “pro-choice,” claimed that he initiated the ban to shut down what he called the “disgraceful … U.S.-style scare campaign” by the left-wing Labor party during the election campaign. Labor had repeatedly warned that the LNP would roll back its 2018 legislation legalizing the procedure for the first time.
Crisafulli’s claim is unconvincing. Simply not changing the existing legislation would have been enough to prove Labor wrong. The more likely reason is to stop Katter, and LNP politicians who are pro-life, from having any influence.
During the campaign Crisafulli did not rule out a conscience vote on the issue, and many of his MPs confirmed that they are against abortion. But in office he has made sure that that they will not get a voice.
The Queensland censorship is another step in what has been a long descent in Australia into meaningless mud-slinging and political maneuvering. When the abortion issue first came into public focus, about four decades ago, the debate tended to be more of a legal or technical nature. Questions such as “When does human life begin?” and “How should the law deal with the ending of a human life when it is dependent on the body of the mother?” were front and center.
There was no clear resolution of these discussions, which should have meant that pro-life proponents had captured the moral and legal high ground. If no clear definition of when human life begins can be made, then the onus of proof must fall on the pro-abortionists, because they are the ones who want to do the killing.
To counter such objections, pro-abortionists shifted to conflating feminism and freedom of choice for women: hence the phrase “pro-choice.” It was a maneuver that ensured that the debate would become emotive rather than logical. Criticisms of abortion were depicted as motivated by sexism and misogyny. That many women were anti-abortion was a fact conveniently ignored.
Over the subsequent decades big medical advances changed the calculus. Now, fetuses can survive independently after about six months’ gestation, albeit with medical assistance. That means it is no longer possible to argue that from the six-month mark the baby is just an extension of the mother’s body. The implication is that late-term abortion is a type of homicide. The homicide problem is even more obvious when killing babies after they are born. That is self-evidently infanticide.
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Pro-abortion campaigners have been able to avoid confronting arguments like this by claiming they are being targeted as women. It is a version of the ad hominem (attacking the person and not the argument) fallacy that has been highly effective.
Feminism continues to be a powerful political influence in Australian politics and media. Crisafulli, like all politicians, does not want to alienate the female vote, which is no doubt part of his motive for shutting down debate.
Yet is a morally cowardly move that entails turning away from rational argument and legal consistency. Parents who kill their newborn babies are believed to be amongst the worst criminals in society. So how is killing a breathing newborn child after a failed abortion procedure supposed to be legally acceptable?
Australia does not have a history of intense political tensions; much less does it have the kind of partisan divides evident in the United States, especially over the abortion issue. To that extent Crisafulli is reflecting the local culture by preferring silence over disagreements. In Australia moral passion is more likely to be denigrated as impoliteness than treated with attention and respect.
One positive sign, though, is that there is very little respect for politicians, so the moral apathy of the Queensland LNP party will not be influential.
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