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Catholic World News News Feature

Australian State Passes Abortion On Demand May 22, 1998

SYDNEY (CWNews.com) - The parliament of Western Australia passed a new law on Thursday allowing abortion on demand, becoming the first of Australia's six states and two territories to allow the practice, while the Catholic Church has pledged to back any woman who sues to stop the law.

The new laws allow a woman to have an abortion as long as she undergoes medical counseling. Abortion will remain illegal in the state, and is allowed throughout the country already if the mother's life is at risk. Each year some 80,000 women circumvent Australia's anti-abortion laws using 1960s and 1970s common law rulings which permit abortion on social and economic grounds. Under the new law, a woman must have the support of two doctors and undergo compulsory counseling before making the final decision to kill her unborn child.

Pro-life groups condemned the parliament's decision. "No parliament, no form of government, whether it's democratic or otherwise, has any right to give legal sanction to the mass killing of human beings," said pro-life leader Richard Egan. "I think it's a very sad day for Western Australia, and a very, very sad day for unborn children," Archbishop Barry Hickey of Perth.

Archbishop Hickey added that the Church would support any legal test of the "informed consent" provisions of the new law. "Women who have been misled and poorly informed about abortion and its consequences may count on the Church's help to seek damages against the doctor who performs the abortion," Archbishop Hickey said.

MP Cheryl Davenport, who sponsored the bill in parliament, accused the Church of hypocrisy, and said such court challenges were "virtually inevitable" from women "guilt-tripping" on pro-life counseling. "It's a pity the Church has been less willing to spend some money on sole parents bringing up kids with all sorts of problems," she said.