Natasha Stott Despoja's bill to force pregnancy counselling services to advertise what they do not offer has re-opened the debate on the rights of the unborn, argues Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce.
In the debate on Pregnancy Counselling Senator Webber said something quite apt, i.e., "the best person to make a decision about how someone lives is the person that decision affects". Abortion affects to the greatest extent the life it terminates. We also heard we must "separate our personal views from the issues at hand". I agree.
The issue at hand is the termination of a human life. We are talking about our ability to refer a person to a position where a human life will be terminated.
We allow that, because we believe the life which is going to be killed has no rights. What do we base this premise on; the fact the person is not cognisant of their right?
When we are asleep, we are not cognisant of our rights. If a bill were brought into this House to refer people who are unconscious or asleep into a position where their life would be at threat, I would vote against that bill. Similarly, if a bill were to be brought into this House to refer people too young and too immature to be cognisant of their right into a position where they would be killed, I would vote against that bill.
No-one has the right to terminate my life now. They did not have the right the day after I was born. The argument we must always address is: why is it that the day before a person is born they apparently have no rights? Why is that day so legally explicit in determining whether I can be killed or not?
The argument becomes the question of possession versus responsibility.
The possible inconvenience of a baby does not bring about the right of its destruction. If someone is in our arms or inside our body, they are not a possession of ours; they are a responsibility. If a person is inside a bassinette they are not the possession of the bassinette. This is the crux of the issue: where, when and why you attain the apparent right to live without harm.
I suppose in addressing this argument we must go to the extremities, because the extremities are where we are always taken. One of the extremities always brought in is the unfortunate and tragic circumstance of rape. In the issue of rape, all consciousness must be placed on the actions of a crime. Who committed the crime? It certainly was not the victim but is it the resultant child? Why should the child be punished for the actions of someone else?
When we believe in punishing the child we believe in inherited guilt. We believe in the transfer of wrongs through generations and that leads us to a whole philosophical conjecture that people can inherit a moral flaw instigated by their predecessors. People, in this instance, can be born bad. This is something I find philosophically intolerable.
There are technicalities in this bill which need to be brought into the open. GPs are not required to advertise whether they will or will not refer women for abortion, yet they receive government funding. It is an absolute right for a person, or a body, with a fundamental belief they are referring a person to a place of imminent danger to not do so.
This argument of the rights of human life is one I know will go on for as long as we are in the Senate. It is the slavery debate of our time. I put great emphasis on the fact we must separate the action from the person. I do not for one moment presuppose the guilt of the person as a continuum nor do I believe every person who ever owned a slave was abhorrent. The act of slavery was abhorrent.
I do not believe the person who has an abortion is a bad person. I argue against the action of abortion. I will continue to argue this because it puts into stark relief our concerns about other things; the environment and other rights fought for with such fervour and with such forthright compassion. Yet, at the same moment, we stand away from the most vulnerable—from those who cannot defend themselves.
The inherent injustice of abortion is the killing of a human being who is not an imminent or comparable threat to us. But we can get absolutely fervent about the destruction of a whale or the destruction of a tree. Are we not in this process deciding by proxy other avenues to try to set down our beliefs, a wish to protect all but the innocent and vulnerable of what we are? This is an issue which has to be further debated in a confident, respectful and honest manner.
We must talk about when the right of the individual attaches to the person. If we cannot reach that position then we must accept the right to exist from the start—ab ovo. At this point it is more comfortable to avoid rather than answer this question.
We will be judged by history for doing so. I believe there will come a time when the argument will be so obvious the conjecture will only lie in how we could not have realised it earlier. This is the debate that separates us from the animals.
This is an edited text of Senator Joyce's speech to the Senate on 14th June 2007.