Australian State Defeats Bill to Protect Babies From Late-Term Abortions

I know next to nothing about South Australia other than it is the fourth largest state in Australia by area and is located in the southern central part of the country. That and the establishment newspapers have no use for pro-lifers or for even the slightest rollback of their ultra-liberal abortion laws.

In 2023,  abortion was “decriminalized” nationwide in Australia.

The headline to Barbara Baird and Prudence Flower’s story is typical: “South Australia is now the battleground for the forced-birth movement.” The subhead is “Conservative forces both inside and outside of state parliament want to make abortion a key issue in 2026.”

So what was the proposal just voted down by the Legislative Council (upper house) 11-8? “To limit terminations after 23 weeks.” This modest proposal was described by Anna Stewart as “controversial”.  It didn’t help that the medical establishment was firmly opposed.

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Tory Shepherd wrote, “The attorney general, Kyam Maher, referred to comments from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (Ranzcog) that the bill was premised either on an ignorance of reality or a willful misrepresentation of the facts.”

Current law in South Australia “allows abortions after 23 weeks if the pregnancy would involve ‘significant risk to the physical or mental health’ of the pregnant person.” The defeated legislation “sought to limit terminations after 23 weeks to situations where there was a significant risk of foetal abnormalities, to save the life of the expectant mother or the life of another foetus,” reported Eva Blandis and Kathryn Bermingham for ABC News South Australia.

Upper House Independent MP Sarah Game carried the proposal.

Ms Game previously told ABC News that under the changes, the mental health of the pregnant person would not be accepted as a reason for a late-term abortion.

She said that those in “severe mental distress” would receive care under the Mental Health Act.

On Wednesday evening, Ms Game told the Legislative Council that late-term abortions should not be dismissed as a “rare event”.

“A lot of healthy babies [are] being denied a choice at   life,” she said.

Apparently, the apocalyptic language was spurred by the fact that it “marks the second time in a year the SA Legislative Council has voted on an anti-abortion bill, with the first having also been narrowly rejected by a vote of 10-9.”

That September 2024 proposed legislation offered even more limited protection for unborn children.

Introduced by Liberal MP Ben Hood, it proposed that “women who were over 27 weeks and six days gestation would be induced to give birth to a live baby, rather than terminating a pregnancy in utero,” according to Blandis and Bermingham.

That lost, 10 against, nine in favor.

“What we are doing is trying to balance the rights of the woman to be able to choose the termination of pregnancy, but also the rights of the child,” Hood said at the time.

“The controversial proposal had drawn criticism from opponents inside and outside parliament, and was labelled an ‘extreme right-wing culture war bill’ by SA Health Minister Chris Picton,” SBS News reported.

Ahead of the vote, “the South Australian Abortion Action Coalition (SAAAC) had also staged a demonstration outside parliament, which included women dressed as handmaids, inspired by Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale.”

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.