I strongly support the Senate Urgency Motion in favour of saving the lives of babies born alive after a failed abortion. For the past six years, I have spoken in the Senate while wearing a lapel pin that depicts the tiny feet of a 10-week-old infant, a symbol of the innocent lives at stake. In Queensland, 328 babies were born alive and left to die over the last 10 years. Under the Queensland Criminal Code, this is clearly a crime.
While there are legal protections for medical practitioners who induce stillbirths, those protections end when a child is born alive. Yesterday, during a hearing in the Queensland Parliament, brave maternity nurse Louise Adsett gave heartbreaking details of the tragic fate awaiting many beautiful newborn Australians in Queensland maternity wards. These babies are left to cry until they die.
Louise shared the story of nurses who, with compassion, held these babies as they took their last breaths, surrounding them with love in their final moments rather than leaving them alone in a cold and hard stainless steel environment. There is no legal grey area here—allowing a child born alive to die in Queensland is a crime, and that crime is murder. I thank Senator Babet for introducing this Motion.
To the Queensland Police, my message is simple: “Do your bloody job!”
These babies deserve better; they deserve the same fundamental right to life that all human beings have.
Transcript
I strongly support this motion from Senator Babet in favour of saving the lives of babies born alive. For 6 years I’ve spoken in the Senate while wearing a lapel pin which depicts an infant’s feet at 10 weeks of age.
My opposition to abortion comes from my humanity and my role as a father and grandfather.
Sadly Queensland’s Termination of Pregnancy Act 2018 allows for unrestricted access to abortion up to 22 weeks. After that point two doctors must be convinced the abortion is in the mother’s best interests. Doctors who make their living signing off on abortions.
As Rhodes Scholar and leading researcher Professor Joanna Howe has found, between 2010 and 2020, 4,929 babies were killed after 20 weeks, and until birth. In Queensland, of these babies, 328 were born alive and left to die.
Last week I was pleased to attend a protest on the Federation Lawn that was a memorial to the 5,000 babies born alive when aborted around Australia. The memorial was 5000 pairs of baby’s booties in the shape of a cross. Babies who were thrown aside and left on a cold stainless steel slab to die. Alone. Nearly 50% of these were perfectly healthy. Nothing wrong with them. Why were they induced and delivered stillborn instead of alive and placed for adoption?
Under the QLD Criminal Code the current law is clear. This is a crime. Section 292 provides that a child becomes a human being after being born and proceeds in a living state from the body of its mother, whether it has breathed or not, and whether it has had independent circulation or not.
Section 302 defines murder as by someone who: intends to cause death, which is the case with these 328 babies; or causes death by an act, omission or reckless indifference to human life;
Currently the penalty for murder in Queensland is life. How ironic. There are protections for medical practitioners who induce the still birth of a child. That protection stops when the child is born alive.
Queensland MP Bobbie Katter has introduced a bill to ensure the rights of babies born alive. Under the bill, the duty of a registered health practitioner to provide medical care and treatment to a person born as a result of a termination would be “no different” from their duty to anybody else. This means babies would be given care allowing them to survive where possible, while babies unable to survive would instead be given palliative care.
In yesterday’s hearing into this bill courageous maternity nurse Louise Adsett described in heartbreaking detail the fate that has awaited so many beautiful young Australians in QLD maternity wards. Babies left to cry themselves to death. Alone. Louise described nurses holding babies that have been marked for death until they drew their last breath, a breath surrounded with love, not cold, hard stainless steel.
There’s no legal grey area here, allowing a child born alive to die in Queensland is a crime, and that crime is murder.
To the QLD Police I have this simple message: DO YOUR BLOODY JOB.
Failure to prosecute the first murder has led to 327 more human beings losing their lives and that’s on you.
The preamble of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) explicitly recognizes the unborn’s right to life. This is a matter that can be legislated federally and if the States will not police their own laws then the Federal Government must intervene.
I have yet to hear an abortionist successfully explain at what point in the development of a child it ceases to be a collection of cells and becomes a baby. Until you can show a physiological point before which the child is just a bunch of cells, and after which the child is a living being, I will continue to defend every life and oppose abortion. Except abortion when the mother’s life is in danger. If these practitioners were proud of their actions, they would not be changing the name of their trade from abortion to reproductive care. There’s no reproduction and there’s no care for the child. As least be honest with yourselves, this is not care. This is designed to dehumanise mothers and fathers, dehumanise society and harden the hearts of our community. Neither can this be described as women’s health, the health of the mother is the same no matter if the baby is put up for adoption or murdered. Woman’s health does not apparently include the health of one-half of these aborted babies who themselves will grow into women.
My office has received over 1000 emails and calls today from Queenslanders who are horrified at this practice. So much so I feel the need to remind everyone that while God loves everyone, God punishes killing.
These human babies deserve better. Babies deserve to have the same rights as have all human beings. And foremost amongst these is the right to life.
How They Voted
