On 2 July 2016 Australian electors in the six states will be
choosing thirteen men and women to represent them in the Commonwealth
Parliament – one member of the House of Representatives and, following the
dissolution of the Senate, twelve Senators to represent their State.
For those who understand that the fundamental human rights
issue of our time is the right of every human being, regardless of stage of
development, age, sex or disability to be protected by law from having his or
her life deliberately ended for any reason the primary consideration in
allocating their votes on 2 July 2016 will be the attitude and intention of the
candidates for election to the life issues that are within the constitutional power
of the Commonwealth Parliament.
Abortion
The Commonwealth Parliament has no direct constitutional power
in relation to the legality of abortion. However, the Commonwealth Parliament
is responsible for the funding of abortion – in Australia through Medicare and
the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and overseas through Australia’s overseas development
assistance programme.
Each year both the House of Representatives and the Senate
have the opportunity to disallow the regulation that authorises a rebate for two
abortion items on the Medicare schedule:
- · Item 35643 currently sets a scheduled fee of $218 for a surgical abortion by curettage of suction curettage;
- · Item 16525 currently sets a scheduled fee of $384.35 for an induced abortion in the second trimester.
In 2015 Medicare paid out $9,282,513 under item 35643 for
53,989 surgical abortions and $205,779 for 711 second trimester induced
abortions.
The Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme subsidised the cost of mifepristone (RU486) and misoprostol used in chemical abortions, paying out $3,511,837 between April
2016 and March 2016 for 12,519 abortions.
In previous Parliaments, former Senator Guy Barnett
(Liberal, Tasmania) worked hard to build support for disallowing item 16525
which funds second trimester abortions and Senator John Madigan (Independent,
Victoria) introduced a bill to prohibit the use of Medicare funds to subsidise
abortions performed solely on the grounds of the sex of the unborn child.
Recently retired Senator Joe Bullock (Labor, Western
Australia) continued the work done by Senator Ron Boswell (Liberal National
Party, Queensland) to ask questions through the Senate estimates process revealing
that Australian overseas assistance development was helping International Planned
Parenthood achieve its goal of aborting over one million unborn children each year.
Euthanasia
Both the Australian Greens and the Liberal Democratic Party
have proposed or introduced bills in the Commonwealth Parliament to either
remove the current restriction on the Northern Territory and the Australian
Capital Territory from making “laws permitting or having the effect of
permitting the form of intentional killing of another called euthanasia or the
assisting of a person to terminate his or her life” or, based on a doubtful interpretation of the constitutional power
for the Commonwealth to legislate in regard to the provision of medical services,
to authorise medical practitioners to perform euthanasia or assisted suicide despite
State criminal laws to the contrary.
It is likely that a euthanasia or
assisted suicide bill of some kind will be proposed in the new Parliament.
Cloning and human
embryo research
The law permitting human cloning
in Australia passed the Senate in 2007 by just one vote.
Cloning and human embryo research
is permitted under laws passed by the Commonwealth Parliament using a range of
constitutional powers, including the corporations power.
These laws should be changed to prohibit
such assaults on human life.
In the ballot
box human lives are in your hands
It is essential that prolife voters use their vote to ensure
the election of committed prolife MPs and Senators prepared to actively pursue
the life issues in the Parliament.
No other issue matters as much as the right to life!
