The 1998 abortion
legislation in Western Australia made it mandatory to report every abortion
performed in Western Australia, regardless of method, to the WA Department of
Health’s Abortion Notification System.
Although the
statistics are only published in detail triennially, with the most recent
report published covering 2010-2012, the basic statistics have been obtained
through parliamentary questions asked each year initially by the Hon Ed Dermer
MLC and, in recent years, by the Hon Nick Goiran MLC.
The answers to the
latest questions regarding abortions performed in 2015 were provided on 10 May
2016.
Overall
decline in abortion rate
There were 8105
abortions performed in Western Australia in 2015 compared to 8467 performed in
2014 – a drop of 4.46% in raw numbers. This is the lowest number performed in
any year since legalisation apart from 2003 (7942), 2004 (7968) and 2005
(7828).
More significantly
the abortion rate – that is the number of abortions performed as a percentage of
the number of abortions plus the number of live births – has continued to
steadily fall from a peak of 26.06% in 2001 to a new low of 18.66% in 2015,
that is from one in every 3.83 unborn children being aborted in 2001 to one in
every 5.35 children being aborted in 2015.
If the abortion rate
had stayed as high as it was in 2001 an additional 3215 unborn children would
have been aborted last year.
A
window into the womb
In the absence of
detailed studies it is difficult to explain this steady decrease in the
abortion rate. However, it is likely that ultrasound – that amazing window into
the womb – has played a key role.
The abortion lobby’s
attempt to describe the unborn child as a nonentity, a cluster of cells, a
zero, a tumour, a parasite, nonhuman, nonliving, a non person and so forth is
becoming more difficult in the face of ultrasound images of that cluster of
cells smiling, sucking its thumb, and in the case of twins cuddling and playing
together.
The recent
outburst by the National Abortion Rights Action League complaining that the
Doritos advertisement screened to millions of viewers during the Superbowl was “humanizing
fetuses” illustrates the difficulty for the advocates of abortion as a merely trivial
act.
Full credit also to
the front line prolife witnesses outside Perth’s abortuaries – 40 Days for Life
and the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants as well as the crisis pregnancy
centres – Pregnancy Assistance and Pregnancy Problem House who are saving
unborn children one at a time.
Teenage
abortion rate also falling
The number of
abortions of teenage women (under 20 years) performed in 2015 hit a new low of
706 - down from a high of 1663 performed in 2006 when 54.44% of teenage pregnancies
ended in abortion.
In 2014, the most
recent year for which data on teenage births is currently available, the teenage
abortion rate had fallen to 43.23%.
Late
term abortions increasing
The number of
abortions performed in 2015 at over 12 weeks gestation was 580 or 7.16% of all
abortions. This rate of later abortions has climbed from 4.49% in 1999 reaching
over 7% first in 2011.
The most alarming
figure for 2015 is the number of abortions performed at 20 weeks gestation or later
which more than doubled to 73 from 36
in 2014. Abortions at 20 weeks or later have increased from a low of 0.32% of
all abortions performed in 1998 to almost one percent (0.90%) in 2015.
This dramatic increase,
despite supposed closer scrutiny by the Minister for Health, gives new grounds
for an urgent, thorough inquiry into the practice of late term abortion for
disability in Western Australia.
TAKE
ACTION NOW:
Write
to Hon Colin Barnett MLA, Premier, 1 Parliament Place, WEST PERTH WA 6005 email
wa-government@dpc.wa.gov.au
and express in your own words your concern that the number of abortions
performed at 20 weeks gestation or later has more than doubled in just one year
from 36 in 2014 to 73 in 2015. Point out that these abortions are being
performed on discriminatory grounds against babies with disabilities and
carried out close to or after the point of viability of 22/23 weeks when premature
babies are surviving in Western Australia.
Ask him to support
a full inquiry into this practice.
