AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENTRY PRO-LIFE GROUP
THE ABORTION FUNDING ABOLISION BILL - QUESTION AND ANSWERS
What is the Australian Parliamentary Pro-Life Group?
It is an informal cross-party group of MPs (Labor, Liberal, National and Independent) formed in early 1988 on similar lines to the cross-party pro-life groups in the U.K. Parliament and the U.S. Congress. Members of the Australian group believe that Parliamentary action is required to protect human life and that unilateral tokenism should be avoided.
How many abortions are performed in Australia each year?
Nationally compiled statistics of all abortions are not available. However, there are three item numbers in the Federal Medical Benefits Schedule officially identified as representing "abortion items’. They are Item 6469 (for abortions generally to 14 weeks) and Items 274 (OP.) and 275 (Specialist) (for later abortions). In the year 1989/90 69,587 abortions were claimed under these Items at a cost of $7.8 million. Since its introduction the principal Medical Benefits abortion item alone has subsidised the extermination of at least 850,000 unborn Australians at a cost (in today’s monetary values) of over $80 million.
How did abortion first come to be funded by Medicare?
By administrative law changes on 10 April 1974 without pubic announcement or Parliamentary vote.
Do these figures of 69,587 and 850,000 represent all the abortions performed in Australia?
No. Some abortions are not claimed under the Medicare system and others are performed on "public patients" in hospital. The costs for the latter are included in the total hospital costs which are subsidised by the Commonwealth and the States. At a conservative estimate there are 85,000 deliberate abortions in Australia each year or I abortion for every 3 five births.
The Federal Government spends money on family planning because some influential Health Department advisers believe that this will reduce the number of abortions. Has this happened?
No. In the past five years direct Commonwealth payments to FPA’s have increased by 59% ($1 1.6 million this year alone). In the same five years Medicare subsidised abortions have grown year by year from 57751 to 69587. Obviously abortion is being used for family planning purposes.
What is the Medicare rebate for an abortion?
The Schedule tee for Item 6469 is $146, for Item 274 $158 (GP), and for Item 275 (Specialists) $196. The rebate to the patient or the doctor s a proportion of the schedule fee:85% if not undertaken in a hospital, 75% if performed within a hospital on a "private patient"
What does the Abortion Funding Abolition Bill seek to achieve?
The Bill allows payments under items 6469, 274 and 275 only for those claims where the procedure resulting in the abortion is carried out to avert the death of the mother, or where the procedure is for a different purpose entirely and the doctor was unaware an abortion would occur.
How does the Bill put these restrictions into effect?
By requiring the Doctor involved to sign a certificate identifying either of these exceptions as being relevant. The signed certificate must accompany any claim for the benefit.
Will the Doctors certificate be made publicly available?
No, Unauthorised disclosure attracts the same penalty as already applies to the ref ease of other confidential medical information necessary for the processing of Medicare claims.
Why target Medicare Items 6469, 274 and 275?
Because these are the identified "abortion items" which underwrite the .abortion industry in Australia. The Medicare system itself is undermined when it pays for medical conduct which kills an unborn child in violation of the Hippocratic oath and the Declaration of Geneva which impose a duty on doctors to have the utmost respect for human file.
What is the ultimate destination of most Medicare payments or abortion?
The pockets of a small number of abortionists operating from private abortion clinics. The top five abortionists in Sydney between them performed 9,545 Item 6469 abortions in the year to June 1988 (44 abortions each working day) for which they were paid over $1 million from that Item alone. In Melbourne the figure paid to the top five abortionists was also over $1 million for 9,425 Item 6469 abortions (43 abortions each working day).
But surely abortion is a State matter?
Abortion is a life and death issue - a human rights issue. Medicare is also a major public policy issue. Members of the Commonwealth Parliament are duty bound to address such issues. It is true that the enforcement of State abortion laws is a State matter. In those States where abortion on demand prevails they are dearly tailing in this duty. The Commonwealth has the clear duty to protect the revenue and also to ensure that the revenue is not used to undermine the basic human right to life.
Will not the removal of the rebate disadvantage poor women?
Consider the implications of this question. It assumes that Governments and society can refuse to give poor women what they need in the way of social justice and support but instead must fund the killing of their unborn babies. The rights of the underprivileged in our society become tenuous indeed if we fail to uphold the basic human right of the unborn child to life and the rights of their parents to practical and emotional support.
Will this move lead to more backyard abortions and consequent deaths?
The Medicare rebate for abortions has not stopped maternal deaths due to abortion. There were five such deaths in Australia in 1980 alone, compared to three in 1969 (well before the appearance of the rebate). The severe cuts to Government funding for Medicaid abortions in the United States did not result in an increase in the maternal death rate due to abortion. The "coathanger and backyard abortion" allegations are unfounded pro-abortion cliches. A fundamental question is - should the Australian taxpayer continue to underwrite the Australian abortion industry?
But the continued existence of open-ended funding is essential for abortions indicated for grave medical reasons.
The available statistics do not sustain this assertion. The pro-abortionists have also answered this argument. In a circular letter attacking this very bill the Abortion Action Campaign has admitted that ‘the main reasons for terminating a pregnancy are social and economic factors’.
What of the argument that the costs to the taxpayer of abortion of unborn babies with suspected disabilities is less than the future costs of providing services for newborns with disabilities?
Possibly, but at the expense of the unborn child, the status of the disabled, and society as a whole. The Disabled Peoples’ International organisation of Australia has commented: "It is a particular tragedy that people should feel that there is so little social support and assistance, and that disability is so appalling, that they should seek an abortion lest they raise a ‘defective' child".
To be consistent, why have not other possibly relevant Medicare Items been included in the Bill?
The abuse of non-abortion Items for abortion purposes is an offence against the provisions of the existing legislation.
Is much opposition expected to the Bill?
When this Bill was first introduced in 1989 a number of family planning associations, and groups with a vested interest in the abortion industry, indicated their opposition to it. On the other hand, strong support came from the pro-life community, and from the Australian community at large. In nearly four months, almost 160,000 signatures from Australians in favour of the Bill were presented to Parliament.
Why persist with this move when you have no firm guarantee beforehand of success in the Parliament?
The debate and vote on this Bill will not be on Party lines. The Prime Minister has already stated publicly that it will be treated as a conscience vote. This means that MP’s are free to vote according to their conscience without being required to follow any existing Party policy. Therefore, the outcome of the Bill cannot be accurately forecast, When William Wilberforce initiated Parliamentary action to abolish slavery 200 years ago he was met by similar objections but eventually succeeded. A continued failure to challenge this funding is being interpreted as endorsement of it. To do nothing is as much a considered policy, as to introduce a Bill.
Authorised for pubic distribution by the Executive of the Australian Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, Parliament House. Canberra, ACT 26CC Telephone 062777111.