NEW research showing MPs and voters in Queensland would back the decriminalisation of abortion undermines Premier Anna Bligh's assertion that reform of the existing law is a lost cause.
Academic Katharine Betts, of Swinburn University of Technology, has found that Queenslanders are no different from other Australians in supporting access to abortion services.
After pulling together 20 years' of surveys, opinion polls and studies on attitudes to abortion, Dr Betts concludes that Queensland slots firmly into the national mainstream, with people in Brisbane actually more "liberal" on the loaded question of abortion on demand than most Australians.
Despite Ms Bligh's insistence that legislation to decriminalise abortion would fail, or possibly be hijacked in the state parliament to restrict existing common law rights, Dr Betts cites an Australian Election Studies survey of winning and losing candidates at the last federal election showing that 85 per cent of MPs sent or returned to federal parliament from Queensland agreed women should be free to decide on matters of abortion.
The proportion of losing candidates who supported this proposition was less -- 66 per cent -- possibly reflecting the fact that Kevin Rudd's home state turned out more strongly for Labor than any other in 2007.
But Dr Betts argues that an Auspoll this year, finding that 79 per cent of people believed state law should be changed to strike out the existing criminal sanctions on abortion, was plausible.
"In fact, more than half the electorate in Australia and in Queensland support freedom of choice, and a further third support the availability of abortion in special circumstances," she said, summarising her findings. "Candidates for election to the federal parliament are even more liberal.
"Such opposition as there is, is concentrated among a few religious groups and among people aged 75 and over.
"As far as attitudes are concerned, Queensland is no different from the rest of Australia."
Cherish Life Queensland yesterday rejected Dr Betts's findings, to be published today in the journal People and Place, a quarterly produced by Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research.
The anti-abortion group's vice-president, Alan Baker, said opinion polls routinely identified a majority in favour of broadbrush questions such as whether people supported "a woman's right to choose". When researchers "drilled down" into this, the support was far softer. For example, an opinion poll commissioned by the Australian Federation of Right to Life Associations in 2006 found that 51 per cent of Australians were against abortion for financial or social reasons, and 73 per cent opposed them after the first trimester of pregnancy.
"I don't know if you can say a majority of Queenslanders are supportive of decriminalisation. What it effectively means is that you can have abortion at any time, for any reason, up until the day of birth," Mr Baker said.
Public sector obstetricians remain at loggerheads with the state government over Queensland's abortion law, which bans terminations unless they are carried out to preserve the life of the mother. However, key court rulings in the mid-1980s interpreting this exception broadly have been used to provide elective abortions in private clinics.
The prosecution of a Cairns couple with procuring an abortion, allegedly using banned abortion drugs, brought the simmering dispute with doctors to a head, prompting hospitals to suspend medical abortion services.
Source: The Australian, 5 October 2009