CALL FOR CHANGE
Women in battle to alter laws
MORE than 100 pro-choice supporters rallied outside the Cairns Magistrates Court on Saturday to change laws about abortions in Queensland.
Cairns Doctors founder Dr Heather McNamee said the laws surrounding abortion in Queensland were second only to the strict laws in her hometown of Belfast.
“They’re an embarrassment for Queensland,” she said. “They make people think of Queensland as a very backward, conservative, misogynist state, and they need to be changed.
“I have two teenage daughters and I feel very strongly that they should be able to live the life that they want to live and have the children they want to have at the time they want to have them.”
She said women who wanted to terminate a pregnancy shouldn’t have to have the additional stress of worrying about the letter of the law.
“She’s got to think about her decision, the method of termination, contraception afterwards, who’s going to support her through the termination. She does not need to be thinking about the complexities of the law written in 1899,” she said.
Lawyer and mother Renee Lees joined the march on Saturday, and said she believed women had to persevere with the fight.
“Women have only gotten to where we are today by fighting for our rights,” she said.
“I think it’s shocking, as we all do, that we are still where we are and that abortion is still in the criminal code. I think it’s well beyond time to change this law.”
Member for Cairns MP Rob Pyne said the support for change bolstered his hopes for a positive outcome from his second abortion reform bill, which moves to regulate abortion under the health act.
“I initially moved a Bill that simply removed abortion from the criminal code,” he said. “It became very clear to me that … such a Bill would not get the support of a majority of parliament. I have moved a second Bill that regulates abortion in the Health Act, that has provisions relating to gestation.”