2014-05-30

Legislative inconsistencies of abortion in Brisbane

The currently four abortion facilities in Brisbane, Australia, allegedly provide abortions to nearly any woman on demand, although abortion in Queensland is a criminal offence which can (and should) be prosecuted. While comfortable churches in Brisbane fail to demonstrate protection of human dignity and protection of innocent human life, one resolute man Mr Graham Preston (http://protect-life.info), confronts the legislative inconsistencies of abortion in Brisbane - at the cost of periodic loss of his personal freedom. Humanity (and Brisbane) needs committed people like Mr Graham Preston. If churches valued the dignity of human life, then they too would confront abortion.

Mr Graham Preston might be the only person in Queensland that is engaging the police/government in this way. Mr Graham Preston has been standing on the footpaths outside the abortion clinics consistently for the past 24 years. Mr Graham Preston has held signs with statements such as “Abortion doesn’t help, it just destroys lives” and enlarged photos of preborn babies, and has offered informative leaflets and offered real help to people entering the abortion facilities in Brisbane.

Mr Graham Preston describes the current situation in Brisbane:

Up until the last 18 months I had few problems with the police for doing this. Since early 2013, at one of the four Brisbane abortion clinics – and this includes when that particular clinic moved premises to another suburb – the police in Brisbane have arrived virtually every time I have visited there and given me a move-on direction. They claim I am causing anxiety to those entering and that I am interfering with the business. This has happened dozens of times there but it does not happen at the three other clinics.

In April 2013 I refused to move when ordered and was subsequently arrested. The police dropped the charge just a week before the hearing in August. As soon as I returned to that clinic the police again began ordering me to move on. I was arrested in September 2013 for not moving on, and as a condition of getting bail I had to agree not to return there until after the hearing. A magistrate overturned that bail condition. The hearing was set down for February 2014 but that charge was also dropped soon before the hearing.

After the charge had been dropped and I went to the clinic thereafter, the police came and ordered me to move on. A friend and I were arrested in March 2014 for refusing to move and again we were only given bail if we agreed not to return there. But again, a magistrate removed that bail condition. That hearing is set down for August 6, 2014.

The police have continued to give me move on orders and I was arrested there again in May 2014 – the police had come so quickly that day that no one had even gone into the place before they gave me the direction! This time, however, the magistrate refused to remove the bail condition. So unless I can get it overturned I will not be able to go back to the footpath outside the abortion clinic until the hearing is held. Given that the first two charges were dropped and these latter two charges have no more substance to them than the previous ones, it is highly likely that these charges will be dropped too, and meanwhile I am being kept away from the footpath outside that abortion clinic.

We have complained to the Crime and Misconduct Commission about the police behaviour but they have refused to look into it. We have also complained to the Minister for Police without any satisfaction.

At this stage, I am waiting to see if these charges go ahead or not – if they don't we will try a lot harder to push for an investigation. It could be argued that this is police harassment, even a form of corruption.

Regarding the lack of law enforcement in relation to the illegality of some abortions done by abortion providers, that is more difficult to establish. You can read about the McGuire ruling from 1986 which held that abortions are legal in Queensland if the woman’s life or physical or mental health are in serious danger. (That decision does not represent the law though, as it was a lower court decision.)

Everyone knows, though, that it is rare for such conditions to occur in pregnancy, but when I have been in court, I have never been able to prove that those women who were going to have an abortion on the day of our sit-in, were not some of those few who happen to be in serious danger. Obviously I don’t know these particular women, so we lose, even though the odds are very strongly in favour of none of the women being in serious danger.

A police prosecutor who prosecuted me, informed me that in view of what I said in court, he had contacted his superiors about the need to investigate the operations of the abortion clinics but they ignored him. It is difficult from my position to get the abortion clinics successfully prosecuted but the police could if they wanted, but they very clearly do not want to. Equally clearly, there is no will from the government to get the police to prosecute.

A reasonable but biased summary of the history and the present legal situation regarding abortion in Queensland has been written by the pro-abortion group Children By Choice: http://www.childrenbychoice.org.au/info-a-resources/facts-and-figures/queensland-abortion-law

It is clear that no government, of any political persuasion, is willing to address the abortion issue. It is seen as being too potentially damaging at the ballot box for the law to either be changed or enforced and so it is essentially ignored, with abortion going on unhindered.