A very amateurish 'information' paper indeed!
The claim, under the section entitled “The need for change”, that “the current law…fails to recognize…women as competent and conscientious decision makers” is ideologically-driven nonsense. Such a claim elevates all women to sainthood, places them above the Law, deemed perfectly incapable of the crime of arbitrary deprivation of an innocent human life. Most women and most doctors(men and women) may be competent and conscientious decision makers, but the Law also recognizes that some women and some doctors (men and women) may not for a variety of reasons, some of them criminal, be competent and conscientious decision makers. Abortion law must remain as “a just and necessary deterrent to the taking of innocent human life.”
Under international human rights law, all governments have a solemn human rights obligation to provide legal protection for all children, "before as well as after birth" from arbitrary deprivation of life. Decriminalizing abortion is not just a domestic legal matter for Tasmania. As Justice Michael Kirby established, where there is a gap in the domestic law, international human rights law may be used to ensure human rights protection for any vulnerable group. To decriminalize abortion is to leave an immense gap—it removes necessary legal protection from a most vulnerable group—children at risk of abortion--a group with no legal representation against arbitrary deprivation of life.

Babette Francis wrote: "So before the Bill is passed and I risk being extradited and confined to the prisons of Port Arthur where previous generations of boat convicts were incarcerated, I will point out some flaws on page l0 of the euphemistically titled "Information Paper" which accompanies the Bill."

The author is all set to assume the mantle of a martyr. However, she does not cite why she would be imprisoned for criticising the paper.

A woman should have the right to decide whether she wants to continue a pregnancy. Neither Babette Francis, I nor anybody else has the right to decide for her.

Your opinion, David, that "A woman should have the right to decide whether she wants to continue the pregnancy" is contrary to international human rights law which strictly forbids any one human being having ownership or disposal rights over any other human being, no matter how small, or dependent or troublesome or 'unwanted'.
It is also contrary to the fundamental human rights principles of inalienability, indivisibility, equality and the non-derogability of the right of "all members of the human family" to legal protection from arbitrary deprivation of life.
Right from the first drafting of the foundation international human rights instruments, the legal language of human rights consistently included "unborn children" and "the child before as well as after birth" and accorded these smallest human beings equal and inalienable human rights to “life, development and survival”. In the 1947-8 negotiations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the first things agreed by Australia, with other members of the international community, was that the “innocent unborn child” was to be legally protected.
It is not valid now for the proposed Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill to pretend that the human rights of unborn Tasmanian children at risk of abortion are negligible, not worth mentioning or protecting.
The Bill violates the indivisibility principle which requires equal human rights protection for both the mother and her unborn child; and prohibits the state from abandoning laws that protect the unborn child on the grounds that it has a priority obligation to protect the "the abortion choice" of the child's mother.

Abortion "choices" as human rights violations by adults in positions of power over children in positions of dependency are incompatible with protection of the child before birth.
When the indivisibility principle is applied, the individual state’s misperceived duty to provide expectant mothers with abortion "services" cannot be performed at the neglect of the more fundamental duty to uphold the rights of their children to "special safeguards and care including appropriate legal protection before as well as after birth". The right to life is "the supreme right" and "basic to all human rights"

Dear Ritaj,

'Unborn children' is an emotive oxymoron. A fetus may or may not become a child. You and I are undead people. Eventually we will be dead, but at present we are not. A fetus may or may go to term.

You wrote: "Abortion "choices" as human rights violations by adults in positions of power over children in positions of dependency are incompatible with protection of the child before birth."

There is no child before birth. It is a part of a woman's body, and she should have the right to decide what to do with part of her body.

david f rejects Babette Francis's concern that she may be at risk of imprisonment for criticising the new draft Tasmanian "reproductive health" bill.

He should read the bill: http://www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/126720/ReproductiveHealth_Consult_Draft.pdf.

Clause 9 of this horrendous legislation penalises any protest in relation to the killing of viable unborn babies within 150 metres of an abortion facility. The penalty is a maximum fine of $65,000 and/or one year in jail.

Right now many people are up in arms about restrictions on free speech in Senator Conroy's new bill to regulate the media. Why is there not even a whimper about Michelle O'Byrne's draconian legislation in Tasmania?

Dear Edmund Burke,

Incitement and harassment is a crime under English common law. Women who decide to have an abortion should be free from incitement and harassment. Those who hang around abortion clinics are inciting and harassing.

Babette Francis is completely free to protest or to take legal action against the bill. She is not free to harass those women who have made the choice to have an abortion. They should be free from that sort of thing after they have made their decision. They are under enough stress as it is.