Garra, to avoid future embarassment, you should speak only when you know the facts instead of making reactionary statements which contain obvious errors.

The law does, at least in wiriting, protect the child killed in this instance. Child Destruction laws under the Crimes Act prohibit late term abortions, despite your protestations to the contrary.

You talk about the child as 'a theory' and a 'potential person'. That is offensive. Who gleefully tells their friends, 'guys my potential human who exists in theory in my womb just kicked?' Who says 'this loose conglomeration of divided cells inside me will be due in two months?' It is a baby, everyone knows it's a baby, and for you to say these people are potential humans is wrong. After all, is not an adolescent merely a 'potential adult'? I suppose that means killing them is less heinous than killing a fully developed adult person.

This case, of a thrity two week abortion, shows how far pro aborts will go to protect their industry. julian mcgauran should fight this until the end, and hopefully abortionists will be put on notice that they are not above the law.

The question, however, is not whether or not the actions in the case (i.e. the abortion) were right or wrong, it is whether uninvolved parties should have the right to complain about a medical proceedure they have had nothing to do with.

The woman in question has not complained, the doctors were cleared of wrong-doing by the coroner... Why does this still have legs? Senator McGauran should butt out, it is not his business, nor his area of ministerial responsibility.

Medical records should not made generally available to anyone who is not connected with the case at hand, that is, immediate family (in the case of a death), the person involved, and perhaps their legal reps.

The black and whiters ride again. I simply can't see the world the way the McGauran's of this world do. For them, it seems, things are right or they are wrong, no shades of grey, nothing ambivalent. Maybe they have been lucky and never faced a really difficult dilemma, like the poor woman being used as a political football here. I sincerely hope that none of the women I know and care about are faced with such a horrible situation, but if they are, I shall stand back and respect their judgement and right to make their own decision without unwanted and unhelpful and insensitive and pompous moralising on my part.
In the end, we must decide, are women mere portals through which other people enter the world, or are they fully human individuals in their own right? If they are the latter, we must trust them to make their own decisions about their bodies, their futures, their lives and, yes, about any potential children they may or may not decide to bear.
If we decide we must make such decisions for them, we are infantilising them, we are telling them they are not quite as human as we, the wiser and more moral ones, are.
As a woman, I believe I am fully as human as Senator McGauran and therefore absolutely able and entitled to make my own decisions in consultation with my doctor.