Ms Pringle, you should be the first to realise that it is not the prerogative of the judiciary to make laws, it is the responsibility of parliament. In this case Mr Justice Menhennitt is the de factor law maker and as a matter of principle this is not really a satisfactory way for such a controversial matter to be resolved, no matter on which side of the fence you sit.

It is therefore good to see that the new Premier of Victoria is taking steps to exercise the authority of parliament to resolve the matter.

David

AS if legislating for something makes it right. It has always been legal for a rich 60 year old man to sleep with as many 18 (or is it 16 these days) year old girls that he likes. Murder will always be murder whether it is legal or not!

I never made any judgment as to whether it was right or wrong. I expect the parliament to weigh up all the pros and cons and then make a rational decision. If you wish to lobby them one way or another then that is also your right.

So, Helen Pringle, having clarified the grey area in the law, where do you stand on the proposed new laws?

It seems to me pretty awkward, time wasting and cruel to expect doctors and nurses and patients to operate under laws which could form the basis of nasty legal attacks on their jobs and reputations. And any law which remains on the books can always be reinterpreted by a State with a particular policy so as to find most abortions illegal, just as the planning and environment Act in Victoria is interpreted via state policy to prioritise economic growth over environmental health and biodiversity.

Australians are currently ruled by increasingly religious and authoritarian governments, with pronatalist tendencies. Maybe Brumby can see some danger looming ahead, or perhaps he is just going for a cheap emotional ride for self-promotion.

The ALP's developer mates won't be too happy because they endorse the big population scenario and would frankly have Australians tolerate any ill just to keep housing demand growing.

I like the idea of abandoning the case-law on abortion.

Helen, your attempt to clarify the simplicity of the current laws actually highlighted to me just how confused they are! I'm sure that to you, who has probably been examining these laws for some time, or to a lawyer reading your article, it all makes perfect sense, but not to the average layperson.

You are clearly in favor of the current status quo, but why are you so against change? ie decriminalisation?

Three cheers for Helen Pringle - Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip...(etc).

Why?

You may well ask. And in reply you would be well advised that this Helen Pringle is no dork. No sir-ee. She's a very intelligent and very ethical bit of womanhood. God bless her little bits. If in doubt, just go read some of her earlier articles on this very site - http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=3739 .

This Helen Pringle is all business and no hoo-har.

Yet, we see her opinions - based on fact and truth you understand - being called into question by the likes of "crumpethead" and "Kanga", the latter of whom calls for clarification about, and in other words - but just whose side are you on? Pro-life or pro-choice?

No one seems to have appreciated that Pringle isn't interested in sides on this issue. Nope. She's just interested in pointing out that Leslie Cannold (and we all know whose side she's on) is creating confusion about abortion laws, when it seems, they aren't confusing at all to normal rational people.

A simply stunningly wonderful article of fact that raises the question of why is Cannold spinning her tale of confusion about this matter?

You good folks can go figure that out for yourselves, but I think I know why.

I'm just tickled pink that Pringle here has most eloquently shot Cannold's hot-air pro-abortion propaganda gas-bagging (read bullsh') down in flames. And she's done it because she (Pringle) is obviously a woman of academical ethics and human balance and isn't on anyone's side in particular here at all. But she is on the side of truth and honesty. She clearly has no motives of "sides" or political bias or social engineering. She's just simply interested in getting the facts straight.

And poor ol' Leslie - you have to admire her spirit - shot down in flames again!

My goodness, isn't life just so wonderful?

Many thanks Helen Pringle. This exceptional article has made my day.

Maximus

I am pleased you wrote that because I feel the same way about Helen Pringle. She is a straight shooter with commendable ethics.

More articles are very welcome.

50-60 000 years of abortion and now we are to decide whether we are immoral,murderers? 50-60 000 years of war and fighting yet we dont sit and legislate this as murder? A person enters a drinking establishment with his/her car keys knowing full well that they will be intoxicated when driving home, why is this not premeditated murder when they kill another human in an accident?

The answer is politics and always will be

cardine, consider the concept of intent. Once having this basic understanding of jurisprudence you won't be so confused.

Intent? Of course.

Please believe me I read your short note with intense intention. I am sure you intended it be brief and to the point of your intent on the issue. My intent was to intend that the intention of people is always intentional unless they have conditions that hinder their intentions eg:sociopathic and the medically insane who have no intentions other then to be insane.

My intention to all intents and purposes was clear. Yours was not.
Instead of being obscure say what you mean without using such a generalised word and it will be taken more seriously.

I was referring to the first letter not to the talk in between if that helps you understand with better intentiveness.

I am enjoying word of the day. Let me think of one for you.
Chill.

Dear David/VK3AUU: Justice Menhennitt did not make the law(s), he interpreted the law in line with precedent. That’s what judges do. A law that covered every possible contingency and circumstance would be enormous (and actually in principle, impossible!).

Dear runner: my article is simply about what the law is, given that it is so often misstated.

Dear Kanga, You ask me a question that is not covered by my article, which is fine – however, I have not seen a detailed draft of the proposed reform and so would be very wary of saying where I “stand on the proposed new laws”.
You note that, “It seems to me pretty awkward, time wasting and cruel to expect doctors and nurses and patients to operate under laws which could form the basis of nasty legal attacks on their jobs and reputations.” You need to add the word “unjustifiably” here eg “laws which could UNJUSTIFIABLY form the basis of nasty legal attacks on their jobs and reputations.” I do not see why medical operations of any sort should be exempt from law. You note that any laws “can always be reinterpreted by a State…”, but the Menhennitt ruling has stood for nearly 40 years now, and has not been reinterpreted so as to find most abortions illegal. Anything can happen…. but in this case it hasn’t.
You also note that “Australians are currently ruled by increasingly religious and authoritarian governments, with pronatalist tendencies.” What is an example of this? I don’t see it myself. At the commonwealth level, the RU486 debate of 2006 would not seem to support your contention neither the debate nor the outcome of the vote.

ran out of words....

HP

and....

Dear crumpethead, you ask why I am against change. I wouldn’t exactly say that, but I would say that I think the present system provides a workable resolution to the question of abortion, and provides some common ground in the debate. I realise it doesn’t satisfy everyone, on either side of the debate.

Dear maximus, it is as you note extremely important to get it right here. I have made mistakes in my work, and am mortified by having done so. I like to think that I welcome people who tell me of my mistakes and help me to get it right (even though it is often painful!). However, I am not interested in shooting Leslie Cannold, or anyone else, down in flames.

thank you for the comments!

Helen

cardine, my goodness. So totally over the top for such a harmless and benign comment. I will expand on my last post, though I did honestly feel it was an easy answer to your professed confusion. Intent is one of the principle foundations of legal principle from which much law rests. Prove intent and you have your criminal. If you can not show argument free of doubt that invests intent of action or outcome in person or corporate or nation. You have no criminality. What you might have is a bunch of very poor decisions made by many different people not directly associated who's combined actions lead to catastrophe. They may also lead to success but who would know? That would never be reported. We are judged on our failures not our successes. And if anyone mentions their success, there is always someone close by to remind that person how they and other people contributed to that success. Failure is something someone does alone. Go figure!

I did not realise that my tongue in cheek answer would be taken to be serious..lol seems my humour failed its intentions....lol

I was not talking about intent but rather the reasoning behind the legislations that occur. Intent is in everything and I believe abortion is not an issue alone.
Abortion is made illegal and then what happens?
Financially, termination is a cost effective solution to unwanted births. Adoption is rarely an option.
If a woman is forced to carry out the birth, then who is responsible for the cost of raising the child?
Does a man have the right to use a womans body without her consent to carry a foetus to gestation?
This is a law that is more than whether a foetus is allowed to become viable.
I choose which laws I want to obey because that is the freedom I have in my country. If I am charged than I have the right to argue my choice.
Lets consider a far reaching, right wing thought. Foetus's are given human rights at conception, their life depends on their host, without their host the woman, they will not survive. The womans rights are not granted and she must carry the foetus to gestation.
Now, lets consider, a person needs a liver transplant, and finds a donor. Without this donation the person will die and relies on this donor to survive. If you believe these are 2 different issues, consider the rights of one outweighs the rights of another.

chill.

Dear chill, using your theory two year old children can be killed and organed off because they too are dependent on their mothers and if abandoned leaves the state holding the bag. The state would then be with in it's rights to kill all abandoned or orphaned children, even profit by marketing the harvested organs . Unless you have special rules at each level of human development. How about the unemployed. Relying on the state and unable to care for themselves. Shall we begin terminating them too. Other than emotional attachment/bonding what constitutes the various strata of human value. Killing a 22 week old developing human being is no different than killing a 22 year old developing human being. That you can find an excuse to do so hardly precipitates moral or ethical human behavior. The difference between a natural miscarriage and an abortion is intent. They are not equal in nature nor circumstance.
Have all the abortions you want but, don't tell the rest of us it's an ethical and moral act because it saves the mother or someone else from taking up the responsibility of raising a child because babies are dependent. We are all dependent on one another for our existence. It's only a matter of degree and time.

Helen Pringle denies the law on abortion is confusing. She asks, where is the confusion? Is she a little shortsighted?

According to the ruling by Judge Menhennitt, as found in her own article, the lawfulness of procuring a miscarriage revolves around preserving the woman from “serious danger to her life or her physical or mental health”.

With the advancement of medical science, most pregnancies are not dangerous, and most of the 80 000 abortions procured each year are for economic or convenient reasons. The doctors know it, and that’s why they are looking over their shoulders.

If it wasn’t that the law was a bit confusing or incongruous with current practice, why would the Victorian government feel the need to legislate? Those in the Labor party wanting free access to abortion already have the status quo on their side with no convictions for abortion in the last few decades.

I agree with Runner, that some things are wrong regardless of what the law says (e.g. 2000 years ago it was good sport to feed people to lions in the Coliseum, and only 200 years ago it was lawful to own slaves), but abortion on demand, as it is been practiced in recent decades, is still technically illegal.

aqvarivs
Not so long ago, the Argentinians used to shoot the feral children who lived in the sewers of Buenos Ares. Feral adults seem to be quite capable of destroying themselves either in motor cars or with drugs.

What really does need some reform is the way we treat the old and suffering terminally ill who would dearly love to end it all, but can't do it legally because some bioethics dick head thinks that life must be preserved at all costs.

David

David, The faster we abort our progeny and suicide the aging, the great society of the no thing can then realise it's full nature. Long live the no thing. You know, people when they hit fifty begin to become more dependent on the system as they require ever more medical care. We should start thinking of ways to kill them off too. We got rid of the extended family and that value system and replaced it with the values of the nuclear family and now we have the feminist anti-family. The social engineers have been pulling at the thread of society and much of our familiar values have been lost to the self-interest of the me me clan. The cloth has begun to unravel and we have not been training weavers but, cultural marxist. We are rotting from with in, looking outside for answers why it could be happening to us. Society is a ship afloat in a ocean of despair and too many people are drilling holes to let in that sea because it has become the moral standard. They look out and see the multitude floating serenely with in their life preservers snug from the cares of the world and responsibility and are envious. Why am I struggling when the State should be responsible for me. I'm a victim too.

Dear Mick V, I do indeed have eyesight problems, the remedy for which is wearing reading glasses. And where I have problems in understanding, my remedy is reading the relevant documents carefully. Please read again the statement of the law by Judge Levine: "it would be for the jury to decide whether there existed in the case of each woman any economic, social or medical ground or reason which in their view could constitute reasonable grounds upon which an accused could honestly and reasonably believe there would result a serious danger to her physical or mental health" (R v Wald (1971) 3 NSWDCR 25, at 29). This statement understands the "danger" of a pregnancy in relation to a woman's health in broad terms.

When you assert that "most of the 80 000 abortions procured each year are for economic or convenient reasons. The doctors know it, and that’s why they are looking over their shoulders", I would suggest that you have absolutely no basis on which to make that assertion. Or perhaps you would like to tell OLO readers, and the police, how you know the private facts in these 80 000 cases?

I would also note that law knows no category of "technically illegal". I have noted the use of this curious phrase by people who should know a lot better, even by people who think of themselves as pro-choice (like Catharine Lumby for example). The term "technically illegal" is at best nonsensical, and at worst indicative of a contempt for the rule of law.

I do agree with you (and Runner) that some things are wrong regardless of what the law in a particular state says.

Helen

Helen - who was Isabel Berners?

Dear Helen,

Since I am an ordinary Joe and not a lawyer and don’t speak or readily understand Legalese, when I used the phrase ‘technically illegal’ I was aiming at ordinarily understood language. That is, ‘technically illegal’ are those things that are not technically legal, or more simply put, actions that are outside of the law.

I reread the paragraph that you asked me to read. As I am not a lawyer, you may have to clarify a few things contained there within. Is a judgement made in the NSW District Court binding on the rest of Australia? The paragraph seemed to indicate the judge putting the fate of an accused ‘procurer of miscarriage’ into the hands of the jury. As I understand it, a jury could make whatever decision they thought best. Is that not right? However, I understand jury decisions do not set precedents that are binding on future cases.

"Most of the 80 000 abortions procured each year are for economic or convenient reasons. The doctors know it, and that’s why they are looking over their shoulders". You question this, but do you have a basis on which you can safely assert that you know enough of the private facts in most of these 80 000 cases to say that such is not the practice?

The law, as you explain it, relies heavily on case law. Excuse me for not being a lawyer capable of sifting through decades of cases decisions, but after reading your article, it seems that the statutes are fairly clear but are flagrantly out of step with current practice. This is not just my opinion, but seems to be a concern for the Labor party in Victoria. If the law was not a bit murky or confused, can you understand why Labor in Victoria is aiming to legislate on the matter?

Dear billie, Isopel Birners is a character in a novel by George Borrow, "The Romany Rye". It is one of the books I love the most (along with Borrow's "Lavengro"), and when I was a teenager, Isopel was a heroine of mine for various reasons -- along with Maggie Tulliver. I changed the spelling so that it wouldnt come up on a google search.....

dear Mick V, thank you for your thoughtful reply, and I will think about it and get back to you.

Helen