The problem here is essentially a conflict of "rights". The pregnant woman in question has, subject to certain caveats, the right to have the abortion. The doctor has an equal right to hold opinions on the moral "wrongness" of abortion. In a society such as ours the paramount "good" is a peaceful environment where we can all go about our business and live our lives without the threats so common in other societies. To maintain that situation a solution to the conflict of rights must be found: that is a compromise. What exactly IS that doctor's right? I would maintain that it is to hold his opinion and under no circumstances can he/she be coerced into performing an abortion. The doctor however does NOT (imho) have the right to refuse to inform that woman of alternative sources of advice & help that he believes are as well qualified as himself, professionally, but may have different ethical views. He MUST advise as to skills of others as his patient is unable to do so and, left to her own devices, may end up in the hands of an unskilled practitioner and as we know from historical precedent may die.

The problem Gorufus is that ordering non-complying doctors to refer patients with a conscience clause in order to improve access is simply not going to work as they see abortion as murder even if you don't.

Imagine a situation where after a particularly child murder, a referendum is held, and the mandatory death sentence is brought back in for certain offences. Two conscience clauses are brought in with it. The first one tackles Christian prison warders who refuse to string people up, as they see it as murder by the State. They are excused, but they have to find one of their fellow warders who is willing to do it, and refer him or her. I'm pretty certain the warder's response would be unprintable and they would be non-compliant.

The second orders lawyers and the judiacy who don't want to be involved in death penalty cases to do the same thing. Well watching the fallout would be entertaining, but I think the condemned would be more likely to die of old age before the legal profession rolled over.

Access to abortions could be improved with a well run advertising campaign about it being legal and confidential, with a letter to each house-hold, information in public places, and even better, a TV and radio campaign. That should have happened in Victoria after abortion was legalised. I think though that the Government is still squeamish about being associated with something as controversial as abortion, which could be a vote loser so brought in a ineffective conscience vote instead. The Government should get over it and do it's job.

Even before it was legalised, patients accessed 20,000 abortions in one year in the State, so backroom abortions might not a very common occurence. It could be that a young woman from a strict background who isn't even supposed to have a boy friend, let alone find herself pregnant could be short on information. A well run information campaign could help here and cut out the middle man, the unnecessary GP.

The only person with 'rights' on the abortion issue is the person wanting (or not wanting)an abortion. It should not be the business of doctors or politicians to impose their personal beliefs.

On the other hand, if Amanda Fairweather is prepared to lose patients to more sympathetic doctors who hold the welfare of their patients dearer than Fairweather apparently will, that's her business.

However, any Bill of Rights would have far more draconian effects on the general public than it would have benefits for women wishing to have abortions. Abortions are regularly performed, now, and a Bill of Rights has nothing to do with Fairweather's personal views on abortion.

However, Fairweather has a right to her personal opinion, regardless of the following outrageous post:

"this article expresses the usual far right ideological clap trap, has no basis in fact, and simply regurgitates the same vicious christian propaganda that has kept people living in fear for centuries. Shame on you.

Posted by E.Sykes, Friday, 6 November 2009 12:54:03 PM"

Apart from being poorly written and expressed, the post is the usual tirade against anyone who doesn't agree with Sykes. He is too stupid, apparently, to realise that in criticising anyone whom he considers to be 'far right', he is exposing himself as a far Left lunatic who has surrendered his powers of thinking to socialist dogma.

Amanda Fairweather strikes me as being a fairly arrogant and unworldly young woman, but she has taken the time to tell us why she thinks the way she does. Name-calling morons like Sykes, with no arguments except loony-left dogma, are far inferior, and less use to society, than Fairweather could ever be.

There are all shades of opinion expressed on OLO, and most of us seem to accept that not everyone is going to agree with our way of thinking. Sykes is a recent and malicious addition to our number who is wasting his time even posting if he cannot come up with something better than just criticising everyone he disagrees with and calling them names indicating extremism when he is clearly an extremist himself.

I think that you have come to the crux of the problem JLDeland. We have another conflict of rights to settle. 1.) The doctor has a right to his moral opinion and has a right to refuse to perform an abortion. 2.) This doctor has also a duty, implicit I admit but I do think well recognised, to offer professional advice on each and every problem presented to him. In this case the advice will be referral to another doctor. He can get out of his conflict by a sign in his surgery stating the limits of his advice i.e. "This practice does not hold with abortion for any reason and advice will not be given concerning pregnancy termination". If he does not so inform his intending patients I think that he probably is in breach of a contract implicit in his calling himself a general practitioner, or gynaecologist for that matter. Incidentally the GP is not "unnecessary" but essential for advising which of his fellow practitiioners is likely to be competent & appropriate to care for a particular patient: horses for courses. This information obviously cannot be made publicly available on some kind of register

Hazza
First we need to dispose of the theory that rights are whatever the state or the powerful say they are.

I’m surprised anyone would defend the claim that might is right. This theory confuses rights with arbitrary power. It provides no protection against abuses of power and will actively carry them out if directed to: the opposite of rights. It cannot distinguish rights from wrongs.

Nor is ‘democracy’ any guarantee against abuses of power. The majority can be greedy, and violent, and exploitative as much as any minority. The greatest crimes in the history of the world were carried out, pursuant to this theory, by a democratically elected government. The classic disproof was provided by the national socialists of Germany. A vast majority voted Hitler in. He even foreshadowed his crimes and abuses beforehand. According to the ‘rights are whatever the democratically elected state says they are’, and ‘the democratic state presumptively represents the people’ theory, the Jews were not murdered, they merely committed suicide.

According to the majoritarian theory, Attila the Hun was merely exercising his ‘rights’, as are the pirates of Somalia. If twelve men and one woman vote whether to have sex, and the men vote for, and the woman votes against, so they use force, then it is it not a crime of rape, it is their ‘right’.

It is no answer to appeal to the existence of the state, because this itself is an artefact of a prior power struggle. It only begs the questions of its own right to use power, and where the boundaries of its territory are to be drawn.

The statist and majoritarian theory is not just confused and absurd: it is positively immoral.

Yet well-intentioned, educated, national socialist Australians defend it in here today. If we called them Nazis, they would be horrified and offended. Yet it is the same theory and they want to use it for the same purposes: to force everyone to obey their arbitrary opinion; to direct other people’s labour; to seize the fruits of other people’s labour; for autobahns...

Since Australia's Constitution provides for men's legislatures only, perhaps the author could be persuaded to consider at the very least that every Australian woman's sole human right to male supervision should be enshrined in a women's bill of right.