Nationals senator Matt Canavan says he won’t pull his controversial ‘babies born alive’ Bill, and has lashed the Greens for attempting to “censor and silence debate”. Next Tuesday, the Greens will move for the Bill to force medical professionals to save ‘babies born alive’ as a result of abortions, to be discharged and removed from further debate and a potential vote in the Senate. However Senator Canavan, who alongside Liberal senator Alex Antic is sponsoring the Bill, is resisting the call and has accused the minor party of being scared of discussion.
“This is an attempt to censor and silence debate this country,” Senator Canavan said on Wednesday. “My Bill doesn’t change abortion procedures, doesn’t restrict abortion procedures. “It simply says that everybody, every Australian, deserves to have medical care appropriate to their circumstances.
I will always defend that.” Greens spokesperson for women said the proposed legislation was a “thinly veiled attack on women’s rights to choose to terminate a pregnancy,” and said both major parties needed to come together to see it scrapped. “If the two big parties genuinely believe that abortion is not a federal issue then they should vote to discharge this Bill from the notice paper, and the Greens will move for that early next week,” she said.
Legal experts have said this would have a “deleterious effect” on Australia’s human rights commitments, and could hamper a woman’s access to rep.