City of Gosnells councillor Peter Abetz has claimed a “misunderstanding” caused him to provide incorrect abortion figures while claiming that public consultation on changes to WA’s abortion laws were fatally flawed.
In a bill introduced to parliament on Wednesday, the State Government will include abortion in the Public Health Act 2016 and remove it from the Criminal Code, to better reflect the fact that abortion care is part of everyday health care for women.
The bill will bring WA in line with other Australian jurisdictions and remove clinically unnecessary barriers for women accessing an abortion.
Under current law, abortion is legal from gestation to 20 weeks.
Post 20 weeks, two of a panel of six doctor must agree that a “late term” abortion is medically warranted.
Key changes include reducing the number of health practitioners required to be involved in care from two to one, abolishing the Ministerial panel requirement for later-term abortions, allow health practitioners to conscientiously object but be required to transfer the patient’s care or provide information on where to access that care, remove mandatory counselling provisions and remove the requirement of Ministerial approval for a health service to perform late-term abortions.
Public consultation on the bill fielded more than 17,500 survey responses, with the State Government claiming the responses showed overwhelming support for a range of abortion amendments.
Cr Abetz, the WA State Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, appeared on the ACL’s new political segment last week, claiming the public consultation was extremely limited.
“The Government announced in November last year they were having a review of the abortion law and they invited submissions, just a four-week window, where you could provide a submission,” he said.
“ACL provide a very detailed referenced submission, and they [the State Government] also provided an online survey the community could fill in, it was multiple choice type of thing, but it was very limited in what you could actually express.
“Basically, it was if you agreed with the current law or what they were proposing.
“They say that has been widely endorsed in the online survey.”
He also said that in 2022, there were 78 late-term abortions in WA, with 72 of those performed on foetuses displaying signs of Down’s Syndrome.
Going on statistics provided by WA Health, this claim is utterly false.
A WA health spokesperson confirmed that in 2022, there were 8,545 abortions state-wide, 76 of which were performed at a gestational age of 20 weeks or greater.
On these 76 abortions, fewer than five had reasons that included trisomy 21 – Down’s Syndrome.
Cr Abetz said the figures he stated publicly were a result of a “misunderstanding”.
“That was a mistake on my part and I’ve sent an email off to ACL to fix that,” he said.
“I misunderstood the information that came from parliament.
“There were 71 abortions performed because there were signs of Down’s Syndrome but not all of those were late term, that’s my mistake.”
