9th September, 2008
JIM WALLACE

The abortion debate has taken a new turn in Federal Parliament in recent days, with Senators given the opportunity to hear a voice that is, inevitably, usually missing on this issue - that of a survivor of a failed attempt to kill her in the womb.

Thirty-one years ago Gianna Jessen was burned alive in the womb by saline solution for approximately 18 hours before being delivered alive in a Los Angeles County abortion clinic.

Currently visiting Australia as an advocate for unborn children, Gianna's poignant testimony cannot help but resonate with the 20 or so Senators who are yet to decide how they will cast their 17th September vote on a disallowance motion to stop the Medicare funding of second trimester abortions (14-26 weeks).

Just as importantly, Gianna's moving first-person story provides a challenge to the tired line of the pro-abortionists, namely that abortion is only the exercise of a woman's right to control her own body. Gianna is an exception, an abortion survivor who can and does provide the counter “what about my rights?”

It would be almost impossible to conceive that we could have a survivor pleading for the reform of laws that have caused her so much injury and trauma and not see a positive response in the Senate.

If this were a survivor of a motor accident that had killed all her friends, we would surely move heaven and earth to find the cause and remedy it. If it was a bad piece of road we'd fix it. If we found that a law was the root cause, we would inevitably have it changed.

But the pro-choice movement has been so successful in dehumanising the unborn child that society is in deep denial about the reality of abortion. This is particularly the case with late-term abortion, where children at the same stage of development as those being aborted are often being cared for and thriving in a another part of the hospital, where ironically the aim is to save life.

Dehumanisation has been the first and essential step in a long line of tragedies wrought against the vulnerable and unwanted throughout history. It has usually only been the testimony of survivors which has brought the reality and inhumanity of such episodes to light and shamed societies into responding.

Now abortion has its survivor.

The pro-choice movement needs to explain the logic of someone else having the right to decide on Gianna Jessen's life while she was in the womb, despite the fact that they could not exercise that right from the moment she was born.

They have to explain why it was right and acceptable to inflict pain on her in the womb, when the perpetrator would have been thrown in jail for doing the same thing once Gianna was out of the womb.

At the heart of this is the leap in logic that says there is no continuity in humanity between the Gianna hurt and damaged in the failed abortion and the woman who now stands before them.

The fact is that Gianna's very presence and poignant testimony make a lie of any argument that we can draw some arbitrary line on the continuum of life and act with cruelty on one side of it and urgent compassion on the other.

This is a testimony that has equal force in Victoria, where the parliament is debating the decriminalisation of abortion, including late-term abortion.

The issue before the Senate in the Federal Parliament should be an easy one. A 'no brainer' we might say.

Senators are being asked to stop using taxpayers' money to fund second trimester abortions - a practice which 67 per cent of those same taxpayers are against, according to the results of a 2005 national opinion poll by Market Facts.

The voice of the community is saying: “Don't use my tax money for this”. And Gianna Jessen is saying: “Yes, please don't”.

Jim Wallace, AM, is the managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby.

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