Posted on 02/16/2005 12:10:06 PM PST by Lorianne
INDEPENDENT senator Brian Harradine has used a parliamentary committee to suggest government departments should be doing more to discourage abortion.
The abortion debate raged again last week, in particular around the issue of Medicare funding for terminations. The federal government ruled out changing the current funding and policy arrangements.
But Senator Harradine, who has six children of his own and seven step-children, asked officials from the Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) in a Senate estimates committee today why their department wasn't doing more to help women avoid abortion.
Advertisement: "Might I ask why you think this is, for example if there are opportunities to improve government to give women the option to steer clear of abortion, we should (not) embrace that opportunity and we should not be put in the position where they have an abortion they don't really want because they can't get help to take a different path?" Senator Harradine said.
"In these circumstances why wouldn't you be doing work to investigate how to help these women?" he said.
The department's Office for Women said it was not doing any research into abortion.
"The most recent project we've done we commissioned a research report on fertility decision-making that the Australian Institute for Family Studies prepared," Office for Women manager Kerry Flanagan told the committee.
"So it was not going to be the abortion issue per se, but about the choices that families made to have or not to have children," she said.
Ms Flanagan rejected Mr Harradine's suggestion she was equating abortion with birth control.
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