24/08/2024
Born Alive But Left To Die
- by Gemma Tognini in The Australian 24.08.2024
READS: I want you to imagine a scenario in which you’re walking down the street, going about your day perhaps, and you see a newborn baby.
We’ve all read about those miracle stories where a stranger finds an abandoned baby in a bin or some such thing. The child is found just in time, given medical attention and lives. It’s a miracle, we celebrate.
Sometimes, though, in these real-life scenarios there isn’t a happy ending. The trauma is too much and the baby dies. In those cases, comfort is drawn from the knowledge a baby wasn’t alone in death. Was held, loved if but for minutes, perhaps hours or even a day. That small truth feels somewhat redemptive in the face of some of life’s inexplicable cruelties.
Now, if you will, imagine a different scenario. Instead of rescuing an abandoned child, instead of rushing to its cries and calling for immediate medical help, we keep walking. Imagine a scenario in which a newborn baby, healthy or heavily compromised, isn’t given medical care. No palliative care or pain relief. No love, no comfort. We say that baby was going to die anyway so why bother?
It doesn’t bear thinking about. Who would even contemplate such a thing?
Guess what, Australia. Some of you do. Most of the states and territories do, and this past week what happens in Queensland hospitals at least was laid bare thanks to the testimony of a whistleblower midwife with more than a decade’s experience in the birthing suite.
Some of you may have read Louise Adsett’s testimony this week. She told a parliamentary hearing in Queensland of babies being born alive after failed abortions and, rather than being held, placed in witches hats or taken out of the room and left to die.
Of all the great many things I’ve forced myself to read these past 12 months, this was among the most traumatic. Something screams silently inside your chest. If your brain works like mine, you read and then you see the images in your mind. Who hasn’t?
Adsett’s testimony was distressing, graphic, devastating and critically important for all Australians to read.
“To give you a first example, a mother made a decision to abort a baby at 21-plus weeks’ gestation. The process began in the morning with misoprostol given throughout the day. The process took all day and the baby was only delivered during the early hours of a night shift where skeleton staff was on duty. This baby moved vigorously, gasped for breath and had a palpable heart rate to make it clear this baby was alive. It was over 400g but the baby was a good weight.”
Adsett spoke of babies being born alive and surviving in some cases for up to five hours, fighting to stay alive yet not provided with medical care.
This isn’t some Third World country, this is a hospital in Queensland, Australia.
To be clear, the inquiry she was appearing at has no impact on anyone’s legal right to abortion. It is only about enshrining legislative protection for babies who survive abortion. Providing palliative care for babies who will not survive and, when appropriate, providing medical care for those who will.
This is the cruel and awful truth in Australia in 2024 – the only states that provide legislative protection for babies who survive abortion are NSW and South Australia. Every other state and territory refuses. The shame of them.
Northern Territory termination of pregnancy guidelines explicitly state “do not provide life-sustaining treatment” if a live birth follows an abortion. Let me translate that: If a baby is born alive, let it die.
In federal parliament this week, a man I’d never heard of before (sorry, but it’s true) United Australia senator Ralph Babet introduced an urgency motion to ask senators to vote on the importance of medical care for babies who survive abortions. This is based on a bill that he and senators Matt Canavan and Alex Antic first introduced in 2022 that, had it passed, would have provided every Australian newborn a right to medical care.
But that bill has been languishing in the Senate for more than 18 months. Why? Politics, I suppose. And nobody likes to think about the truth of babies surviving abortions and being left to die.
But that is the truth and it contradicts the narrative. That’s the shallow answer. The more confronting question is this: who, when directly asked, says, no, I’d rather let that baby die?
I’ll tell you who. Every single ALP member voted against this motion. Every one. Their housemates, the Greens, obviously. Independent senators David Pocock and Tammy Tyrrell. Liberals Simon Birmingham, Jane Hume, Andrew Bragg and Maria Kovacic. When people show you their moral compass, take notice.
Some say this is a state matter and constitutionally shouldn’t be dealt with by the federal parliament. It’s a cute and highly convenient position to take. And incorrect. The external affairs power in the Constitution allows the federal government to pass laws that are covered by international conventions that Australia has ratified. Industrial relations, for example, was a state issue until it wasn’t, when Canberra used the external affairs power to introduce a national unfair dismissal law overriding existing and non-existent state systems.
Similarly, equal protection for all newborns could be introduced using this constitutional power and based on Australia’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
I despair. Not just because of what has been exposed by this Queensland inquiry but this country’s inability to have hard, tough, fact-based conversations.
And it isn’t about the rights or wrongs of abortion. That’s a separate conversation – though, to be clear, inferring that every woman who has a termination does so for convenience or without significant personal trauma is a lie lacking in compassion and empathy.
Equally, to suggest that anyone who believes, as I do, that late-term abortion is terribly wrong is just an anti-woman tool of the patriarchy is just as flawed. In a perfect world, I am pro-life. Sadly, I know first-hand the world is anything but perfect. My views are formed from that truth and come with no judgment because, like most people my age, I’ve not escaped being touched by this issue personally or closely. The one thing I truly know is that there is much complexity.
So, to the federal MPs who voted against this, the remaining state governments that continue to turn their faces away from what’s happening under their own watch, help me out.
Which babies are we allowed to care about? Those who die too soon, tragically and of natural causes yet in the womb, or the ones we choose to terminate, but healthy and still in their mother’s wombs. You’ve made yourselves Caesar, so tell us. Thumbs up or down?
If that question is too confronting, then good. My deep hope is these words bring conviction rather than condemnation. That we stop pretending and obfuscating.
The idea that babies who, through some miracle, survived an abortion and whose lives are viable still would be left to die is horrific to me. Because I’ve held a newborn baby in my arms. Because I’ve marvelled at an ultrasound. Felt a baby kick. Wept with someone whose baby was stillborn, full term or before. We cannot and must not hide this evil any longer.
A measure of any society is how it treats the most vulnerable and on this measure alone our governments continue to fail.
ENDS
The legal situation in New Zealand is the same as in Queensland; the same therefore presumably happens in New Zealand hospitals.
