This event being the pro-choice rally calling for charges against Tegan Leach and Sergei Brennan under Queensland’s anti-abortion laws to be dropped, and for the laws to be repealed.
Date: Saturday 9 October
Time: 1pm
Place: Queens Park, Brisbane (opposite Treasury Casino).
Maybe we’ll even get to sing this song.
The National Council of the National Tertiary Education Union has adopted the following resolution on this issue.
Cairns Abortion Trial
Council notes with concern that Queensland Police have charged a young Cairns couple with intent to procure a miscarriage, relying on archaic anti abortion provisions in the Queensland Criminal Code. The young woman faces up to seven years imprisonment while the young man could be imprisoned for up to three years.
Council condemns this action as a deliberate attempt by the Queensland Police to overturn a 1986 court decision that legalized abortion where the woman’s life or mental health is at risk. The prosecution is arguing that they only need to prove the accused had the ‘intent’ to procure an abortion to establish that the ‘crime’ has been committed. This case threatens to turn back the clock to the days when all abortions were illegal in Queensland and may have implications for other Australian jurisdictions.
Council instructs the General Secretary to write to the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, expressing Council’s view that the Queensland Police’s attempt to alter the law in this manner must be prevented and calling on her Government to ensure the charges are dropped.
Supporting Statement
The Queensland Criminal Code 1899 makes it unlawful both for a pregnant woman to attempt to procure an abortion and for another person to supply of drugs or instruments to procure an abortion. However, this is subject to a 1986 court decision that legalized abortion where the woman’s life or mental health is at risk. Further, RU486 was legalized in 2006.
The 1986 ruling has permitted abortion, but it is by no means easy or cheap to obtain in Queensland, especially in regional areas. Abortion centres operate only in the Brisbane area, Rockhampton, Townsville and Cairns. In Cairns it costs around $810 ‘up front’ for an abortion in the first trimester. Although the drug RU486 is lawful, it is not widely available in Australia because pharmaceutical companies do not import it. The young man concerned legally obtained the drug RU486 overseas and legally brought it to Australia through customs. The police have no evidence that the drug caused a miscarriage or even that the woman was pregnant. In the committal hearing, the prosecution argued that the only evidence of a crime that is needed is evidence of ‘intent’ to procure a miscarriage.
In the light of all these circumstances, it seems that the Police have made a calculated political judgment. It appears that they deliberately selected these young people because they live in relatively small regional town, rather that in Brisbane where there are strong support networks and well organized opposition to such prosecutions. The Bligh Government has been disingenuous in suggesting that the case is about drugs, rather than abortion. This is particularly disturbing given Anna Bligh’s avowed history as a feminist and union activist.
If the Police are successful, the Cairns Case will set a dangerous new precedent and criminalize all abortions in Queensland. The trial commences in Cairns on October 12, 2010 and a National Day of Action is scheduled for the Saturday prior to the trial, October 9.
Cue Spana ….
RU486 is available over the counter in pharmacies in Qld. The person being supplied must take the pill right there in front of a pharmacist, who oversees administration of the drug.
Thus I struggle with the basis for the Leach/Brennan prosecution.
“RU486 is available over the counter in pharmacies in Qld.”
I’m not sure that’s correct. Unless something’s changed in the last few months, there’s no domestic supplier for Mifepristone and it can only legally be brought into Australia by doctors who have been approved by the TGA for a special licence to import the drug, which can only be used in that doctor’s practice and not provided for use by other doctors.
d
Plan B isn’t RU 486, steve, and to suggest otherwise in the face of overwhelmingly widely available public health information goes beyond mere ignorance and wades gleefully into deliberate deception.
This is a truly appalling and vindictive case, particularly at a time when other States are looking at removing anachronistic criminal laws against abortion.
I can’t attend the rally, but if I was in Brisso this weekend I certainly would. I hope the rain holds off.
What CJ Morgan said. I worked in the Queensland Courts (in Central and North Queensland, too) for 18 months as a Judge’s Associate, finishing up in 2007 before migrating to the UK. I have no idea where this is coming from and can only conclude that the prosecution is emanating from some tosser with far too much time on his hands.
Memo to the DPP: there are a lot of better cases out there.
Indeed, SL.
I’ve been keeping a bit of an eye on this case, with mounting outrage.
Apparently the charge stems from a drug raid where the cops didn’t find what they were looking for, but came across this young woman’s mifepristone.
Seems to me that it’s a case of an over-zealous cop coming up with some kind of charge to justify the raid, or perhaps a godbothering drug squad detective (if such a creature exists) using their position to conduct a personal crusade, or maybe both.
But as you say, what was the DPP thinking?
Godbags in Queensland have organised a petition in support of the charges which GetUp claims has 6,000 signatures. From a GetUp email:
Please go and add your email address to the petition.
The thing is, these two young people have been made a spectacle of over some time now, pilloried in an obnoxiously intrusive black parody of the middle ages.
The ALP, in shedding itself of its left and soc liberal elements has allowed power to concentrate into the hands of the dregs of the DLP of two generations ago that was reincorporated into labor for their organisational and tactical abilities, but as to any sort of “consciousness”, you have to scratch your head, surely.
The saddest figure in all of this has been Anna Bligh, standing by, acquiescent to the right’s policies.
Unless you think of all the perverts and sharks in gaol now, who also seem to have been extruded from this once vibrant, now decaying subculture.
Any way, rottenness runs through our system; just got back home from a do to raise consciousness and funds for the fight against a ppp type expropriation of a swathe of beautiful parkland at St Clair in Adelaide’s west. What a shonk and as you guess, half of the ones involved at the top are holy rollers…
This is the sort of case (along with the crazy prosecution of the Chief Magistrate) that makes me doubt that entirely unchallengeable DPP’s are a good idea.
@ Helen
As at 12.15pm AEDST there are over 16 300 signatures (plus mine). So a few more than the god botherers now.