Australia Baby Bonus Measure Includes Accidental Loophole Paying for Abortions
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 26, 2008
Canberra, Australia (LifeNews.com) — Needing to boost its birth rate to respond to the abortions that have plagued the nation’s population and caused a worker shortage, Australian officials instituted a baby bonus paying $5,000 per child. However, an accidental loophole in the law allows women who have late-term abortions to receive the money.
The loophole came about because abortion practitioners wrongly list late-term abortions as stillbirths in official governmental medical records.
Under the baby bonus statute, women who become pregnant but sadly lose their child during the pregnancy still qualify for the bonus.
According to the Herald Sun newspaper, Liberal senator Cory Bernardi got the Federal Parliamentary Library to examine the policy and found the loophole. He told the newspaper that it was unintended.
"This is not a debate about abortion. This is about the baby bonus being misused and misapplied to women who do have terminations," he said. "Clearly that is not the intention, it’s not in keeping with the support of mainstream Australians for the baby bonus."
Not everyone appears to think it is a problem to reward women for having late-term abortions.
National Association of Specialist Obstetricians and Gynaecologists chairman Andrew Pesce told the Herald Sun that, because some late-term abortions supposedly involve babies who have disabilities, that there is no difference between a stillbirth and a late-term abortion.
He said, "I think it is a very humane gesture from society to say, ‘You are going through enough already, we’re not going to withhold the bonus.’"
But Families Minister Jenny Macklin told the paper that the government would make sure the bonus is not given in abortion cases.
"If there is any evidence of this occurring we will follow it up immediately," she said.
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