Independent Cairns MP Rob Pyne is calling on his colleagues to vote to decriminalise abortion in Queensland.
But many MPs have said they will not support his legislation to remove abortion from the criminal code in Queensland, where it is only lawful to “prevent serious danger to the woman’s physical or mental health”.
Pyne believes these politicians owe women in their electorates an explanation.
“It is a real cop-out... if you are voting 'No' then you are saying it is appropriate for it to remain in the criminal code," Pyne told BuzzFeed News.
Abortions still occur in the Sunshine State, but women must first overcome legal, financial and geographical barriers to access a termination, and their doctors can face prosecution for performing one.
"What [MPs] are really saying [by voting against decriminalisation] is that they regard one-in-three women in Queensland as a criminal."
Pyne said parliamentarians who voted against the bill "are actually voting to condemn current clinical practice and move us back to the 19th century".
"At the moment doctors are protected by ambiguous case law, and if someone was charged a future judge may look back on a [failed] vote in parliament and say that the parliament had made it clear that it wants abortion in the criminal code, so the judge [would have] no choice but to prosecute someone with the full force of the law."
The first bill Pyne introduced last year to decriminalise abortion was rejected by a parliamentary committee after hundreds of submissions from doctors, religious organisations and members of the community.
He introduced a second bill to address their concerns about a gestational limit for abortion.
It states a woman more than 24 weeks into a pregnancy can only have an abortion if her doctors believe continuing the pregnancy would involve greater risk of physical or mental injury than if it were terminated.
On Friday a committee released a report stating it could not reach a decision on whether the second bill should be passed.
Update on how MPs have indicated they'll vote on whether to decriminalise abortion in QLD. Many waiting for report… https://t.co/vnB0yNFBtX
"I think a lot of [MPs] are fundamentally opposed to abortion for religious reasons and no matter how sensible the regulatory framework is, they're just never going to support it, so you have intelligent and rational people behaving in an unscientific fashion," Pyne said.
"There are also a lot of [MPs] worried about losing their jobs at the next election."
A vote on both bills is expected next Wednesday.
