Abortion is still a crime in Australia's sunshine state of Queensland, where an inquiry into a bill to decriminalise the procedure has received more than 1000 submissions from citizens, doctors and legal groups.
Here is a collection of the claims made in the submissions.
1. Abortion makes women depressed, randy or 'frigid' and could result in suicide or breast cancer.
"Physical risks include infertility and breast cancer," one submission said.
"Psychological risks include depression and other mental illness, suicide and attempted suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity or frigidity and general poor self-esteem."
There is no evidence to support these claims.
2. Pregnant women are committing "murder" so they can afford Foxtel.
"If a mother wanted to murder her baby because she would rather spend her money on a paid tv subscription rather than diapers, then society would likewise be obliged to protect that child from the threatened harm," one submission said.
3. Opening the cervix to do an abortion is damaging (unlike childbirth).
The submission also cites studies from the 1970s and 1980s into the psychological impact of abortion.
Having multiple abortions can cause scarring at the top of the cervix or inside the uterus, but complications during surgical abortions are very rare. Patients are advised of possible complications before they undergo the procedure.
4. Moonlight Sonata might not have ever existed if Beethoven was aborted.
"What about a woman who has tuberculosis and already has four children. The first child is blind, the second child has died, the third child is deaf, and the fourth child also has tuberculosis," one submission said.
"Her husband is unsupportive and regularly drinking, and her grandmother is an alcoholic. Given the Bill’s proposal, this would more than suffice for reason to have an abortion. If so, then you have just killed Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the greatest composers who has ever lived."
5. Abortion involves chopping up unborn kids.
"Abortion is a horrendous procedure that involves killing and chopping an unborn child into small pieces," one submission said.
The submission concludes with a warning: "One day you will personally have to answer to God for this."
In fact, abortions are performed from six weeks into a pregnancy (when a foetus is about the size of a lentil) and the vast majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester of pregnancy.
6. A woman's body is property to be leased by a foetus and an abortion is akin to breaking a rental agreement.
"The room/womb is let and a souls agreement has been struck between landlady and tenant/un-born," one submission said.
"And for those who do go through with an abortion I believe the breaking of this agreement gives rise to the many of the depressions felt by those women which are not discussed in our society."
7. Legalised abortion is equivalent to the Holocaust.
"To what have we come that, 72 years after Hitler’s extermination camps filled the world with horror, we should without turning a hair be ready to wipe out a swathe of this generation?" one submission said.
"Hitler killed Jews legally," said another. "He didn't do anything legally wrong, but what he did was morally wrong."
8. Abortion involves a baby opening its mouth "as if to cry".
“Watch and see its mouth open as the sucker tries to catch it in the womb," one submission said.
"See the baby open its mouth as if to cry.”
There is very little research on foetal crying but one study found incidents of it occurring at 28 weeks of pregnancy. Most abortions in Australia are performed in the first trimester of pregnancy, which is before 13 weeks.
9. Legalised abortion is equivalent to slavery.
"Please realise that it is completely irrelevant what the laws of the other states of Australia are in relation to abortion," one submission said.
"If every State but one in the USA had allowed slavery that would not have justified the remaining States adopting the monstrous practice."
10. Women having control over their bodies when it comes to unwanted pregnancies is a "laughable double-standard".
"Choosing to be sexually active and risk becoming pregnant these women already exercised ‘control over their own bodies’," one submission said.
"Now indeed they do have a duty to exercise the control of their own bodies by giving birth."
11. Sex education by the Safe Schools coalition leads to abortion.
"I witnessed the introduction of sex education into primary schools and I am not surprised that we have young people experimenting with their bodies and engaging in sexual activity without regard for the possible consequences of pregnancy," a submission said.
"I believe the latest push from the ‘Safe Schools’ program into Queensland Schools will open a pandora’s box of problems we have not begun to imagine. So we are going from the advocation of abortion as a non criminal activity to the extremes of gender confusion. Surely we are on a slippery slope to self destruction."
UPDATE
This post has been updated to reflect BuzzFeed's editorial standards.