Category: Australia

Abortion law changes eyed as Dr Mark Hobart probed

The Sydney Morning Herald

Henrietta Cook

The Napthine government is not ruling out changes to Victoria’s abortion laws ahead of an investigation into a doctor who refused to give a couple an abortion referral because they wanted a boy.

The state government said it was interested in the outcome of the Medical Board of Victoria’s investigation into Mark Hobart, a pro-life doctor who has been accused of breaking the state’s abortion laws.

It comes as pro-life advocates run a concerted campaign to repeal a section of the Abortion Law Reform Act, which requires doctors who have a conscientious objection to abortion to refer a woman to someone with no such objection. [Full story]

Australian and New Zealand palliative physicians oppose euthanasia

The Australia and New Zealand Society for Palliative Medicine (ANZSPM) has issued a statement opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide. Statements of this kind indicate that the legalization of the procedures would generate significant conflicts of conscience among members of the medical community.

Doctor risks his career after refusing abortion referral

Perth Now/Herald Sun

Miranda Devine

A DOCTOR risks being deregistered because he allegedly refused a referral for an Indian couple who wanted to abort a healthy unborn baby girl at 19 weeks, simply because they wanted a boy.     

Dr Mark Hobart, 55, has been under investigation by the Medical Board of Victoria for five months, accused of having committed an offence under the state’s controversial Abortion Law Reform Act of 2008.

His patient and her husband requested a sex-selection abortion after an ultrasound determined their fetus was female.

They only wanted a boy, the husband told Dr Hobart, who, as a practising Catholic, had a conscientious objection to providing the abortion.

Under Victorian law, he was obliged to refer the patient to a doctor he knew would terminate the pregnancy.

But Dr Hobart doesn’t know any doctor who would agree to abort a healthy baby for sex selection reasons.

“The general response from my colleagues is disbelief and revulsion,” he said.

In any case, a referral is not necessary for an abortion. Hobart’s patient independently procured the abortion a few days later. Neither she nor her husband made any complaint.

But Dr Hobart now finds himself subject to a star chamber inquiry by the Medical Board of Victoria.  [Full text]

Australian regulator misrepresents physician obligations

Claim that practitioner codes require referral disproved by Australian Medical Association

Sean Murphy*

According to a report in The Examiner, a representative of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Association told a Tasmanian legislative committee that physicians who object to a procedure for reasons of conscience are obliged by professional codes of ethics to refer patients to another physician.  Lisa McIntosh was addressing the Committee concerning a proposed Reproductive Health Bill.

Her assertion is contradicted by a submission by the Australian Medical Association Tasmania, which protested the section of the bill that would force objecting physicians to facilitate morally contested procedures by referral.  The AMA Tasmania submission included quotes from the AMA Code of Ethics and a document from the Medical Board of Australia Good Medical Practice to demonstrate that the draft legislation information paper falsely claimed that there was a duty to refer.

The Committee also heard from Catholic Archbishop Adrian Doyle, whose concerns about the proposed bill included the mandatory referral provision.