By AMY STOCKWELL
Another day, another politician explaining to us how women’s bodies work.
Today, Liberal Senator Chris Back made an extraordinary speech to the Australian Senate in which he suggested:
1. Miscarriages occur because foetuses have the capacity to “understand…that they might not survive in post-foetal life”
2. “The records as kept by health authorities actually don’t provide a breakdown…whether a lady miscarries for whatever reason…or terminations as arranged by the lady herself.”
3. “From an endocrine point of view…maleness suppresses femaleness” when it comes to embryonic development. “We have a predominance of female hormones as foetuses and as the male develops the development of the male hormones take over and, of course, we end up with the characteristics of maleness.”
Senator Back thoughtfully prefaced this final point by saying that “some people in the [Senate] chamber… might be a little disturbed or distressed by the comment that I’m about to make”. It’s fair to say that if you need to make this kind of disclaimer, you probably should just stop right there. (In truth, the only distressing element of his view that hormonal “maleness suppresses femaleness” is trying to establish its relevance to the debate – perhaps he is concerned that a female foetus might be aborted before it has the chance to transform into a male? It’s not clear.)
Senator Back’s comments were made during the debate on DLP Senator John Madigan’s private members bill that seeks to ban Medicare payments for abortions based solely on gender. [To be clear, the Senate is not talking about abortions of foetuses of a particular gender for medical reasons, such as an inherited disease – only those solely to choose the gender of a child].
Top Comments
we do have some evidence of sex selection abortions as we had the case of the Melbourne couple who aborted IVF twin boys because they already had boys and wanted a girl!!
Really has he looked in the mirror