Miles ‘shocked’ by baby attack but leaves newborns to die in hospitals
QUEENSLAND Premier Steven Miles has a serious moral problem. On one hand he goes on media to express his “concern” over the random attack of a disturbed man who threw hot coffee on a nine-month-old child in a Brisbane park, but on the other hand Miles is silent about hundreds of newborn children left to die in metal dishes on hospital tables.
“The baby is doing well in hospital and I’m sure our clinicians have done a great job taking care of him. I know our police are working hard to apprehend that alleged offender,” Miles told media. The fact that Miles commented on the attack on the baby indicates a cynical attempt to retain some sort of moral standing and a Premier and party desperate to retain power.
Queensland Health staff including a clinical midwife who recently testified in State Parliament have protested the late-term abortion policy of Miles’ Left faction comrades that has resulted in at least 328 newborns dying of hunger or other factors because of failed late-term abortions.
Dr Joanna Howe, an Adelaide law professor campaigning for the right of all newborns to live, said at the best in Queensland and Victoria, newborns were wrapped in a blanket and held by midwives who took it upon themselves to care for these babies.
“At the worst, these newborns are left gasping for air, struggling to breathe and crying in distress on metal kidney dishes and plastic urine dishes (witches hats) for hours. This is barbaric and inhumane. We wouldn’t do this to animals,” she wrote on her Instagram page.
Dr Howe, who has letter-boxed Miles’ electorate highlighting this complete failure of a government’s duty of care, respectfully confronted staff at Miles’ electorate office, seeking to speak to him. Their response was to call police, who turned up to question Dr Howe on the street.
Dr Howe says there’s been a doubling of newborn deaths since Miles was appointed Health Minister and that number may be low as data reporting requirements on abortions vary between States and territories and there is only limited publicly released information about when babies are born alive following an abortion.
Queensland is exceeded only by Victoria where 396 such deaths have been reported. Numbers in other states are much lower with only one reported in NSW and the NT, 31 in WA and 54 in South Australia.
These cruel deaths are as much a form of murder as are the macabre “normal” forms of industrial abortion where babies in the uterus are literally torn apart by suction machines and the biological by-products sold for commercial use.
Such moral concerns however are dismissed by Queensland Labor’s “progressive” crowd – largely a young professional class of neo-Marxist university sociology and environmental graduates – who simply call abortion and all of its horrors “reproductive rights”. The Left website brags about Labor achieving “the long overdue reform of abortion law”.
This New Left crowd mentally blank out the brazen hypocrisy of their stated belief: “We believe in fairness, social justice, respect, dignity and equality for all.” People like Dr Howe are asking where is the respect, justice, dignity and equality for those newborns left to die – let alone the thousands killed in the womb?
On August 19th, Louise Adsett, the clinical midwife of 14 years, told a state parliamentary hearing that some babies survived for up to five hours fighting to stay alive. The mother of three said they were never held by their parents, but were placed in metal dishes or ‘witches hats’, taken out of the room and left to die.
Ms Adsett was giving evidence to a parliamentary inquiry into KAP leader Robbie Katter’s Termination of Pregnancy (Live Births) Amendment Bill 2024 which aims to enshrine legislated protections for babies born as a result of a failed abortion.
She said some midwives were distressed because they were “unable to provide any medical care for a baby” and were “limited to providing comfort care only, which is merely wrapping and holding the baby.”
In one case “midwives and doctors were left holding a 400 gram baby while they continued to provide care for other women who were birthing and welcoming their babies into the world. This is not an uncommon occurrence.”
Ms Adsett said she was a “conscientious objector when it comes to providing care for women aborting their babies,” but was “happy to make myself available to hold a baby who was born alive after an abortion. These babies deserve better. They deserve to have the same rights that all of us human beings have.”
Appearing at the request of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) the midwife said she had noticed at her hospital an increase in the number of late-term terminations for “psychosocial or financial reasons”. “Sadly in the birth suite unit in my hospital where every new birth is celebrated and protected, there has been an increase in numbers of social terminations at later gestations and this is now common,” she said.
Dr Elisha Broom representing the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists told the hearing that “babies born alive at these gestations, say 16 to 22 weeks resulting from an abortion is not a failed abortion. It’s not an unintended unexpected consequence. We know that these babies will be born alive, but they’re pre-viable, so this is existing practice. This is what happens with the current legislation.”
ACL Queensland director Rob Norman said he was shocked to hear from Dr Broom that live births during abortion procedures was not a rare occurrence and to be expected. “The abortion industry must be held to account for these shocking admissions. The consequence of passing the Termination of Pregnancy Act 2018 is that we are now dealing with homicide by neglect of newborns left to die after abortions.”
In her submission to the inquiry, Dr Howe said Robbie Katter’s bill would bring Queensland into line with “recent best-practice reform in South Australia and New South Wales, which provides for equal treatment to all children born alive in those jurisdictions irrespective of the circumstances of their birth.”
“Only two states release this data on an annual basis but even in those two states, it is more than one baby each week who survives their abortion and is left to die. Neither Queensland nor Victoria have a specific equal treatment provision like SA and NSW and as a result these babies do not have a right to medical care.”
Katter’s bill is focused solely on providing medical care for babies who survive an abortion procedure and under the proposed law, the duty of a registered health practitioner to provide medical care and treatment to a person born as a result of a termination would be no different from their duty to anybody else.
Dr Howe invites people to sign her petition which can be accessed on the QR code (above) or the open letter to Miles at drjoannahowe.com/miles.
Ms Adsett’s evidence also reverberated in Canberra, and prompted UAP Senator Ralph Babet to introduce a motion of urgency in the Senate on August 20 to acknowledge that babies born alive after an abortion procedure deserved medical care. Labor and the Greens united to defeat the motion by 32 votes to 18. They were supported by four Liberal senators including frontbenchers Simon Birmingham and Jane Hume.
Dr Howe said it was “downright sinister” that pro-abortion Senator Maria Kovacic and journalists Jenna Price and Tory Shepherd questioned the accuracy of Senator Babet’s claim of one baby a week being born alive and left to die.
