Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Mr Speaker. I refer to the report of the majority of the Abortion Legislation Committee on this the Abortion Legislation Bill. The majority report is linguistically elusive ideologically incoherent and scientifically unsound. The report like some of the contributors to this debate characterised abortion services as being like other health services". The fact of the matter is that unless one is separating conjoined twins one is not in fact operating with two human lives in the power of one's hands as a doctor. This is the elephant in the room that has been I believe wilfully ignored by many of the contributors to this debate. A colleague earlier said that this bill is not concerned with abortion up to birth. And yet the pre - 20 week regime is followed in the legislation by a post - 20 week regime at which the only natural endpoint is birth short of of course the performance of abortion services. So if those colleagues who believe that this bill does not concern itself with abortion up to birth would like to indicate the point at which it becomes no longer valid short of birth or another intervention then I would be very interested to hear it perhaps in the committee of the whole House stage. I note that the select committee majority report said that it was grateful to those submitters who had shared their views and stories. That will be news to the ones who had wished to speak but were denied that opportunity. I do acknowledge the point made by Amy Adams that not all submitters can necessarily be heard but the skewing of the submitters who were allowed to be heard in favour of those relatively speaking in favour of the bill as distinct from those who were against—some 92 percent of the submissions overall—will leave many to make a conclusion that some members of the select committee will not enjoy being made.The elephant in the room as I've described previously relates to the status of what is variously known as the unborn child or the fetus or most creatively of all within the Abortion Legislation Bill select committee report "contents of the uterus". This is a reference in relation to surgical techniques that are used. In fact the phrase "unborn child" is currently used in the Crimes Act in section 182 and will remain so. The bill despite what proponents have sometimes claimed will not entirely remove essentially the practice of abortion from the Crimes Act. Section 182 of the Crimes Act is amended by the proposed bill but it is not removed from that. So it is—bearing in mind that description of an unborn child as I say existing on the statute book that we have at the moment—that phrases such as "choice" "freedom" and "the ability to choose what one does with one's own body" should be viewed in the context of the alternative language to that of "unborn child" dehumanising as it is.The report—again I stress the majority view within that—talks about a desire to modernise the legislation. Well of course all changes to legislation are by definition modernising it but of course they wish for the connotation to be of improvement. But it will be for members of this House individually as well as members of the public to judge whether improvement is in fact the result of such modernisation. Whether it has a civilising or barbarising effect—that is a decision for us each all to make.In my remaining time and it is short now I wish to also make a note about the select committee majority report claiming that the current legislation contains deeply offensive language in relation to disabled people. The disabled people themselves and the advocacy groups who have contacted me in relation to the bill find much more deeply offensive the notion that their lives will inevitably be deemed to be worth less in many situations whereby conditions such as for example Down syndrome can be effectively screened to an even greater extent than is already the case by the fact that this bill does have a liberalising effect—that is it makes the regime more liberal both in relation to pre - 20 weeks and post - 20 weeks until either such time as birth is given or abortion services performed."