Humphries Withdraws Funds From Pro Choice Campaigner

Wayne Berry - Member for Ginninderra

Media Statement - 17 February 2000

The ACT Attorney General has blocked a funding allocation from the ACT Law Society to the Women's Legal Centre in the latest round of debate on abortion in the ACT, Labor MLA Wayne Berry said today.

"The Women's Legal Centre has been a strong campaigner for a 'woman's right to choose' and played a prominent role in attempts to head off recent moves to limit access to abortion in the ACT.

"The Centre was highly critical of the Attorney General's introduction of laws which force doctors to provide women with pictures of foetuses if considering an abortion.

The Attorney General's move against the funding allocation for the Women's Legal Centre has been described in the ACT Legislative Assembly as spiteful and vindictive by Mr Berry.

"The Women's Legal Centre was informed by the Law Society that a grant had been made under Legal Practitioners Act in June 1999 but it wasn't until last month that Humphries revealed that he had decided to block the grant.

"Attorney Humphries carries an obsession about abortion and seeks to restrict women's rights on this issue at every opportunity. I am not convinced that the Minister has considered the grant to the Women's Legal Centre free of his bias against a 'woman's right to choose'.

"This latest chapter in the Carnell Government's attack on ACT women through the blocking of this grant to the ACT Women's Legal Centre is nothing more than a spiteful and vindictive payback for the Centre's opposition to the government's appalling attack on women's rights," Mr Berry concluded.