SW News:

Australian Catholic bioethics and legal experts called for legal safeguards for infants born alive after an abortion. During the Senate committee hearing, Dr. Bernadette Tobin, Director of the Australian Catholic University's Plunkett Centre for Ethics, called for a child born alive after an abortion to be given the same medical treatment as a newborn. 
"Children born alive in whatever circumstances including after attempts at termination are human beings, and thus healthcare practitioners have the same duty of care to these children as they do to anyone else requiring emergency medical care," said Dr. Tobin during her submission to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee's inquiry. 
Adelaide legal academic Joanna Howe and Johnny Sakr, an adjunct lecturer for the School of Law at the University of Notre Dame, called for the legalization of the bill to protect children born alive after abortion. They cited various reports showing that 328 children were born alive post-abortion in Queensland and 396 children in Victoria over the 10 years from 2010 to 2020. 
In Australia, medical professionals are not legally required to provide medical or palliative care to an infant who survives an abortion. However, Senators Matthew Canavan and Alex Antic introduced a bill to Federal Parliament last November to protect such newborns. The proposed legislation requires a child born alive after an abortion to be given the same medical care as a newborn. Health practitioners who neglected to do so would be prosecuted. 
Dr. Sakr said the bill is required to address a legal loophole that permits the unlawful homicide of aborted children who are born alive.