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Draft legislation to decriminalise abortion in Tasmania is ``bordering on infanticide,'' Anglican Bishop John Harrower has said.
Reverend Harrower made the comment at the launch of a joint statement by Tasmania's five largest churches yesterday opposing the state government's social reform agenda.
He said the draft legislation's inclusion of socio-economic factors in the list of potential harms doctors could consider when deciding to perform an abortion after 24-weeks gestation could mean that women could abort their pregnancy up to full-term for reasons like sex-selection or because they lost their job.
``This is an extreme form of eugenics,'' he said.
``I think we need to stand up and be counted, because we don't want a culture of death in legislation.''
The Salamanca Declaration is signed by the Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist and Anglican churches and champions traditional family values, the sanctity of human life and the freedom of speech for religious groups on political issues.
Salamanca Declaration spokeswoman and Examiner columnist Claire van Ryn said Tasmanian churches had united because they felt their core values were under attack.
Women's Legal Centre managing solicitor Susan Fahey said she was concerned abortion debate had returned to the 1960s discussion of a women's right to control her own body.
``It looks like people are going from trying to govern a medical procedure to governing women's bodies, and that's a pretty quantum leap,'' Ms Fahey said.
``I'm getting more and more people saying to me that they are worried at the direction the debate has taken.''
Political staffers say they have received distressing graphic correspondence from people who oppose the legislation, including rubber foetuses.
Ms Fahey said just 0.7 per cent of abortions occurred after 20-weeks, and it was insulting to suggest that women would make such a decision without serious consideration.
The document will be tabled in Parliament and was supported yesterday by Lyons Labor MHA and speaker Michael Polley as well as Liberal MHAs Rene Hidding and Michael Ferguson.
Lobby group Pro Choice Tasmania noted on Twitter than none of the signatories was female.
Premier Lara Giddings said she understood the concern expressed by church leaders, but said not all Tasmanians or even all Tasmanian Christians shared their views.