A bill championed by two opposition MPs to ensure babies who survive abortions receive appropriate medical care might be scuppered by a Green party Senator.

When a baby is born alive after an abortion that does not kill it in the womb, it is then left to die without medical care. This also happens in Ireland.

Dr Joanna Howe, Professor of Law, Rhodes Scholar, has condemned the practice saying not even animals are treated that way. She cited a 2022 law which banned the premature induction of calves to be killed outside the womb, where killing them by blunt force trauma had been considered more humane than leaving them to die.

The Human Rights (Children Born Alive Protection) Bill, a private members bill of Senators Matt Canavan (National Party) and Alex Antic (Liberal Party) would change that grisly practice for human babies.

Greens Senator Larissa Waters however plans to move a procedural motion on 26 November to have the Canavan-Antic bill discharged from the Senate notice paper.

She claims this bill represents “a thinly veiled attack on women’s rights,” framing it as an issue of controlling women rather than protecting vulnerable lives.