Wow. Andrew Bolt. His uncanny ability to offer insensitive opinions on sensitive topics that quite literally no one asked for remains second to none.
If you haven’t seen the news this morning, there’s another legal battle involving a refugee seeking travel to Australia to undergo an abortion.
As the SMH reports – and as was highly publicised during the Abyan case last year – abortion is illegal on Nauru.
The woman requested an abortion in Australia, but instead Australian authorities transported her to Papua New Guinea for the procedure, were not only is abortion illegal (save for cloudy laws depending on the mother’s mental state), but where attempts to procure your own miscarriage carry a maximum jail sentence of seven years.
As the SMH also reports, the facts of her rape are not up for dispute by the Australian government. That’s done.
Instead, they’re far more concerned about S99 not being “our problem”, because she was sent to Nauru two years ago from Christmas Island and lives there on a temporary settlement visa.
Meanwhile, S99 – who has attempted suicide and still experiences PTSD and anxiety since the alleged rape, yet has received no ongoing psychological care – doesn’t want to undergo the risk of an abortion on PNG.
“I am very concerned about having it in PNG, because I am scared about the level of care because of my epilepsy, my female genital mutilation and because I could go to jail if it isn’t legal” she told her lawyer George Newhouse, according to a document filed with the Federal Court. ” I want to have a termination in a safe place.”
Which brings us to Andrew Bolt’s blog this morning, a dark and terrible place that best practise says you should never willingly stray.
In this (thankfully) short post, he postulates that SMH’s story includes an “inherent improbability.”
“I am not saying the rape did not happen,” he says, before explaining why the rape probably did not happen. “I am saying that it seems very unusual when you see what a seizure looks like.”
As evidence, he links to a YouTube video from 2007 about why you shouldn’t put anything inside the mouth of a person seizing.
PEDESTRIAN.TV has reached out to George Newhouse’s law firm Shine Lawyers for comment.
Photo: YouTube.
Hey mates, if you’d like to speak to someone about sexual assault, call 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 723. To speak to someone about mental illness, call BeyondBlue on 1300 22 4636, or if you are in crisis, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
