A federal
court has said a pregnant asylum-seeker cannot be forced to have an abortion in
Papua New Guinea, rather than Australia. The woman claims to have been raped in
an offshore detention center on Nauru.
In his
ruling late on Friday, Justice Mordecai Bromberg said the African
asylum-seeker, who has sought an abortion in Australia, could not be forced to
have the operation in Papua New Guinea because it was both unsafe and illegal.
Australian
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton had ordered that the pregnant African woman,
identified in court documents only as S99, be sent to Papua New Guinea for the
procedure in line with the government's hardline policy on immigration, under
which refugees trying to reach the country by boat are told they will never be
settled in Australia.
Instead,
they are sent for offshore processing to camps on Nauru and Manus Island in
Papua New Guinea.
Under the
policy, such refugees can only be brought to Australia under "exceptional
circumstances" - and Dutton has said the woman's case is not exceptional
enough.
In a 150-page
judgment, Bromberg said that the "abortion in Papua New Guinea made
available to the applicant is attended by safety and lawfulness risks that a
reasonable person in the minister's position would have avoided."
Dutton says the woman's circumstances are not exceptional enough for treatment in Australia |
Papua New
Guinea allows abortion only in case of danger to a woman's life. The woman has
claimed she was raped while she was in Nauru, where abortion is also illegal except
to save the life of the woman or to preserve her physical or mental health.
Bromberg
also rejected Dutton's argument that he had no duty of care toward the woman,
saying she had been, and still was, reliant on the minister for all her basic
needs.
He said the
woman had serious neurological, physiological and psychological conditions that
required expert care.
The camps are a controversial issue in Australia as well |
Policy
under fire
A spokesman
for Dutton said the court ruling was "under consideration," and
suggested that the government might appeal.
The camps
on Nauru and Manus Island have come under widespread criticism from the United
Nations and human rights groups, amid reports of harsh conditions and systemic
child abuse.
Papua New
Guinea last month after the country's Supreme Court ruled it illegal, while on
Nauru, two people have set themselves on fire this month to protest against
conditions there.
A
23-year-old Iranian man died of the injuries he sustained, and a young Somali
woman remains in critical condition in an Australian hospital.
Australia doctors demand children be freed from #immigration detention http://t.co/oSHkZyvn5V pic.twitter.com/s9yLBKHA2Z— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 12, 2015
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