Australian teen faces prison for abortion

I had no idea Australian abortion laws were so medieval.

A teenager faces seven years in prison after being ordered to stand trial for organising her own home abortion in the first such prosecution in Australia in over half a century.

Tegan Leach, 19, from the north Queensland city of Cairns, was committed to trial today in Cairns District Court. Her boyfriend, Sergie Brennan, 21, who has been charged with supplying drugs to procure an abortion, faces three years in jail.

The court heard that police found empty pharmaceutical blister packets alleged to have contained contraband abortion drugs obtained in Ukraine, along with a Russian doctor's instructions, during a search of the couple's Cairns home in relation to another matter in February.

Police allege that Ms Leach took the drugs, a Chinese version of the abortion pill RU486, to induce a miscarriage because she and her partner believed that they were too young to raise a child.

Which sounds like a rational considered decision by a couple mature beyond their years. Because of hysterical media coverage the girl's home has been firebombed and the couple has had to go into hiding while they wait to find out if they will be thrown into prison for making a private medical decision.

But despite attacks like this and a long history of violent terrorism by pro-lifers, some psychotic spree killer who by chance included an abortion protester in his planned series of murders shows that it's pro-choicers who are the irrational violent ones.