The Queensland state government is under pressure to reform “archaic” laws criminalising abortion after a young couple were acquitted on charges related to a medical abortion. In the Cairns District Court in north Queensland on 14 October a jury took less than an hour to find Tegan Leach, 20, and Sergei Brennan, 22, not guilty of charges that could have resulted in a jail sentence. Ms Leach was charged under section 225 of the Queensland Criminal Code of 1899, which applies to a woman who uses force, any “noxious” thing, or any other means to procure an abortion. Mr Brennan was charged under section 226 of the code with unlawfully supplying the means to procure an abortion. It was alleged that he had arranged for a relative in the Ukraine to post him tablets of mifepristone (also called RU486) and misoprostol, which had been used to bring about an early abortion in the couple’s home in December 2008.
Today's sentencing of a 50-year-old Mt Nebo man to three years' jail for assisting the suicide of an elderly friend is a significant milestone in Queensland's criminal legal history, a Queensland University of Technology (QUT) law expert has said. Associate Professor Ben White said Merin Nielsen was the first person in Queensland to be convicted of assisting a suicide. He was convicted of assisting the suicide of 76-year-old Brisbane man, Frank Ward, who died in 2009 after taking the drug Nembutal which Mr Nielsen procured for him in Mexico. In the Supreme Court this morning Justice Jean Dalton ruled Nielsen would serve six months of the three year sentence in prison. "The case will be used in future by judges considering how they should sentence similar cases," Professor White said. "It will be significant not only in Queensland but also in sentencing nationally as there are only relatively few cases of this type in Australia."
L. Holden, S. Pager, X. Golenko, и R. Ware. Australian journal of primary health, 18 (1):
62-7(января 2012)6700<m:linebreak></m:linebreak>JID: 101123037; 2010/10/29 received; 2011/05/02 accepted; ppublish;<m:linebreak></m:linebreak>Recerca clínica.