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DESPITE Prof George Williams' enthusiasm for the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities (Herald Sun, February 24), I was not reassured when I attended the charter's so-called stakeholders' forum.

Such charters create multi-million dollar bureaucracies -- "rights units" in government departments -- and a plethora of "advisers".

Taxpayer money is better spent reducing the waiting lists in hospitals; such as for hip replacements.

At my hydrotherapy pool, I hear harrowing stories of operations scheduled and cancelled because of shortage of beds or staff and the indifference of the Bracks Government. Patient stress is enormous. If you cannot walk, life expectancy is lowered.

Memo Prof Williams: include a "right to walk".

The recently defeated Canadian Liberal Government allocated $100 million for a museum eulogising their charter of rights -- that represents a lot of postponed hip replacements.

The in-coming conservative government is stuck with its commitment to a charter giving Canada abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, age of consent at 14, legalised sex clubs and all the accoutrements of a totally permissive society.

What rouses my ire is the Victorian charter's Recommendation 7 defining the right to life as applying from birth.

This breaches Australia's obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948; the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966; the Declaration of the Rights of the Child 1959; the Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989; and the UN Declaration on Human Cloning 2005.

Quite a backward step. The Victorian charter should also be in a museum, but not funded by taxpayers.

Lack of recognition of unborn children has serious implications quite apart from abortion. For example:

PREGNANT women are at greater risk of domestic violence than non- pregnant women; stating the fetus is not a person will encourage partners prone to violence.

THOSE who kill pregnant women, deliberately or accidentally, might no longer be charged with double homicide or double manslaughter, and it may become difficult to obtain damages for unborn children injured in car accidents.

INHERITANCE rights may become difficult for a child still in the uterus at the time a will is settled.

AND Recommendation 7 will have poor educative effects on students and the public. Nor will it discourage pregnant women from using drugs or alcohol.

Stating that right to life applies from birth is anachronistic in view of information we have from ultrasounds of unborn babies, pre- natal surgery on the fetus, reproductive technologies such as IVF, and embryo adoption.

Australian and overseas legislatures have acknowledged the human embryo is an entity deserving of respect, but the Victorian charter reads like a 19th century document, when embryos could not survive outside their mothers.

As Prof Williams asked for alternative wording, I suggested the preamble to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child: "The child by reason of his physical and mental immaturity needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth."

ANOTHER objectionable section in Recommendation 7 is for affirmative action, that is, positive discrimination against white, able-bodied heterosexual males.

As a US professor facetiously remarked: "If you are a black lesbian in a wheelchair, you don't need to attend my lectures. You get an A in exams automatically."

A Victorian charter, which ignores unborn children and encourages discrimination against men, doesn't even qualify for a museum -- but maybe for a dustbin.

babette@endeavourforum.org.au

BABETTE FRANCIS is co-ordinator of the Endeavour Forum, a counter- feminist, anti-abortion group