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''R v Davidson'', also known (particularly among medical practitioners) as the Menhennitt ruling, was a significant ruling delivered in the Supreme Court of Victoria on 26 May 1969. It concerned the legality of abortion in the Australian state of Victoria. The ruling was not the end of the case, but rather answered certain questions of law about the admissibility of evidence, so as to allow the trial to proceed. In the ruling, Justice Menhennitt ruled that abortion might be lawful if necessary to protect the physical or mental health of the woman, provided that the danger involved in the abortion did not outweigh the danger which the abortion was designed to prevent. It was the first ruling on the legality of abortion in any part of Australia. The principles put forward by Justice Menhennitt have since been drawn upon in other parts of the country. ==Background to the ruling== Charles Davidson, a medical doctor, was charged with four counts of unlawfully using an instrument to procure the miscarriage of a woman, and one count of conspiring to do the same, offences prohibited in the Victorian Crimes Act 1958. When Justice Menhennitt gave this ruling, the trial had been going for eight days. The prosecution was about to call expert medical testimony, and Menhennitt anticipated that the admissibility of that evidence might be challenged, so he decided to rule on certain questions of law in advance. The relevant section of the Crimes Act, section 65, stated that: Whosoever... with intent to procure the miscarriage of any woman whether she is or is not with child unlawfully administers to her or causes to be taken by her any poison or other noxious thing, or unlawfully uses any instrument or other means with the like intent, shall be guilty of a felony, and shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than fifteen years. , the only subsequent change to this law is in the classification of the crime, from felony to indictable offence. The remainder of the wording remains the same. Menhennitt discussed the background of the section, saying that it was drawn from an 1861 English law, the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which in turn derived from English laws from 1837, 1828 and 1803. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「R v Davidson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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