Critics of abortion bill are putting up a smokescreen

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Editorial

Critics of abortion bill are putting up a smokescreen

Religious conservatives fighting the bill to decriminalise and regulate abortion in NSW deserve a fair hearing but their criticism of the bill looks like a smokescreen to delay a reform that is long overdue.

The thinnest argument against the bill is that it is being rushed through in a surprise attack. In fact, the problems with the law on abortion have been obvious for decades.

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On the one hand, a poorly drafted century-old section of the Crimes Act bans “unlawful abortions.” On the other, a series of court judgments since the 1970s including by the NSW Court of Appeal, found that abortions were to be considered “lawful” provided a doctor considered them necessary for a woman’s health.

NSW is the last state in Australia to resolve this tension and create a proper legal basis for abortion which reflects the fact the abortions are de facto legal and widely available.

The current bill should come as no surprise. This newspaper has been reporting since March that Alex Greenwich MP was planning to sponsor a private member’s bill in the current term.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who supports the bill, has made a concession to the outcry by delaying debate slightly for conservatives who do not read the Herald. So MPs will have had over a week to read the bill before debate next week.

They will discover that it is very close to legislation in Queensland and Victoria that was passed after exhaustive inquiries by the law reform commissions in those states. This is not reinventing the wheel.

Nevertheless, Finance Minister Damien Tudehope has raised a number of concerns about the substance of the bill. He says it will remove all restrictions on late-term pregnancies “all the way to birth.” He says doctors will not be required to justify their decisions to abort and some doctors will be forced against their conscience to assist or facilitate abortions.

Yet this misrepresents the bill which will in fact make late-term abortions less likely and increase rather than decrease scrutiny of them. The law clearly legalises abortion by a doctor although backyard abortions will still be a crime.

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However, the bill says that for late-term pregnancies, those over 22 weeks, two doctors must be consulted before the procedure. That is more stringent than the current legal situation where only one doctor’s approval is required at any stage of the pregnancy for an abortion to be lawful. The bill’s threshold for requiring a second opinion after 22 weeks is actually stricter than Queensland where it is 24.

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The focus on late-term abortions is in any case skewed because they are already extremely rare. Less than 1 per cent of abortions are believed to occur after 20 weeks.

Late-term abortions are also already subject to very strict controls since they almost always involve drastic cases such as women who are the victims of violence, mental health issues or drug addiction or where the foetus has been diagnosed with serious deformities. When doctors encounter these cases they are handled in hospitals by teams of health professionals. The claim by conservatives that these decisions are not documented or justified is already fanciful and it will be even more so once the bill is passed and two doctors are involved.

In fact, the irony is that evidence from other states suggests the bill is likely to reduce the number of late-term abortions even further.

Currently, the legal ambiguities and the lingering stigma of the Crimes Act discourage some doctors from offering abortions, making it harder for women, especially from disadvantaged and rural backgrounds, to find a cheap service in their neighbourhood. If more doctors are in the market, women will be able to get cheaper advice locally in a timely fashion and later-term abortions will fall.

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That is a crucial reason for a provision in the bill requiring doctors who object to abortion to refer patients to alternative services. This may be a slight infringement of their freedom of conscience but it is already required under medical professional ethics codes. It is the only way to protect those women who are currently at the mercy of the lottery of whether their local GP is willing to help them. Barnaby Joyce may have scruples about abortions but many of his bush colleagues in the NSW National Party have indicated support for the bill for exactly this reason.

Of course, some religious conservatives will oppose abortion however it is regulated. Their power is about to be tested in the NSW parliament. The Herald would argue that this bill sets the right balance between regulation and giving women a clear right to make a choice.

  • The Herald's editor Lisa Davies writes a weekly newsletter exclusively for subscribers. To have it delivered to your inbox, please sign up here

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