I did not think I would need to defend the right to safe abortions again. Abortion is no longer a criminal offence in Australia. There are well-reasoned and effective legal structures around abortions based on healthcare and women’s choice. It is broadly accepted that if you’re pregnant, it’s your decision to have children, or not.
But it appears that is not the case with extremists now proposing a range of ways to reduce women’s choices regarding their lives and reproduction. The overturning of Roe v Wade in the US has continued to embolden anti-abortion activists who are attempting to reduce women’s choices by introducing legislation in several Australian states that lacks factual basis and curtails women’s rights to make their own decisions.
Currently Queensland’s state MP Robbie Katter (Katter’s Australia Party) is proposing to stop nurses and midwives from providing the medication MS-2. In South Australia, state MP Sarah Game (who describes herself as Australia’s ‘unofficial Minister for Men’) seeks to only allow abortions after 24 weeks where the pregnant person’s life is at risk. NSW Upper House MLC John Ruddick is a key member of the so-called Libertarian Party (libertarian is someone who champions individual liberty and personal sovereignty as the highest political principle). Nevertheless Ruddick has introduced a bill to ban abortions performed for sex selection and introduce penalties of up to $22,000 and up to five years imprisonment for healthcare providers.
None of these proposals are about protecting life, they are (even Ruddick’s proposed bill) about restricting women’s choices in a clear attempt to incrementally roll back or restrict abortion across Australia.
Their arguments rely on emotion, fear, the idea of sexism, and child protection – but the evidence does not support their proposals.
I agree with Ruddick that terminations based on gender should not be taking place unless there is a good reason for it. And under NSW health policies and decriminalisation laws, abortions for the sole purpose of gender selection are already prohibited. However, sometimes there are very valid medical reasons to have a termination based on gender including to not pass down particular gender-based genetic diseases such as hemophilia or Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Evidence in Australia does not support the idea of any significant use of gender-based abortions. According to an article by the University of Technology (www.uts.edu.au) ‘The South Australia Law Reform Institute found “little, if any, evidence that abortions purely on the basis of gender are a real issue in Australia”. A 2020 NSW review similarly found sex-selective abortions “are rarely performed for the sole purpose of sex selection”.’
The Australian Medical Association (NSW), Family Planning Australia, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the New South Wales Nurses and Midwives’ Association, along with many others oppose these bills.
The arguments to restrict women’s choices are based on fear and moral outrage, not on the facts. You cannot get a termination after 24 weeks in South Australia without a significant reason, and the decision to have a later-term abortion is not an easy one. They are rare, they are based on complex medical reasons, and are heartbreaking and challenging decisions for the people having to make these difficult choices in their lives.
Restricting abortion does not result in better health outcomes, nor happier families, nor lives saved. The real provable outcomes of restricting abortion are: an increase in unsafe and illegal abortions that risk women’s lives and future reproductive health; delays to needed and essential care especially in relation to miscarriage treatments; exposure of patients to greater infection risks and complications; making women poorer – and more likely to live in poverty, remain unemployed, and living on social welfare. None of these are positive outcomes – women are entitled to decide when, how and with whom they want to have a child, or to choose not to have one. The result of that is positive outcomes for everyone from parents, to children, to society.
Aslan Shand, editor
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
