NSW draconian abortion laws

OPINION

BY ANITA SENARATNA

On May 11, I was sitting in the public gallery of the State Parliament House watching a debate about Mehreen Faruqi’s Abortion Law Reform Bill in the upper house. There were people from both sides of the debate there, but what struck me was the fact that at least three quarters of us were women, looking down into the chamber as 31 men (and 8 women) decided that a woman ending a pregnancy should be a criminal offence in 2017.

For me, this is the abortion debate in a nutshell- controlled by men and completely disconnected with what the public actually wants. A recent poll conducted by the Greens showed that 87% of NSW residents believed that women should be able to have abortions.
It also found that 76% didn’t even know it was a crime.

It’s understandable, because despite being technically illegal, abortions are still relatively accessible in NSW- provided you have the finances and live near a clinic, you won’t get arrested for having an abortion.

As it exists currently, abortions are illegal unless the doctor can prove that continuing the pregnancy would pose a risk to the woman’s physical and mental health. The way this looks in practice is that doctors have to have a ‘counselling session’ with the woman beforehand, where they ask you questions about why you want the abortion and what your personal circumstances are like. It’s not too terrible but at the same time it’s pretty unnecessary. After all, the government doesn’t think women need counselling before any other types of surgery- it’s completely between the woman and her doctor. And if her doctor objects to abortions on moral grounds, that doctor should refer her to another provider who doesn’t have that objection.

But abortion’s confusing legal status means that they aren’t nearly as easy to get as they should be, especially for the amount of women that have them.

According to pro-choice organisation Children by Choice, it’s estimated that anywhere between a quarter and a third of Australian women will have an abortion in their lifetime. But if you Google ‘abortion clinics nsw’, only fifteen clinics come up for the entire state. About ten are in Sydney, the five remaining ones are on the Central Coast, with a couple in Port Macquarie and Wollongong. For comparison’s sake, when you Google ‘plastic surgery nsw’ you get ten pages of results. Why is it easier to find a doctor who’ll give me a boob job than one who’ll give me an abortion?

Of course doctors are hesitant to enter a field where they could face prosecution for simply not asking the right questions. And although it’s rare, there have been cases where it’s happened. In 2006, abortion doctor Suman Sood was found guilty of performing an illegal abortion because she failed to “adequately counsel” the woman beforehand. There are a lot of facts in that case that indicate she may have been medically negligent, but there are already laws that cover that without the need for specific ones relating to abortion.

Most of the arguments presented by the MPs who voted against the bill seemed to centre around an ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ approach towards the law. It must be noted that very few of these MPs actually got up to speak during the debate, a point noted by Dr. Faruqi in her press conference after the vote.

Liberal MP Troy Khan was one of the few that did speak, and his argument was essentially that women can still get abortions despite it being illegal, so what’s the problem? As we’ve already established, there are a lot of problems.

It’s also worth noting that abortion has been decriminalised in every other state besides Queensland, and there have been no adverse effects. Having unrestricted access to abortion isn’t going to lead to more women to seek illegal abortions, or late-term abortions, just because they can.

There seems to be this myth amongst conservatives that women are just dying to seek out illegal abortion providers or wait until just before they’re about to give birth before deciding that they don’t fancy having the child after all. This is not even remotely based in reality. Approximately 1% of all abortions performed in Australia occur after 20 weeks, and even then it’s only in exceptional circumstances where there’s a foetal abnormality or some kind of threat to the woman’s life.

NSW’s abortion laws are completely out of touch with reality, and don’t reflect what the community wants at all. But one good thing that has come out of all this – it has drawn attention to the fact that abortion is still a crime. Hopefully that will encourage more people to make their feelings known to their local members and push for reform.