Abortion laws in Queensland and New South Wales suck and right now is the time to change them. A survey this week found that Australians overwhelmingly believe that women should have unqualified access to abortion.
The Australian Electoral Study has been taken each election since 1969 by the Australian National University and this year found, among other things, that 65% of Australians believe women should be able to obtain an abortion readily when they want one, 26% believe women should be able to obtain an abortion only in special circumstances and 4% believe that a woman should not be able obtain an abortion under any circumstances.
This is the highest level of support ever.
But despite that, access to the procedure is severely restricted for women in Queensland and New South Wales, particularly poor women and those living in rural areas.
Say you live in Queensland, but outside the south-east corner. Your options for a surgical abortion look like this (the clinics that provide surgical abortions are marked in red).
As you can see, outside of the south-east corner of the state there are only two clinics that provide them. And to make matters worse, these clinics will close in February due to a lack of funding. This leaves women in central, far north or western Queensland having to travel hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres to obtain an abortion, which can end up costing more than $ 1,000.
The situation is so dire in Queensland that one of the state’s leading pro-choice groups, Children by Choice, crowdfunds abortions. Last year the organisation raised more than $ 90,000 via grants, donations, and no-interest loans for clients who needed financial assistance. They also seek funds for individual cases via their Facebook page.
In New South Wales, women face a similar lack of options, with abortion providers concentrated in coastal areas and procedures almost exclusively performed in private clinics.
This situation exists in large part because of both states’ antiquated, regressive and now patently out of touch abortion laws, which criminalise the procedure except under certain circumstances.
These laws do not prevent abortions from happening though. It is widely accepted that between 10,000 and 14,000 take place in Queensland every year. The laws merely make life more difficult for women, particularly for those who already face disadvantage due to where they live, their socio-economic status and what kind of relationship they are in.
However, the wheels are in motion for things to change.
Currently there are bills before both the Queensland and NSW parliaments that seek to decriminalise the procedure, and in the case of New South Wales, enforce exclusion zones around abortion clinics so that anti-choice protesters cannot accost people at their entrances.
There has been a lot of pushback against the two proposals. See the submissions to the inquiry into MP Rob Pyne’s abortion law reform bill in Queensland for a taste. But the proposed changes are not extreme. They would put Queensland and New South Wales abortion law in line with the rest of Australia and with most European countries.
And change is possible. In the past two decades abortion has been decriminalised in Tasmania, Victoria and the ACT and just this year in Poland a popular protest prevented regressive abortion laws from being enacted by the country’s conservative government.
Changing the current laws is a step towards affording women in Queensland and New South Wales the same dignity, respect and access to safe options that many women around Australia, and the world, already enjoy.
And if the wishes, health, safety and bodily autonomy of women seeking abortions are not enough, the changes would now also reflect the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Australians.
No more excuses. It"s time to change abortion laws in NSW and Queensland | Anna Livsey
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