A bill aimed at improving abortion access has passed NSW Parliament, allowing nurses and midwives to prescribe abortion pills up to nine weeks gestation.
This is a step forward, but falls short of addressing the issues that keep abortion out of reach for many.
Abortion has been decriminalised in NSW since 2019, but access remains patchy and unequal. Research shows only three of the state’s 220 public hospitals routinely provide surgical abortions, leaving many areas as “abortion deserts”, where people are forced to travel over 160 kilometres or pay thousands in up front costs for access.
Some regional hospitals like Orange hospital have imposed bans on providing abortions, forcing patients to seek services hours away. The Health Minister was forced to intervene to overturn Orange Hospital’s ban last November.
To address this, Greens MLC Dr Amanda Cohn introduced a bill that originally also required public hospitals to offer abortion services close to where people live, expanded public display of access information, scrapped unnecessary reporting rules, and mandated doctors who refuse to provide abortion care to refer patients to someone who will.
These changes were backed by a NSW Health review that highlighted access failures across the state.
But most of these measures were stripped from the final bill after Labor voted with the Liberals.
They allowed a conscience vote, giving anti-abortion MPs cover to oppose it.
In a shocking moment during debate, Liberal MP Chris Rath compared abortion to the Holocaust and said the notion that abortion is healthcare was “bizarre.”
With the rise of the far right across the world and the rolling back of women’s right to abortion the watered down bill should be a warning for women’s rights advocates.
We don’t just need abortion to be legal, we need it to be free, publicly provided, and available on demand. Otherwise access depends on your postcode or your bank account.
We can’t rely on Labor to stand up to the right as they try to chip away at women’s rights to reproductive healthcare. And we can’t rely on parliament alone to address the lack of access.
The kind of protests we have seen in defence of abortion rights in the past will be necessary again to win real reproductive justice for all.
By Jordi Pardoel
