- by Anna Pha
- The Guardian
- Issue #2121
Progressive reforms under capitalism can never be taken for granted. The struggle for wage rises and workplace gains needs to be maintained or they will be wound back and even taken away. Medicare is constantly under attack. Free tertiary education won under the Whitlam Labor government has since been eroded to the point where courses can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The enemies of progress never let up. So it is with women’s reproductive rights. At present abortion has been decriminalised by all state and territory parliaments, but as mainstream politics shifts to the right, reproductive rights are under threat.
Under legislation passed in 2021 in South Australia, a pregnant person can get an abortion after 22 weeks and six days if medically appropriate and with the approval of two doctors. In 2023 less than 5 terminations were performed after 27 weeks.
Right-wing Liberal MP Ben Hood has introduced a bill in the SA Upper House to amend the 2021 laws. It amounts to forced birth. The bill requires women who seek to terminate their pregnancy from 28 weeks onwards gestation to deliver their baby alive. This would be done by inducing the birth to deliver a live baby rather than terminating the pregnancy in-utero with an injection. The mother would then have the choice of keeping the baby or adoption.
“Abortion care is health care, and decisions should be left to the pregnant person and their medical team. These are very complex, often heart-breaking, cases. […] They were based on extensive consultation by the SA Law Reform Institute (SALRI) and informed by medical expertise,” Greens MLC Tammy Franks said. Hood’s bill would force birth even where the mother or the foetus might not survive.
There are many reasons why a woman might seek a late abortion – serious foetal abnormalities; physical or mental health, or late diagnosis of a disease requiring treatment incompatible with an ongoing pregnancy such as cancer or other personal circumstances.
SA Abortion Action Coalition (SAAAC) called the bill “cruel and unworkable.” “Doctors and healthcare teams would be prevented from providing normal abortion care and required instead to force the pregnant person to give birth. It would impose unethical practices, with tragic potential consequences for patients.” Brigid Coombe from the SAAC said: “Those changes remove the basis of informed consent and they don’t recognise at all the complexity of the circumstances that people are in when they need an abortion at those gestations.” The bill was to return to the Legislative Council on 16 October.
The question of abortion is also being hotly debated in Queensland, with speculation that Robbie Katter, Queensland state MP and son of the better-known Bob Katter, is planning to introduce a bill rolling back abortion law. Liberal National Party (LNP) leader David Crisafulli voted against Labor’s bill decriminalising abortion in Queensland in 2018. The bill, however, was passed.
Queensland Unions secretary Jacqueline King said no one should be playing politics with women’s bodies, and that the proposed abortion law overhaul was a “step back into the dark ages.” Given the likelihood of an LNP victory in the elections on 26 October and the large number of LNP candidates who hold anti-abortion views the possibility of such a bill being passed is not out of the question.
Gillian Gibson, president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said abortion was “an essential healthcare service. A decision to terminate a pregnancy should be a discussion between women and their doctors,” she said. “Any attempt to further legislate abortion is an attempt to deny women access to health care.”
