Page 3852 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 September 2018
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Non-availability of termination of pregnancy services has been shown to increase maternal morbidity and mortality.
While there are abortion services available in the ACT, there is an issue of access. Their recommendation goes on to say:
Access to termination services should be on the basis of health care need and should not be limited by age, socioeconomic disadvantage, or geographic isolation.
Until this bill is, hopefully, passed in half an hour or so, Canberrans are being discriminated against on the basis of their geographical location. If we lived across the border in Queanbeyan, not many kilometres away, we would have access to medical abortions.
The recommendation also talks about women’s right to access any medical services without fear of privacy infringement or harassment. That was achieved in the ACT in the previous Assembly through the work of my colleague Mr Rattenbury. Also, I can happily report that New South Wales has recently passed very similar legislation for abortion clinic safe access zones, in June this year.
Passing this bill today is important, but it is not the only thing that we should do in the ACT in terms of improved reproductive health rights. Other things include better access to affordable, reliable contraception, in particular, long-acting reversible contraception such as contraceptive implants and intrauterine devices. One of the interesting things I found in talking to some of the abortion providers was that some of them try to suggest to their clients that long-acting reversible contraception would be a good thing to have at the same time as an abortion, but they find that there is a very low take-up rate on this. I think this shows that unless this is something which can be provided then and there, we really need to improve our education and improve our access to reproductive health services as a number one priority.
We do need better sexual and reproductive health education for professionals and the community, including more consistent and tailored sex education in schools. And, of course, we need more affordable access to sexual and reproductive health services for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups and for those people who do not have ready access to funds needed to pay for an abortion.
As has been mentioned previously in this debate, there are many people who could not very quickly have access to the funds required to pay for an abortion. Even if they are basically quite well off, they may not have a spare $500 lying around. This is an issue, and this is an issue that we as a society need to look at.
Unfortunately, there is a lack of statistical information about how big this issue is, but advocates from the sector, including the Women’s Centre for Health Matters and Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT clinic, through anecdotal and practice-level information, have been able to tell me and the government, and anyone who is listening, that people are not always able to access abortion when they need to. Financial barriers are the major reason why people do not access abortion services when they desperately need them.
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