A proposed amendment to New South Wales abortion laws is being introduced in State Parliament today. Albury-based Greens MLC Dr Amanda Cohn is introducing the bill and discusses the reforms that would make it compulsory for most of the state's hospitals to offer abortion care and remove obstacles for clinicians. She says parts of the legislation bring NSW in line with Victoria and the Northern Territory.
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00:00Abortion was decriminalised in New South Wales in 2019, but unfortunately that wasn't actually
00:07followed up with service provision.
00:09And I've heard from so many people who are still travelling hundreds of kilometres to
00:13access care, especially in rural and regional New South Wales, forking out hundreds or thousands
00:17of dollars to access care in the private system.
00:20The bill would also allow nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives to prescribe medical
00:24abortion.
00:25This is something that's permitted by the TGA.
00:27It's already happening in Queensland in the ACT, and this is just about bringing that
00:30New South Wales legislation up to date.
00:33It would also remove onerous and bureaucratic mandatory reporting requirements that are
00:37real barriers for practitioners, and require practitioners who have a conscientious objection
00:42to providing abortion to actually refer a patient onward, and that's something that's
00:46already in legislation in Victoria and the Northern Territory.
00:50What sort of response have you had from your parliamentary colleagues so far, if any?
00:57We've heard heart-wrenching stories here in New South Wales in recent months of people
01:01being refused abortion care in public hospitals in places like Orange and Queanbeyan.
01:06I think there is a real understanding of these problems and a mood for change.
01:12Your changes wouldn't force every smaller healthcare facility to offer abortion care.
01:18So would there be discretion for some doctors and facilities, and then what would the options
01:24there be for those patients seeking that care?
01:30The bill proposes a very broad duty to ensure that abortion services are provided within
01:35a reasonable distance of where people live.
01:38What might be reasonable for someone in Gunnedah or Wilkenya or Albury is very different from
01:42what's reasonable in Western Sydney, so that section of the bill has been deliberately
01:46drafted to provide quite a lot of flexibility.
01:50But I think there is a real community expectation that these services are available at
01:54public hospitals.
01:55A significant number of public hospitals do have the technical capacity and the expertise
02:00to be providing surgical abortion care, particularly up to 12 or 15 weeks, and there really needs
02:05to be a responsibility for the public health system to step in and provide those services.