Abortion - a matter of life and death

Abortion News 1

Govt to review law on abortion

22 December 1999.

By NICK PERRY.

The Coalition Government is investigating changing the law to make it easier for women to get abortions.

The cabinet will review abortion laws following the release of a strongly worded report by the Abortion Supervisory Committee.

Although any vote will be a conscience vote, Women's Affairs Minister Laila Harre said last night that abortion procedures were unnecessarily complicated and she wanted to make them simpler.

She also wanted to increase access to abortions and advice for women living in rural areas.

Minister of Justice Phil Goff said the existing law had failed to reduce the number of abortions, which had nearly trebled in two decades to 15,000 last year.

The report said existing legislation,now over 20 years old, was out of date and had not kept up with technological changes such as the introduction of ultrasound scans.

At present, an abortion is granted if doctors decide the pregnancy will cause serious danger to the mental or physical health of the woman. Two medical consultants have to approve each abortion.

The report said legal hoops and the need for two consultants had stopped abortions from becoming an integral part of women's health services.

"A decision to have an abortion should only be between the woman and her doctor."

The committee recommended that women be automatically allowed abortions after pregnancies of 20 weeks if the foetus had major abnormalities - rather than cases being argued on mental health grounds.

It criticised previous Governments for failing to act on its recommendations, and MPs for using it as a buffer between them and abortion groups, "which allows them to abrogate their responsibilities."

The committee also criticised "vested interests" in the medical profession that it claimed had strongly opposed abortion law changes.

Laila Harre said the cabinet would review the law "with the view to introducing legislation to meet the recommendations of the supervisory committee."

"I am strongly of the view that the current law does not operate fairly and costs a lot more than is necessary to administer," she said.

Mr Goff said it was highly questionable whether the annual spending of $2.7 million on consultants to approve abortions served any positive effect.

"If the desire is, and it should be, to bring down the rate of abortions, then this considerable sum of money would be better spent on contraceptive education and to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies."

Committee member Dr John Whittaker said that making abortions simpler could

also make them safer, because the risk of complications was reduced the earlier an abortion was performed.

He said the hoops women had to go through to get an abortion tainted the process and put them under pressure at a vulnerable time.

But the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child said any attempt to make abortions easier would increase abortion rates.

President Jenny Street said that trying to "push women through a conveyor-belt system" without proper checks and balances would increase the deep psychological trauma many faced after abortions.