Tuesday, 31 October 2023

Abortion services

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (17:11): (541) The action I am seeking is for the Minister for Health to establish monitoring and reporting requirements for the provision of surgical termination of pregnancy in Victoria. Equity for women, especially in health care, has been hard fought for by a legacy of courageous and persistent women. Throughout the 20th century accessing abortion was a criminal offence. The Menhennitt ruling in the 1960s was triggered by a landmark case in which a doctor’s abortion practice was ruled lawful due to its necessity for protecting an individual’s life or physical or psychological wellbeing; however, it took another 50 years for abortion to be formally decriminalised in this state.

Despite these reforms, 15 years on there are many parts of the state in which women simply cannot access an abortion and abortion care is treated differently to other areas of health care. Women cannot be sure that they will be able to access abortion care from a Victorian public hospital. In fact, because of conscientious objectors, a lack of trained workforce and stigma around termination provision, there are entire local government areas where there is no access to abortion care. For women facing the complicated decision to have an abortion, the barriers to access and challenges navigating the system make a difficult period even more so.

The latest data compiled by the Victorian Women’s Health Atlas identifies 11 LGAs across the state with high numbers of patients seeking medical terminations but limited to no practitioners prescribing medical termination. While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from women attempting to access services and people who work in women’s health around the barriers that are faced, we do not have publicly available data on the number of surgical terminations performed, the availability of practitioners who can provide surgical terminations or the number of patients seeking surgical abortion care, because the Department of Health do not publish this and we are not even sure if they collect it.

How can we solve the postcode lottery if we do not have the capacity to strategically plan for service provision? By knowing where the gaps are, we can work on solutions. Women’s health services rely on this data so they can be strategic about workforce development and support and the rollout of new services where gaps exist. The Greens position is that abortion care is basic health care. The National Women’s Health Strategy 2020–2030 aims to enable women and girls to have access to services that meet their healthcare needs, and yet abortion is treated differently from other health services. A first step to rectifying this would be mandating the department to report on the delivery of this essential component of health care.