Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am appalled that, once again, we're here debating women's choices over their own bodies—choices that are no-one else's to weigh in on. Senator Babet's claims are incorrect. Late-term abortions resulting in a live foetus are extremely rare, and they only occur in situations of lethal foetal abnormalities or where there are serious risks to the pregnant person. Medical practitioners are already subject to ethical responsibilities that manage those complex situations, and, moreover, the vast majority of terminations in Australia occur prior to 16 weeks, at which time a foetus would not survive outside the womb. If you want to prevent unwanted pregnancies, then support the calls by the Greens to make contraception free. But you just want to control women's bodies. If you don't want an abortion, don't have one, but you don't get to tell other women what choices they should have.

With this motion, Senator Babet is, once again, seeking to undermine women's rights and access to reproductive health care—rights that have been hard-won over decades. We know that abortion is finally legal across the country but is still not affordable or accessible to everyone who wants one.

I started a Senate inquiry in 2022 into universal access to reproductive health care, which heard that it's a postcode lottery as to whether you have access to a safe abortion. Many women, particularly in regional Australia, are travelling hundreds of kilometres and paying hundreds of dollars to get a termination, and many can't afford that. We heard about the shortage of surgeons trained to provide abortion services and restrictions preventing GPs from prescribing medical abortion drugs. We heard that regional areas are often served by fly-in doctors rather than locals, meaning they might not be available when they're needed for this time-critical procedure. It should not be this difficult to access basic health care in a nation like ours.

Allowing more medical practitioners and pharmacists to supply the abortion pill MS-2 Step was a welcome step forward following the inquiry recommending this. This decision was particularly important for improving access for women and pregnant people in regional and remote parts of the country, but financial barriers remain, and the Greens believe that abortion is basic health care that should be free and available through the public health system. This used to be Labor's policy too, back in 2019: hospitals receiving federal funding had to provide the full suite of reproductive health care. Unfortunately, that's not their policy anymore. The most I could get the Senate inquiry recommendations to say was that either public hospitals must provide terminations or they must provide a timely and affordable local pathway to an alternative provider, but those pathways have to be fully funded or access is not real.

The Australian community is strongly pro choice and has been for decades. Thanks to the tireless efforts of so many advocates, lots of progress has been made. There's lots more to be done. Abortion is health care. It should be accessible, affordable, safe, legal, compassionate and free. (Time expired)