Frontline workers speak of ‘heartbreaking’ late-term abortions

As NSW MPs prepare to debate whether to decriminalise abortion, two frontline workers speak out about women they have helped to secure late-term terminations — including one who was raped and another whose baby had a severe deformity.

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A rape victim aged 20 was among 700 women who were helped to have an abortion by a Sydney health service last year.

Of those women, 15 were more than 20 weeks pregnant, with the government-funded service helping to pay for the procedure at a clinic in Victoria.

The manager of the service, who requested anonymity, said the number of women helped had more than doubled in the past year, from 320, although the number of those seeking late-term terminations remained low.

“The further along you are, the more expensive it gets, and the hard part for women is that if they are over 20 weeks they cannot have the procedures done in NSW,” the manager said.

Another women sought a late-term abortion after learning at 20 weeks that her baby had a severe deformity.

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Of women seeking earlier abortions, religion often played a role, such as in the case of an 18-year-old who feared for her safety if her parents learned she was pregnant.

Another woman with “multiple” children secretly terminated her child without her husband’s knowledge. The centre also paid for an IUD contraceptive device.

“No woman we work with considers this decision lightly and that is why sometimes they hold off and hold off,” she said.

Medical groups overwhelmingly support the Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill 2019, including the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians And Gynaecologists and the Australian Medical Association.

Gynaecologist Dr Claire Fotheringham, who has worked in NSW, Queensland and overseas, said most women needing late-term abortions wanted the child and acted only after learning of a severe deformity.

“It might be an ultrasound at 18 weeks suggests some kind of issue,” she said.

“These are really, really sad, heartbreaking cases, because in nearly all of them, the baby was wanted.”