Why are we terminating 80,000 pregnancies a year?

As someone who was not able to have children, willingly choosing to end a pregnancy is something I can’t fathom, writes Peta Credlin.

There’s a lot that I find perplexing about Gladys Berejiklian’s decision to allow abortion law changes to become the defining issue of her time as premier.

This is a fraught policy area where a lot of good and decent people have very different views and where families can be divided, so it’s an area where the electorate should lead the way. Yet rewriting the law in NSW was not raised in the recent March election so voters have every right to be upset at being denied the opportunity to express their views before the parliament expresses its will.

And the haste bothers me. The fact that politicians are trying to ram this legislation through the parliament is the surest sign to me, after years of being on the inside, that this is a bill they really don’t want you to get your head around, lest you understand it and disagree.

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Abortion is a tough subject to discuss. Even as women, among our own, we find it very difficult. And I guess it should be like that because contemplating the end of a pregnancy should not be a decision taken lightly; and as a society, I think we would all hope that’s the case. But dealing openly and transparently with tough subjects is what we elect our parliamentarians to do.

The fact that politicians are trying to ram this legislation through suggests this is a bill they really don’t want you to get your head around. Picture: AAP/Joel Carrett

As someone who was not able to have children, willingly choosing to end a pregnancy is something I can’t fathom. But I’ve had a long history in the area of women’s rights, and I accept the reality that some women, for what are compelling reasons to them, feel unable to continue a pregnancy. Under those circumstances, they will seek an abortion; and it should be one that’s safe due to the availability of highly competent medical professionals, and lawful.

It’s here that Bill Clinton’s famous phrase, ‘safe, legal and rare’ is often cited but while ‘safe’ and ‘legal’ get the running, very little attention is focused on rare and to me, that’s the most important.

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The fact that there are about 80,000 abortions a year in Australia — or roughly one abortion for every four live births — should concern all of us in a country where women have equal rights, are well-educated, and have ready and affordable access to contraception. You can’t tell me that 80,000 abortions are just the result of missed pills or broken condoms. With far more sexual freedom than any other generation that have come before us, as women, we must take responsibility for protecting ourselves against unwanted pregnancy rather than think it won’t happen to us. As a community too, there’s questions for us; what sort of support are we offering women? Can we do more?

While adoption is not something I have ever contemplated, there are many couples who wait years for the chance to give a child a home. And with only 233 adoptions last year yet 80,000 abortions, have we got something badly wrong?

These are the legitimate community debates that the Premier seems determined to shut down by trying to ram this legislation through, but it gets worse.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard, has been totally incapable of explaining certain aspects of the bill. Picture: AAP/Joel Carrett

While I understand the rationale for a bill that removed any first trimester abortion from the Crimes Act, this legislation that Gladys Berejiklian says she supports (but would appear hasn’t yet read) will allow termination right up to birth provided that any two doctors agree that it “should be performed” based on a woman’s “current and future physical, psychological and social circumstances”.

These are not defined, and one of the bill’s co-sponsors, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard, has been totally incapable of explaining what such abortion-justifying circumstances might be. Does a woman’s partner walking out at 28 weeks meet the ‘social’ test to now abort a pregnancy at six months gestation? Or she loses her job? Or decides three children under four is too much to handle? There’s a world of moral difference between life that’s merely potential and life that has become actual — and an as-yet unborn child, with the right medical care, is usually quite capable of life beyond its mother by the beginning of the third trimester.

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There’s been a lot of community support in NSW for the enactment of Zoe’s law; bravely advocated by her parents, Brodie and Nick, after Zoe was stillborn at 32 weeks when her mum was hit by a drug-affected driver on Christmas Day 2009. Their fight to have the law recognise the life of a child killed in utero like this from 20 weeks on highlights just what dangerous legal territory we are heading into when at the same period of gestation and beyond, we’re contemplating lawful termination. While a wanted pregnancy is different, the law is a blunt instrument and this is why careful lawmaking, not rushed, matters.

Maybe these changes are what the people of NSW would want — but more likely they’re not. Picture: AAP/Joel Carrett

Now just maybe, these changes are what the people of NSW would want — but more likely they’re not. While procuring an abortion is still dealt with in the state Crimes Act, as a result of judicial decisions, abortions that are reasonably necessary to protect the physical and mental health of the mother have not been illegal in NSW for 40 years.

While there are no precise statistics, about 25,000 abortions a year are thought to be performed in NSW. The last reported prosecution was in 2015 of a woman who bought drugs online to self-procure an abortion at 28 weeks. The previous prosecution was in 2006 of a deregistered doctor who had administered drugs to a patient to bring on an abortion at 23 weeks.

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So if early trimester abortion is readily available, and if prosecutions are only for what are essentially “backyard” procedures, what’s the problem that this bill is supposed to remedy? If the Premier really feels that this is an issue where the electorate wants change, then she should take it to an election, and using the resources of government, draft the bill carefully with all the usual procedural opportunities for scrutiny, rather than handing it over to an obscure, left-wing independent. And at the same time, we have an honest conversation about what we can do, as a community, to bring down the rate of 80,000 abortions per year because, all of us, can do better.