Anthony Albanese makes call on Labor’s public hospital abortion policy

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has delivered a point-blank response to a question about abortions in Australia.

Anthony Albanese has poured cold water on a plan to improve abortion access for women in Australia.

The Prime Minister says he’s not considering asking public hospitals to provide abortions after a request from a Queensland Labor MP to do so.

In an interview with The Australian newspaper, Keppel MP Brittany Lauga urged the Albanese government to revive its 2019 abortion policy.

The policy cham­pioned at the time by Tanya Plibersek would require public hospital systems to offer pregnancy termination services as part of their commonwealth funding arrangement.

Asked on 3AW radio on Wednesday if he was looking at requiring public hospitals to make abortion available as part of their funding agreements, Mr Albanese said: “No.”

Anthony Albanese says he’s not looking at asking public hospitals to provide abortions. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Pressed on the request coming from within Labor, Mr Albanese insisted abortion provision was a “state matter”.

“We don’t control the health system. The states control the health system,” he said.

“We’re fortunate that in Australia we don’t have the sort of divisive debate that has occurred in the US that we’ve seen playing out with a Supreme Court decision on Roe v Wade.”

Mr Albanese said the Supreme Court decision, which overturned Americans’ universal right to abortion, was “very unfortunate”.

Abortion is a state issue in Australia, where it has now been decriminalised in every jurisdiction following South Australia’s decision in 2021.

But access remains patchy across the nation, particularly outside the major cities where private clinics are scarce and doctors can face stigma for providing the service.

Tanya Plibersek championed a 2019 policy to reform public abortion access in Australia. Picture: Else Kennedy

The resulting postcode lottery means many women living in rural and remote Australia need to travel to get a medical or surgical abortion.

Medical terminations, using the drugs Mifepristone (RU486) and Misoprostol, can be performed by doctors in the first nine weeks of pregnancy, but very few Australian GPs are registered to prescribe the medication.

The time limits on surgical terminations – a day procedure that is used to end later-term pregnancies – vary from state to state, from 16 weeks in the ACT up to 24 weeks in Victoria and the Northern Territory.

These can be even more difficult for women to access because they can be cost prohibitive and usually require travelling to a private clinic to have the procedure performed.

It’s a different story in Tasmania, where public hospitals are the only place to have an abortion as there are no private providers.

The state and territory women’s ministers have indicated they want to see Australia’s abortion legislation streamlined and for the procedure to be made more accessible and affordable.

They are expected to discuss abortion access when they meet in Adelaide on Friday.