Clinic closures give rise to horror tales of ‘at-home’ abortions

Words: Lydia Lynch Producer: Louise Starkey

“At-home” abortions are being attempted by women in the Sunshine State, despite abortion being decriminalised by the Queensland Labor government three years ago.

After many of the state's regional clinics closed during the pandemic, one facility in Brisbane is performing the majority of publicly funded surgical terminations as most hospitals do not offer the procedure on request.

Women are resorting to self-abortions ­due to an “inconsistent and challenging system that is difficult to navigate”, with the loss of regional clinics pushing surgical abortion wait times up to five weeks.

One woman lodged a complaint to the Health Ombudsman after she was turned away from three hospitals while trying to obtain an abortion. She attempted suicide and two self-abortions before finally given access to a surgical procedure, seven weeks after her first request.

At-home terminations are less common after abortion was decriminalised in 2018, but there are still "horrible stories" of women inserting instruments into themselves to try to end their pregnancy.

Queensland's public health system is split into 16 separate hospital and health services, of which 11 have agreements with Marie Stopes to provide publicly funded surgical terminations.

There needs to be a clear directive from the government that all hospital and health services implement pathways for terminations that are local, compassionate, timely and in line with community expectation for legal healthcare.

Daile Kelleher Children by Choice chief “ “

Medical terminations, using the drug RU486, can be performed by doctors in the first nine weeks of pregnancy but only about 10 per cent of Australia's GPs are registered to prescribe the medication.

In 2019, the year after abortion was removed from the criminal code, there were 26,583 termin­ations performed across the state.

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