On 19 March, our CEO Rachael Wong spoke to a rally of thousands outside NSW Parliament about the Greens' radical new abortion bill, which will harm women, children, health professionals, and our healthcare system. Watch or read her speech below and read more about our concerns in our letter to Premier Chris Minns.
"In 2019, in the face of immense community backlash, NSW passed one of the most extreme abortion laws in the world, removing longstanding safeguards for both women and unborn children.
But it is not enough for the Greens to have abortion until birth in NSW. The Greens want more abortion.
To achieve this, the Greens want to force hospitals and doctors opposed to abortion for medical, ethical or religious reasons, to violate their conscience, and to be involved in ensuring access to abortion at any stage, for any reason.
They want to remove some of the few remaining safeguards for women by expanding who can perform abortions.
And they want to get rid of minimal data collection requirements, because they absurdly claim these create barriers to abortion access.
NSW Greens MP and former abortionist Amanda Cohn couches her radical and authoritarian new abortion bill in the language of ‘women’s rights’.
This is a bill put forward by a party, that in 2019, voted down protections for women and girls against sexual abuse, abortion coercion, and sex-selective abortion.
This is a bill put forward by a party that doesn’t even know what a woman is, and who last year cheered on a law allowing men to legally identify as women, further erasing women in law, and further eroding protections for female-only spaces, services and sports.
And this is a bill that gravely endangers women.
Removing the requirement that a medical practitioner perform an abortion and allowing them to be undertaken by nurses, midwives and other prescribed health practitioners, increases the risk of adverse outcomes following complications, especially for women in rural, regional and remote areas – the exact women Cohn says her Bill is meant to help.
This is especially the case when it comes to medical abortions.
Complications following a medical abortion include haemorrhage, infection and incomplete abortion – all of which require urgent medical attention.
A missed ectopic pregnancy prior to a medical abortion can have fatal consequences.
Expanding access to medical abortion, particularly in remote areas with underqualified health practitioners and a lack of clinics equipped to deal with serious adverse events, puts women's lives at risk.
Instead of simply pushing for more abortion, imagine if the Greens actually addressed the underlying societal issues and inequalities that drive women to seek abortion in the first place?
But this bill, and indeed many of the Greens’ policies, are inherently anti-women – because at the end of the day, it’s not about women. It is about blindly following ideology at all costs, even at the cost of women.
If passed, the Greens’ bill will endanger women, it will create more victims of abortion – both children and women – and it will force hospitals to close and health professionals to leave their jobs, which would cripple NSW’s already strained health care system.
However, while the Bill may belong to the Greens, it only passes the parliament with Labor’s support.
I call on all Members of Parliament to reject this radical bill, but Premier Chris Minns, it is your responsibility to lead your party in rejecting this anti-women, anti-children, anti-freedom law, and to put an end to activists running this state."
Women’s Forum Australia is an independent think tank that undertakes research, education and public policy advocacy on issues affecting women and girls, with a particular focus on addressing behaviours and practices that are harmful and abusive to them. We are a non-partisan, non-religious, tax-deductible charity. We do not receive any government funding and rely solely on donations to make an impact. Support our work today.
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