Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill

Below is the submission I wrote regarding a 'reproductive health' bill currently being tabled in the Tasmanian parliament. I also sent a much-edited version to the Mercury and Examiner newspapers' Letters to the Editor (don't know if they got in). Please go to the Department of Health and Human Service's Women's Health homepage for links to the proposed bill and its information paper.

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The proposed Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill would be an elegantly designed, carefully defended bill if termination were indeed “like any other medical procedure”. But I'm not sure that it is and I'm not convinced the Tasmanian community is either. The information paper relating to this bill (accessed through www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/pophealth/womens_health) states that the vast majority of Tasmanians and Australians “support access to safe and legal termination”. But, as with all statistics, the answer given depends a great deal on how the question was asked. Naturally, if questions about termination are framed in terms of women's right to choose, the answer will be overwhelmingly favorable because our society respects and affirms women's self determination.

However I think we know that termination is a particularly complex issue. There is more going on in pregnancy than in other bodily changes a women may experience and make decisions about. Termination is not “like any other medical procedure”. Even the most ardent supporters of termination tend to regard it, not as a neutral-value medical practice but as an unfortunate yet necessary solution to unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. Community ambivalence to termination is heightened by the extraordinary efforts we go to in order to conserve the lives of premature babies and the occasional incredible story heard about the survival of babies born even earlier than 24 weeks. It is also complicated by our more everyday efforts to protect foetuses' health, for example, as part of the Tasmanian government's 'Kids Come First' initiative which, among other things, seeks to reduce foetal exposure to alcohol and better equip midwives to address smoking in pregnancy. The locally run 'Butt out for Bubs' program is another telling named example of our community's complex thinking around pregnancy and the value of the foetus.

I would suggest that the majority of Tasmanians don't so much 'support' termination as reluctantly acknowledge its necessity. Tasmanians would, I think, be glad to see terminations performed only rarely. We certainly do not want to see women having terminations because they have been pressured into it by their partners, or women from cultural backgrounds that devalue their sex seeking a termination when they find out they're having a girl at their 20 week scan. And I dearly hope we do not aspire to be a society that sees women terminating eight month-old foetuses or ridding itself of people with disabilites.

I would love to see counselling made compulsory principally to ensure that women who are experiencing coercion from a partner or family members are given the opportunity to talk through their situation with a professional, but also so that all women can receive dispassionate support during this difficult time and as they make these tough decisions.

I would love to see a Tasmania respectful of different viewpoints and committed to properly informing its citizens. If, in order to ensure that women receive “unbiased information from which to make informed choices”, referrals to medical practitioners or counsellors without a conscientious objection to termination are to be made compulsory, the reverse should also occur. So, if a women is attended by a doctor or counsellor favorable to termination, it should equally be a legal requirement that they receive a referral to a doctor/counsellor with a conscientious objection, so that they too may hear and assess the biases of both perspectives.

I do not want Tasmania to be a place where early foetuses may be terminated for any reason at all. To guard against the barbarity of things like gender-targeting, the minimum requirement should be: “the continuation of the pregnancy would involve greater risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman than if the pregnancy were terminated” (the proposed rationale for foetuses over 24 weeks).

I do not wish for Tasmania to be a place where foetuses of the same age receive incompatible treatment. Where one prematurely born foetus spends the first months of her life receiving the best medical treatment we have to offer, and the other ends up as hospital waste. I do not personally wish this to happen to foetuses of any age, but I would suggest that the Tasmanian community is not ready to see this happen to foetuses old enough to be viable outside of the womb.

Most of all I would love to see a termination-free Tasmania; a Tasmania in which women with unplanned, unwanted pregnancies feel confident that adoption is a safe and compassionate option for their children; a Tasmania that leads the world in providing pregnant women and new mums with assistance from caring professionals and such an actively supportive community as to make us all proud.