The debate over the Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Health Care Access) Bill 2025 introduced by Greens’ member Amanda Cohn into the NSW Upper house, has seen seveal amendments
Lyle Shelton reports: “I’ve been watching the NSW Parliament live feed as MLCs have debated the Greens’ abortion bill. Amendments carried tonight seem to have all but gutted the bill. It seems pro-life hospitals will now not be forced to perform abortions and pro-life heath practitioners will not have to be complicit in them.”
There appears to be two big wins for those opposed to the bill’s aim of narrowing the opt-outs for medical practitioners with conscientious objections to abortion.
A section of the bill that would have made a conscientious objector provide a formal referral for a patient seeking abortion to another medical practitionaer who would carry out a termination has been dropped. This means that the 2019 rule that pointing patients seeking abortions to the NSW Health depoartmnet website stands. No formal referrals will be required, which anti abortion protestors described as making doctors “complicit” in abortions.
Provisions that would have meant religious hospitals would have to provide abortions hve also been dropped. The Health Minister will not have the power – as proposed under the bill – to require all hospitals to provide abortions.
However an amendment that would have dropped a provision to allow nurse practitioners and midwives to prescribe abortion pills was lost, so that change is likely to survive.
But a provision that might have widened the definition of those medical practitioners further, and was seen as overly vague, has also been dropped.
Image: NSW Upper House. Image Credit: Ashley / Flickr