Page 783 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2018
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hormonal implants, the rate of unplanned pregnancy drops to one per cent or less and remains stable over five to 10 years—as opposed to reaching over that time period up to 38 per cent failure rates for common contraceptives such as the pill.
There are, of course, some free contraceptive methods such as the rhythm and withdrawal methods, but they require practice, discipline and overall trust between the partners and, unfortunately, they have a very high failure rate. The figures I cited came from data from the New York Times. However, it demonstrates that despite people’s best laid plans, even the most effective contraception does fail and fails often enough for abortion to be something that many women have to consider.
While there is access to the morning-after pill, there is a very short window in which to access this. In general, this circumstance would not be when a person knows that they are pregnant, particularly if the pregnancy came due to failure of their normal contraceptive method. And, of course, we are all human and we all make mistakes at times.
Unfortunately, there is another instance which I have become increasingly familiar with due to consultations on the draft consent legislation, which I plan to bring to the Assembly. It is sexual assault. Without going into detail, with sexual assault a pregnancy can be an unplanned and very deeply distressing pregnancy. Suffice to say, I am convinced of the need for people in this circumstance to have access to abortion services, with minimal further intrusion in their lives.
The bill also ensures that a doctor and nurse must not refuse to carry out or to assist in carrying out an abortion in an emergency—I stress the word “emergency”—where a woman’s health is in danger. My understanding is that the professional ethics of most medical professionals—not most; all of them—would mean that that was a requirement anyway, but I want to make that abundantly clear. I will stress again that I am talking about an emergency, when the woman’s life is in danger.
The bill also ensures that a doctor or nurse must inform patients if they are exercising their right to conscientiously object. There is no expectation that any medical practitioner who has a conscientious objection would have to have anything to do with an abortion. All they need to do is inform their client that that is the situation and leave it to the client to make whatever decisions they feel are appropriate at that point.
That is important because sometimes people do not realise on what basis they are being refused an abortion and so may make the wrong decision if they feel that the basis is medical when, in fact, it is because of the views of the health practitioner. We have consulted with the Human Rights Commission about how to write this. We have gone backwards and forwards on it and we believe that this properly balances the rights of any medical practitioner with the rights of a patient seeking this particular medical service.
There is a clarification in the Health Act to ensure that those who undertake a medical abortion are not inadvertently criminalised. The bill also provides for gender neutral language, recognising that people who do not identify as women may be capable of being pregnant and thus seeking an abortion. The Greens believe that all women and
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