By: Jamie Walker
Date: 25 August 2009
Source: The Australian
Two more public hospitals in Queensland reportedly withdrew medical abortion services and a pregnant woman was sent by the state's biggest hospital to Sydney for treatment. This was despite Premier Anna Bligh's bid to appease doctors who want Queensland to decriminalise abortion with a partial rewrite of the existing law.
State cabinet yesterday agreed to amend section 282 of the Queensland Criminal Code to extend the exemption for doctors to perform otherwise banned terminations to so-called medical procedures using abortion drugs such as mifepristone. But the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said the concession was not enough. Public hospitals in Rockhampton and Mackay are believed to have joined the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital (RBWH) in suspending medical abortions, while a service attached to Cairns Base Hospital is also reviewing its legal position.
"They can tinker all they like with section 282 but it does not withdraw the threat of criminal prosecutions," said college president Ted Weaver. "That is really the bottom line here: we would like doctors to be able to practise without the threat subsequently of having criminal charges laid against them." Dr Weaver said more hospitals were set to follow and suspend medical abortion services, which are provided to women with medical complications to their pregnancy or severe fetal abnormalities. These are generally performed later in pregnancy than elective abortions provided in Queensland by private clinics, not public hospitals.
"I know anecdotally that, yes, it already has had an impact on services and those impacts have been conveyed forcibly to the Premier -- she knows," he said. Ms Bligh yesterday ruled out wider reform of Queensland's abortion laws, considered to be the harshest in the country: "None of the parts of the criminal code that relate to termination of pregnancy will be changed by the government. There will be change to another section that provides that where a doctor is prescribing medication, whether it's for chemotherapy or mental illness, they will have the same protections they currently have when performing a surgical procedure."
The move is designed to allay long-standing concern by some doctors that section 282 of the criminal code, allowing abortions to be performed to preserve the life or health of the mother, refers only to surgical procedures. The government disputes that this would make medical terminations illegal, but moved to amend the section to cover them after RBWH last week suspended its service and said women requiring such treatment would most likely be referred interstate.
The move by RBWH and possibly other public hospitals brought to a head a row that has been simmering since Queensland police in March charged a 19-year-old Cairns woman and her boyfriend with criminal offences involving an allegedly self-administered medical abortion. The college backs the push to repeal the offence, under section 225 of the criminal code, of a woman procuring her own miscarriage.
