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The Health, Environment and Agriculture Committee of the Queensland Legislative Assembly has tabled its into the Termination of Pregnancy (Live Births) Amendment Bill 2024. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (�����ƽ��, The College) has been outspoken against this bill. The College provided written evidence via a submission in May 2024 and was afforded the opportunity to provide additional testimony at a public hearing of the Committee in August.

�����ƽ�� commends the Committee for seeing through the spurious rationale that underpins this bill, and congratulates the membership for recommending against progressing the bill to the next stage of the parliamentary process. �����ƽ�� supports the Committee’s second recommendation that the Queensland Government continue to elevate staffing levels in the provision of abortion care. The College’s testimony identified the problem of insufficient workforce in Queensland to provide safe, timely and accessible abortion care.

The purported rationale for the bill is to increase the protection and care of a fetus born alive as a result of an abortion. There are several problems with the bill, most basic of which is that the proposed legislative protections are unnecessary as health care providers already owe a substantial duty of care to their patients, including babies born alive prior to fetal viability.

What the bill will do – rather than improve care and protection in a practical sense – is increase barriers to accessing safe abortion care, essential health care which is a fundamental right which all Australians are entitled to. Any time legal requirements are imposed on the practice of abortion, barriers to access follow, whether restricting access to abortion is the intent of legislation or not. Arguing otherwise is disingenuous and a strategy of a certain political constituency that does not believe in or support the well-being or bodily autonomy of women. 

Legislating the text of this bill would make it harder to access an abortion, particularly for First Nations women, women in regional, rural, and remote settings, and those from other vulnerable communities. It will also make it hard on health care professionals who come to work each day to care for their patients, to do exactly that, by dictating how care should be provided and interfering in the very difficult choices that women are faced with in scenarios where an abortion needs to be considered. 

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