Premier Gladys Berejiklian will allow Liberal members of the upper house a conscience vote on a historic bill to legalise abortion in NSW, but even those in favour of law reform are unlikely to support the controversial laws as drafted.
The Greens bill to decriminalise abortion will bring about the first parliamentary debate on the issue in more than 100 years, since it was introduced as an offence under the NSW Crimes Act 1900.
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It also provides for safe access zones to be enacted outside reproductive health clinics, to prevent women and staff being harassed by anti-abortion protesters.
Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi said the NSW Parliament had been ignoring the conversation on abortion for a century.
![Right-to-life demonstrators block the doorway of the Preterm Clinic in Cooper Street, Surry Hills in 1985.](/web/20170515100229im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/d/y/e/b/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gw1eyv.png/1494403678401.jpg)
"It is a change that is not only due, but well overdue," Dr Faruqi said.
The Liberal party room agreement to give members a free vote means MPs on both sides of the upper house will be unshackled by party policy, as Labor's longstanding position is to allow a conscience vote.
But Liberal MPs who support the decriminalisation of abortion say they will not support it in its current form, which places no limit on the gestation at which an abortion could be performed and does not mandate for it to be performed by a clinician.
Liberal MP Catherine Cusack said the bill was constructed in a way that she could not support and let women down on the opportunity for law reform.
![The Abortion Law Reform Campaign by Mehreen Faruqi held an action outside NSW Parliament House earlier this week.](/web/20170515100229im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/0/x/h/w/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gw1eyv.png/1494403678401.jpg)
"Anyone can perform an abortion, you don't have to be a qualified clinician and you can have an abortion right up to the birth - the day the baby is born in fact," Ms Cusack said.
"I just think it's extraordinary. I see it as an effort to test our female premier on women's issues and not as a genuine effort for reform which is what women are entitled to expect."
![Dr Philip Goldstone, Medical Director of Marie Stopes Australia, in one of the consultation rooms at his Westmead ...](/web/20170515100229im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/0/p/4/b/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gw1eyv.png/1494403678401.jpg)
A spokesman for Ms Berejiklian said she supported conscience votes on issues such as abortion, as she had stated previously.
In January, Ms Berejiklian was forced to reassert her government's position on abortion after the new minister for women Tanya Davies said she was "personally … pro-life".
Ms Berejiklian stepped into state that "there's obviously no change in policy on those issues".
Labor health spokesman Walt Secord said he would vote for the bill because he supported a woman's right to choose in principle, but did not support the way Dr Faruqi had conducted the matter.
Abortion was allowed under common law and no prosecutions had taken place in NSW, while Dr Faruqi's legislation did not provide a legal framework for medically approved abortions to occur, Mr Secord said.
Overseas efforts to codify common law had allowed groups to attempt to wind back a woman's choice.
"I liken Dr Faruqi actions to taking a giant stick and poking it into a beehive, shaking it like hell and then walking away," Mr Secord said.
"She is willing to jeopardise the current situation for her own base political advantage."
The approach adopted by the Greens in bringing about the bill recalled to another MP's mind the voluntary euthanasia bill introduced by Greens MP Cate Faehrmann in 2013.
Her attempt to legalise the practice was out-voted 23-13 after she failed to gain consensus within the house on the nuts and bolts, despite general support for the intention of the bill.
"The same rules don't apply when you're working with a conscience vote," the MP said.
"You need to win people one by one and there needs to be people who will step up, put some political capital into it, work together and sometimes make compromises."
Dr Faruqi said she gave notice of the bill two years ago, introduced it last year under the Baird government, and had engaged with many MPs throughout the process.
"This is not my bill, or a Greens bill," she said.
"This is a bill we have brought to this parliament on behalf of the women of NSW, on behalf of medical practitioners, lawyers, and most importantly the community that overwhelmingly supports the decriminalisation of abortion and enactment of safe access zones outside clinics."
Labor MP Penny Sharpe, who has proposed a separate bill on instituting safety zones around abortion clinics, said she expected seven or eight members on her side of the upper house to vote for the Greens bill and she would be among them.
Showdown
The Catholic Church and Christian Rights Lobby have been campaigning against the bill among congregations, focusing on the ability to terminate pregnancies up until nine months and the outlawing of prayer vigils outside clinics.
They are facing a showdown with 300 medical practitioners and 100 law and criminology academics who have written to the legislative council in support of the law reform.
Medical director of Marie Stopes Australia Dr Philip Goldstone said current legislation meant doctors were reticent to provide abortion.
Just 355 NSW doctors are accredited to prescribe a medical abortion in NSW, according to 2017 data from the sole pharmaceutical supplier of the medications in Australia, MS Health.
"Abortion is still a taboo subject in the medical community. As long as it remains a crime it's certainly not encouraging GPs to offer abortion care," said Dr Godlstone who supports the Greens bill.
He rejected the suggestion that decriminalising abortion was a semantic move, arguing its illegality was a significant barrier to women unable to pay out-of-pocket at a private clinic.
"The public health system will provide everything a woman needs should she choose to continue her pregnancy, but if she chooses not to she is left seeking help in the private system.
"Public hospitals have really abdicated responsibility," he said.
More than 120 law academics at NSW universities have signed an open letter asking MPs to support the Bill.
"Abortion is a health and welfare matter, not a criminal issue. People who have an abortion, and their doctors, should not face the risk of criminal prosecution," the letter read.
Ms Faruqi said the church campaign was derived from the playbook of far-right anti-abortion groups in the United States.
"The suggestion that women will carry their pregnancies to term and then terminate without strong medical reasons is deeply offensive and implies that women can't be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies," she said.
Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists president Steve Robson said he had never in 26 years encountered a woman seeking a late term abortion for non-medical reasons.
One circumstance in which a woman might terminate a child close to the due date is if one twin had a severe disease incompatible with life but terminating earlier would compromise the normal twin.
"It would be an impossible decision," Dr Robson said.
"These decisions are so hard for women, they put so much pressure on families, it's so awful for doctors and nurses caring for these patients.
"We don't believe there's any place at all for decisions about pregnancy between a woman and her doctor to be in the criminal code."