Thursday, 18 June 2026

 Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (12:43): (1372) My question is for the Minister for Health. Last night an anti-abortion bill driven by Family First and backed in by One Nation passed the upper house of the South Australian Parliament. It is the first time legislation like this has passed any house of parliament in our country’s history. Women are feeling fearful and scared in these unprecedented times. This is no longer something that we watch on in horror from overseas. It is happening here at home. I have been open about accessing abortion myself in the past, and since becoming a mother myself it has only made me believe more strongly in our right to choose. Pregnancy should only be a decision that is entered into willingly, and I am scared for the future that my own daughter could grow up in. What is your message to Victorian women right now?

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Health, Minister for Water) (12:44): Thanks, Ms Purcell, for that question. Yesterday we heard some really disturbing commentary in a range of different spaces around access to abortion. We all heard it. I just want to be really clear that no-one and no political party can pretend that they did not hear these comments, and no-one can pretend that these comments were ambiguous. Every party is going to have to make a decision on how they respond to these comments, particularly on access to abortion and women’s health more generally. No political party gets to pretend that it did not hear these comments.

The Allan government supports access to safe and affordable pregnancy termination for women. Abortion is legal in Victoria, and the act ensures that there are really clear laws in place that reflect current clinical practice and community standards to protect the decisions of women, in consultation with their doctor. This is about bodily autonomy, health equity and access to safe and affordable care. Since 2017 we have funded women’s sexual and reproductive health hubs open to women and girls and gender-diverse folks to improve access to care closer to home. On top of this, the women’s health and wellbeing program, which we announced in the 2023–24 budget, establishes 20 women’s health hubs over four years, a mobile virtual women’s health clinic and also a dedicated Aboriginal women’s clinic to overcome some of the barriers that women experience in accessing medical treatment.

The women’s pain inquiry, which is the most prolifically responded-to inquiry, led to the Bridging the Gender Pain Gap report, and those recommendations were so instructive in this space. This is an area that warrants careful, considered and evidence-based approaches to health care, whether it is through My Options or whether it is through the provision of direct services in community health in our public hospital systems. But every woman deserves access to abortion care and to services here in Victoria. That is why we made it legal, and that is why we will continue to support it.

 Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (12:47): This legislation was framed around late-term abortion, which is not just incredibly dangerous and deceptive but a Trojan Horse to slowly dismantle our reproductive rights. In South Australia, where this legislation passed – and I note it was supported by the Premier himself – less than 2 per cent of abortions are considered late term. They are almost always wanted pregnancies where an abnormality is found that puts the fetus or the pregnant person at risk even of death. They are heartbreaking decisions with severe ill health or death being inevitable, and they are signed off by multiple medical experts who supervise their care. The ‘babies born alive’ narrative is only so that parents can make the choice to hold their babies as they die. Can you please explain the reality of late-term abortions in Victoria before similar laws are inevitably proposed here in our state?

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Health, Minister for Water) (12:48): Ms Purcell, it is really hard to do justice to exploring and trying to honour the pain and the trauma and the distress that parents feel when a pregnancy for a desperately wanted baby results in a diagnosis, for example, of anencephaly or acrania – these fetal conditions that are incompatible with life. Again, these decisions often are revealed at a 20-week scan or thereafter, and they involve so much work across a team of specialist clinicians. They involve so much anguish and often conversations about what it is that parents want to do. Late-term abortions are, as you have indicated in your question, such a small part of the conversation around abortion access but also around neonatal palliative care. Being able to hold a baby for seconds or for minutes before he or she dies is such a profound thing. It is something we need to honour, and it is something that deserves a really respectful and considered engagement and response.