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As the abortion campaign to use legislative and economic coercion on public and Catholic hospitals to perform abortions expands, legislation is needed to protect the right to conscientious objection for medical professionals.

Such coercion violates the right of doctors, nurses and medical staff not to participate in medical procedures that are contrary to the true nature of two human beings (mother and baby) and therefore contrary to good health care.

The stage for coercive policies has already been set.

Victoria and Queensland have not only legalised abortion to birth, but have violated the right of doctors’ consciences by requiring any doctor who objects to abortion to refer a women seeking a termination to a doctor who will do the abortion.

The ACT went further. In 2023, the Labor-Greens ACT Government used an inquiry into the territory’s abortion services to attack Calvary Catholic hospital for not providing “full reproductive health care” and then executed a compulsory takeover of the hospital.

Activists

The two-pronged attack – legislative and economic – comes from the Greens, The Guardian, the ABC, parts of the Labor Party, and is led by Women’s Health Victoria (WHV).

Funded by the Victorian Government, WHV ran the campaign for the 2008 Victorian Abortion Law Reform Act. In 2010, WHV further expanded the abortion agenda in “Women and Abortion” (2010), arguing that “only a limited number of public hospitals in Victoria offer termination” and that in “rural and regional areas … services are limited or nonexistent.”

The following year, Victorian Women’s Health Services, a cluster of state-funded health services aligned with WHV, issued a “10-point Plan For Victorian Women’s Health 2010-2014”. It said that a full implementation of the state’s Abortion Law Reform Act needed “a requirement in funding agreements that all publicly funded sexual and reproductive health services, including those providing termination of pregnancy and contraception, meet catchment needs”. Further, that training for abortions in all “medical and nursing courses” was needed.

Recently, WHV issued an 87-page report further calling for the expansion of “surgical abortion provision in publicly funded hospitals”, to overcome the “key barriers to abortion access … conscientious objection and lack of referrals to alternative providers, lack of timely access to supporting services (pathology and ultrasound) still required by many providers, lack of provision in regional and rural areas, and limited public provision”.

Politically, this agenda has been driven by the Greens and a part of the ALP. In the run-up to the last two Queensland state elections, the Greens pushed for the government to make provision of abortions a condition of funding for the public section of a new Mater Catholic hospital in Springfield, to the southeast of Brisbane. The government refused.

A federal Senate inquiry last year into “reproductive health-care access” recommended increased accessibility of abortion services at public hospitals but stopped short of making it a requirement of public funding.

In 2019, the then shadow minister for women, Tanya Plibersek, indicated that Labor would tie funding to public hospitals with a willingness to provide abortion services. At that time, the 2018 ALP National Platform called for “the provision of abortion in public hospitals”, including “access to surgical and medical terminations for women in rural and regional areas”.

The 2023 ALP National Platform was slightly toned down, saying Labor would work to “expand service provision in the public system” and “in regional, rural and remote areas”, but stopped short of economic coercion.

Coercion

The media campaign has been led by The Guardian newspaper, with articles attacking Catholic and other public hospitals for not providing abortions. A 2023 long feature article entitled, “‘I was shocked’: Catholic-run public hospitals refuse to provide birth control and abortion”, noted that, of 15 Catholic public hospitals in Australia, at least five provide specialist maternity or gynaecology care but will not do IVF or abortions.

While there have been federal and state bills to require treatment for babies born alive for abortion, the clear push by abortion activists is for economic and legislative coercion of doctors and hospitals to perform abortions. Economic coercion would go far beyond the violation of conscience clause in Victorian and Queensland legislation.

The argument for forcing abortions on public hospitals, and possibly GPs, is that, as abortion is now legal, taxpayer-funded doctors and hospitals should be required to do abortions.

However, what is legal is not necessarily moral, and at its heart, abortion is a moral issue.

To that end, taxpayers fall on both sides of the debate, meaning that pro-life taxpayers are as entitled to have their money spent according to their beliefs on health as those who are pro-abortion.

Further, as Angela Shanahan points out in The Australian (November 2, 2024), abortion is not performed in many public hospitals in Australia, “mainly because it is not treating the sick, and it clogs up beds for women who are truly sick”. This is a cost to the taxpayer at a time when public hospitals are under great stress.

To confront the push to force hospitals and health professionals to perform abortions, legalisation is needed that protects conscientious objection for health professionals. That would include objection to abortion, euthanasia, IVF, contraception and medical transitioning to the opposite sex.

It would likely receive support from many doctors, hospitals and other health professionals.

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Republished with thanks to News Weekly.