A prominent anti-abortion campaigner and professor has criticised the NSW Labor government for giving MPs a conscience vote on new laws that will widen access to abortion.
The proposed Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Health Care Access) Bill 2025 is being introduced by Greens MP and former abortionist Amanda Cohn.
It aims to ensure abortion is available throughout Australia’s most populous state, within a “reasonable distance of residents’ homes” and that “information about access to abortion services is made publicly available.”
The amendment further proposes health practitioners be allowed to perform abortions up to 22 weeks’ gestation, including midwives, nurses, and other trained health workers.
Under the amendment, unwilling medical professionals asked to perform an abortion need to declare their conscientious objection before transferring the patient to another willing GP.
Concerns Catholic Health Services May be Impacted
Joanna Howe, of the University of Adelaide, has called on New South Wales (NSW) Premier Chris Minns to step in, after Health Minister Ryan Park said MPs would be given a conscience vote on the issue.
In an open letter, Howe said she believed the law change, if successful, could impact significantly on Catholic health services.
“This bill significantly widens ministerial power and has the potential to force the closure of Catholic hospitals who do not want to perform abortion because it ends the life of an innocent human child in-utero,” she said.
“This will reduce healthcare for everyone as it will place even greater pressure on the hospital system in NSW.
“The bill also greatly erodes freedom of conscience protections for individual health workers.”
Howe said forcing health workers to actively refer for abortions makes them morally complicit.
“This will lead to an exodus of Christian and other health workers from a sector that is already experiencing crippling shortages,” she said.
The private member’s bill also removes the requirement for abortions to be reported within 28 days, something Howe says will reduce the ability of the government to collect adequate data.
On her website, MP Cohn says the Greens will “keep fighting until abortion is safe, legal and free in every corner of NSW.”
Her website also encourages people to share theirs or their “loved one’s” abortion experiences via an online form.
The Epoch Times Minns for comment.
Meanwhile, Cohn told The Epoch Times the bill would not impact religious hospitals.
“The bill does not force all hospitals nor all health professionals to provide abortion,” she said.
“There is no intent nor any mechanism for Catholic hospitals to be forced to close.
“Individual doctors, nurses and midwives would still be able to exercise a conscientious objection to providing abortion.”
Cohn said practitioners with a conscientious objection would be required to refer patients to access abortion, which said “already occurs in Victorian legislation.”
