The territory’s government announced a $4.6m program to fund select GPs to provide no-cost abortions, a week after WA decriminalised the practice.
Abortion accessibility is slowly but surely expanding, as the Australia Capital Territory offers no-cost abortion through some general practices and Western Australia’s decriminalisation legislation comes into effect.
Yesterday the ACT government, in partnership with Women’s Health Matters, announced the start of a $4.6 million program to fund abortion access in the territory at selected general practices.
Currently, Watson General Practice and Tuggeranong’s Canberra Family Planning are the two practices offering the no-cost services.
Both practices now offer medical abortions until nine weeks and insertion of long-acting reversible contraception, such as hormonal and copper IUDs and the implant.
MSI Australia, which has offered free medical and surgical abortions up to nine and 16 weeks respectively since last April, will continue to offer these services as well as counselling.
The free services are available to those with and without a Medicare card.
Speaking to The Medical Republic, GP and president of the AMA ACT Dr Kerrie Aust said the program would increase safe access to abortion across the territory and was a “step in the right direction for women’s health and choice about family planning”.
“It’s beneficial for patients to be able to access and discuss all aspects of fertility, including contraception, pregnancy and abortion care, through the GP that they have an ongoing, long-term relationship with,” she said.
According to Dr Aust, GPs are perfectly placed to provide quality sexual health care, and already do.
“It is our bread and butter in the sense that most of our patients, at some stage, will need a discussion about an element of sexual health or fertility.
“And there are lots of opportunities for learning for those who need to upskill and for those of us who are very comfortable in this area already to continue to offer the good care that we already do.”
According to the announcement, the program may expand beyond the initial two practices in future, with information on any participating providers easily accessible on the Women’s Health Matters website.
This will make it easier to find pro-choice providers, said Women’s Health Matters CEO Lauren Anthes.
“We have heard that it can be difficult to know where to go when you need a medical abortion in Canberra,” she said.
“Having a publicly available list of no cost, non-judgmental and pro-choice providers will make it easier for women and gender-diverse people to find the care that they need.”
It will also be helpful for GPs looking to refer on their patients for abortion services, said Dr Aust.
“The models offer GPs who wish to be involved in termination services the opportunity to participate, but there is always space for conscientious objections and to instead provide patients with information about where they can access the services elsewhere.”
Evaluation of whether Canberra’s model meets patients’ needs will be important to understand if the service should be expanded within and beyond the ACT, added Dr Aust.
“It’s good to trial a range of different models of care and then make sure that you assess them to see whether or not they’re actually effective,” she said.
“There’s a lot of pros to the ACT model in the sense that it offers, hopefully as they roll out to more organisations, greater access, choice and, ideally, the opportunity to access regular care with your regular GP – the person who knows you and can provide that non-judgmental counselling.”
Related
The ACT announcement coincides with major amendments to WA’s abortion legislation, that came into effect last Wednesday.
Under the new laws, which decriminalised abortion, only one health practitioner will need to be involved in abortion care provision up to 23 weeks, bringing the state more in line with other jurisdictions across the country.
The new legislation also removes the requirement for mandatory counselling for patients seeking an abortion.
President of the AMA WA Dr Michael Page told TMR that the right to conscientious object to providing services was also enshrined in the legislation, however health professionals would be required to provide patients with an information leaflet approved by the Chief Health Officer.
According to Dr Page, the legislation is “quite relaxed” in its language around who can provide medical abortions as it specifies health practitioners rather than medical practitioners, a point of contention for the AMA WA.
“The rationale put to us was that in regional areas, for instance, it might be difficult to access a medical practitioner, so midwives and nurses might need to prescribe abortion medication.
“What we’d like to see is equity of quality access across the entire state.
“The devil will be in the detail of how it’s operationalised.”
Further investment to increase accessibility “ought to” follow the changes, but WA’s geography may make this a tricky fix, added Dr Page.
“We are very Perth-centric, so access in Perth is unlikely to be a major issue,” he said.
“But access in the regions is probably a bigger issue.”
