Hobart abortion services to expand
By Kamala Emanuel
HOBART — Over the past month, the local Mercury newspaper has run a series of reports and letters regarding a proposal to establish a new abortion clinic at Bellerive on the city's eastern shore.
Predicting "Public rage on abortion clinic", it has profiled the campaign of local government alderman Martin McManus to build opposition to the family planning clinic.
The clinic will offer a range of outpatient reproductive services including vasectomy, tubal ligation, intrauterine device (IUD) insertion and first- and second-trimester pregnancy termination.
Interviewed for Green Left, Dr Peter Bayliss (whose Brisbane clinic was raided during the Bjelke-Petersen years) said he plans to open the clinic in May, and indicated an interest in teaching medical practitioners how to perform the procedures, to enable the services to be more widely available. Currently, there is a free-standing abortion clinic in Moonah, and abortion and sterilisation are performed at the public and private hospitals. Until now, women have usually had to travel interstate for second-trimester abortion.
Abortion remains on the criminal code in Tasmania, and abortion providers usually rely on liberal common law rulings interstate. (There have been no charges laid in the nearly 75 years since the law was enacted.) Bayliss indicated contempt for efforts to prevent the opening of the new clinic, emphasising the need to be open and up-front about what services will be provided.
A similar view was echoed at the "Abortion: a woman's right to choose" forum held by Resistance and the Democratic Socialist Party on March 13. Activists emphasised the need for public campaigning to take advantage of majority support for women's right to abortion to repeal anti-abortion laws.