Why WA’s safe access zone laws are a step forward for abortion rights
OPINION | REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
For decades, women seeking abortion care in Australia have been targeted by anti-abortionists as they tried to walk to their doctor’s front door.
They have been screamed at, followed, jostled and had misleading and graphic images thrown in their faces. Not anymore.
By Adrianne Walters
Associate Legal Director
Human Rights Law Centre
and Dr Susie Allanson
Clinical psychologist, formerly at the Melbourne Fertility Control Clinic
On Thursday there was a crucial win for reproductive rights. The West Australian Parliament voted to join all other Australian States and Territories in enacting safe access zone laws and ensuring people accessing abortion care can do so safely and with dignity and privacy.
Around Australia safe access zone laws now ban harassment and intimidation of patients and staff outside of abortion-providing clinics.Safe access zones are about protecting the right to access health care and respecting the right of every person to make private decisions about their bodies.No one should fear being accosted and shamed by strangers or filmed without consent when seeking health care.
But for far too long, people accessing abortion services were routinely targeted by people with extreme anti-abortion views.
The anti-choice tactics were distressing and harmful to patients and staff, and were devastatingly taken down an appalling path by an anti-abortion fanatic who, in 2001, walked into the Fertility Control Clinic in East Melbourne and shot and killed security guard Steve Rogers. The murderer’s plan to perpetrate a massacre was stopped by Steve and other courageous people.
The passing of Western Australia’s safe access laws comes as Empowering Women: from Murder & Misogyny to High Court Victory marks the 20th anniversary of this tragedy.
It pays tribute to the army of people who responded by successfully campaigning for a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and respect.
The campaign relied on a collective of determined advocates and a legal challenge that showed how Victoria’s existing laws were failing.
By 2015 safe access zone legislation was being championed by Victorian MP Fiona Patten and the Labor government, and was passed into law with overwhelming cross-party support.
The new laws provided immediate relief to patients and staff — the streets outside the clinics were quiet and patients could finally safely use the front door.
Safe access zones work. The Northern Territory, New South Wales and Queensland soon followed suit. A challenge by anti-abortionists to Victoria and Tasmania’s laws led to a landmark 2019 decision by the High Court of Australia.
It upheld safe access zones and acknowledged the importance of rights to privacy, safety and equality in access to health care. The High Court’s decision was momentous and created an imperative for States which were trailing behind, like South Australia and Western Australia, to put in place safe access zones and decriminalise abortion.
Western Australia has yet to deliver on the latter. Safe access zones in WA are an important step and will have a very real impact on the safety and wellbeing of patients and staff accessing abortion services.
But it is only one step.
Now the McGowan Government must move to decriminalise and modernise abortion laws.
Western Australia’s outdated abortion laws continue to cause harm to this day. Some women are being forced to fly interstate in extremely distressing circumstances to get health care that they should be able to access in their home State.
The financial and emotional costs are significant — missing work, finding childcare, being separated from loved ones, all while needing to pack and get on a plane to an unfamiliar place for a medical procedure.
Access to a safe, legal abortion is a critical healthcare right, not a criminal offence.
It’s time for the McGowan Government to take the next step and ensure this right is accessible to all West Australians.