Legal patchwork forcing abortion 'tourism'

Patchy abortion laws across Australian states and territories are forcing women to travel to Victoria or even overseas for terminations, doctors have warned.

Abortion laws have failed to keep up with developments in the detection of fetal abnormalities, they say.

While testing is Medicare-funded and routinely offered to all pregnant Australian women, a woman choosing to terminate a pregnancy when a serious abnormality has been detected faces myriad legal hurdles.

Writing in the Medical Journal of Australia on Monday, James Cook University's Caroline de Costa and Queensland University's Heather Douglas are calling for urgent reform, highlighting the patchwork of legislation across different states and territories.

There needs to be uniform legislation across the country, they say, "so that the law is in step with modern medical practice, and so that women regardless of where they live have equal access to abortion services".

Abortion is legal in the ACT, Victoria and Tasmania.

Although fetal abnormality is specifically discussed in legislation in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory, in practice, late abortion is restricted in those jurisdictions, the professors say.

And the law makes no reference at all to fetal abnormality in Queensland and NSW.

"The result of these differences is continuing and extensive abortion tourism from all Australian states to Victoria and overseas in the face of barriers to access to abortion," the professors said.

On top of that, women are blocked from abortion services by verbal and sometimes physical harassment outside clinics and very limited access to abortion drugs for rural women, especially in SA and the NT.

Other barriers include doctors who have a conscientious objection to performing the procedure with no obligation to refer the patient elsewhere, and a lack of data, the professors say.