by Kathy Clubb
Pro-abortion Victorian parliamentarian Georgie Purcell, of the Animal Justice Party, has used her pregnancy announcement, paradoxically, to promote the “perceived right” to abortion, as Endeavour Forum recently reported. Incoherence appears to be a way of life for Purcell, who defends the rights of ducks and greyhounds while advocating for the slaughter of innocent children in the womb — including two of her own babies. Now Ms Purcell has teamed up with Rachel Payne of the Legalise Cannabis Party to push for expanded abortion access in the already extremely permissive state of Victoria.
Payne and Purcell have released a report which they hope will garner support for their vendetta against Victoria’s babies. They claim that, despite abortion having been legal to full term in Victoria since 2008, women face multiple obstacles to accessing abortion due to a variety of factors. The Abortion Access Report identifies four areas which the two women believe need to be addressed so that Victorian women can gain greater and more straightforward access to abortions, and makes recommendations related to those areas of focus. An examination of the Report reveals the same disdain for pregnancy, for conscience rights and for women’s safety that is evident in modern “reproductive rights” debate.
Affordability
Following in the footsteps of the ACT, where abortions have been free since 2022, Payne and Purcell are demanding that Victoria taxpayers likewise fund abortions. Included in this demand is the specific call for those mothers not covered by Medicare to be offered chemical or surgical abortions for free — a clear reference to migrants and international students.
Yet these two minority groups — migrants and international students — are already accessing abortion due to the high cost of giving birth outside the Medicare system. Anecdotal evidence of this comes from members of the pro-life community who attended prayer vigils outside abortion facilities before the advent of exclusion-zones. They confirm that many non-citizens would gladly proceed with their pregnancies were the hospital fees associated with having a baby not so high.
So, despite the cost, abortion is far less expensive for non-Australians than having a baby; it is this problem which needs to be solved rather than attempting to reduce the cost of abortions.
Payne and Purcell also want the state government to examine its Patient Transport Assistance Scheme to ensure its policies, such as eligibility criteria and paperwork, are not raising barriers to abortion access.
Accessibility
According to the Abortion Access Report, 70 per cent of Victoria’s local government areas have no dedicated abortion provider, and 20 per cent have no chemical abortion provider, obviously a disastrous state of affairs for any advocate of child sacrifice.
In order to address this perceived need, Payne and Purcell want the Victorian government to expand its sexual and reproductive “health” hubs into even more areas, with what can only be called a eugenic agenda — the babies of migrants and the “economically disadvantaged” are being specifically targeted for more abortions.
Payne and Purcell are also demanding that any hospital which provides maternity care be also forced to perform abortions. These women’s continual certitude of the supposed equivalence of birth and death by abortion is quite staggering!
Another egregious defect of the Report is the lack of concern shown by its authors for women’s safety. Citing the latest guidelines for abortion provision, Payne and Purcell state that doctors who require pathology and ultrasounds prior to a mother’s abortion are causing unnecessary delays. Indeed, ultrasound-free chemical abortions, such as those procured via Telehealth appointments are being promoted as the “modern” and “straightforward” way of accessing abortion.
Yet although these diagnostics are not legally required, it makes good medical sense to perform them prior to an abortion. For example, if a pregnancy is ectopic (that is, the embryo is implanted outside the mother’s womb), then it is extremely dangerous for a woman to take the abortion pill. Since the location of an embryo can only be detected by ultrasound, it is very irresponsible of a doctor not to order one before prescribing a chemical abortion. An ectopic pregnancy is a life-threatening condition which should not be downplayed by those seeking to simplify abortion access.
Conscientious objectors
As the Report reminds us, pro-life doctors have a legal obligation under Section 8 of the Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 to advise patients of their pro-life stance and to refer women to another doctor who has no objection to abortions. Of course, this is a gross violation of conscience rights as, despite that action being indirect, by referring a mother to a colleague, and knowing this will lead to a child’s death, a pro-life doctor becomes an accessory to that death.
Payne and Purcell claim that such referrals by pro-life doctors are often not being provided and want this to stop. The two women are requesting from the state government more resources in the form of officials designated to monitor pro-life doctors — in effect, to spy on them and turn them into the authorities.
This is an unrealistic and dangerous suggestion for a number of reasons. Economically, Victoria is strapped for cash and it would be most irresponsible to spend public money on policing confidential conversations between doctors and their patients, when, as the Report’s authors agree, many basic health services are not being provided in the state.
Secondly, it would be demoralising to medical professionals to have their privacy violated in this way. Only pro-life doctors would be affected; their actions should be contrasted with those of doctors who do refer for and perform abortions which leave their patients traumatised yet for whom there is no oversight.
Thirdly and most importantly for the privacy of all residents, the creation of a watchdog of this kind would set a dangerous precedent, one which would only cement Victoria’s reputation as a police state.
Included in this section is another call for publicly-funded hospitals to be forced to provide abortions; an end to the practice of — in the authors’ words — “corporate conscientious objection”. Failure of pro-life medical staff and hospitals to provide abortions is at the very heart of Payne and Purcell’s new campaign.
Workplace training
The final section of the Abortion Access Report is dedicated to increasing the number of abortion providers through more funding for training. A widely-circulated untruth is repeated: that it is stigma surrounding abortion which makes doctors reluctant to provide them. Nothing could be further from the truth as abortion is so ubiquitous that it is the doctors who are pro-life, and not pro-abortion, who are being marginalised!
Yet the lie must continue, for it covers the reality that many doctors simply do not want to perform abortions because they find it distasteful. The Report quotes another from 2024, providing the following statistics:
As of mid-2023, just 17 per cent of GPs in Victoria were providing medical abortions and only 19 per cent of pharmacists were dispensing the medication. Access to surgical abortion is even more limited, particularly in regional and rural areas. Across Victoria there are just 35 providers, and only 15 offering procedures beyond 12 weeks’ gestation.
To anyone who is shocked by the industrial scale of abortion, having 35 providers in Victoria alone, with 15 willing to perform late-term abortions, appears a disastrous state of affairs. Yet Purcell and Payne believe women need far, far more abortionists — one on every corner? — to ensure that every last unwanted child is eliminated in a timely manner.
The Abortion Access Report underscores a harmful undercurrent continually at play throughout Australia: that the abortion lobby is prepared to jeopardise women’s health and safety, and to push more and more vulnerable women into choosing death for their children over life. Its emphasis on squashing the rights of medical practitioners to exercise freedom of conscience highlights an authoritarian agenda that needs to be resisted at every opportunity.
About the author
Kathy Clubb is an Australian mother and grandmother and has home-educated her children for the best part of 30 years. She has undertaken official pro-life work for 10 years, first in Tasmania, and then in Victoria. In 2016, Kathy was part of an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Victoria’s abortion exclusion-zones, which led to a constitutional challenge in the High Court of Australia in late 2018. Her articles have also appeared at Family Life International, LifeSiteNews, Online Opinion, Caldron Pool and Fidelity magazine.