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      Australia : Abortion and Human Rights

      research-article
      , LLM, PhD , , PhD
      Health and Human Rights
      Harvard University Press

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          Abstract

          This article adopts a human rights lens to consider Australian law and practice regarding elective abortion. As such, it considers Australian laws within the context of the right to equality, right to privacy, right to health, and right to life. After setting out the human rights framework and noting the connected nature of many of the rights (and their corresponding violations), the article shifts its focus to analyzing Australian law and practice within the framework of these rights. It considers the importance of decriminalizing abortion and regulating it as a standard medical procedure. It discusses the need to remove legal and practical restrictions on access to abortion, including financial obstacles and anti-abortion protestors. Further, it comments on the importance of facilitating access; for example, by keeping accurate health data, securing continuity of health care, increasing the availability of medical abortion, and ensuring appropriate care is provided to the most marginalized and vulnerable women.

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          Most cited references42

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          Barriers and facilitators of access to first-trimester abortion services for women in the developed world: a systematic review.

          To identify the barriers and facilitators to accessing first-trimester abortion services for women in the developed world.
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            “Dishonourable disobedience” – Why refusal to treat in reproductive healthcare is not conscientious objection

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              Medical abortion in Australia: a short history.

              Surgical abortion has been provided liberally in Australia since the early 1970s, mainly in privately owned specialist clinics. The introduction of medical abortion, however, was deliberately obstructed and consequently significantly delayed when compared to similar countries. Mifepristone was approved for commercial import only in 2012 and listed as a government subsidised medicine in 2013. Despite optimism from those who seek to improve women's access to abortion, the increased availability of medical abortion has not yet addressed the disadvantage experienced by poor and non-metropolitan women. After telling the story of medical abortion in Australia, this paper considers the context through which it has become available since 2013. It argues that the integration of medical abortion into primary health care, which would locate abortion provision in new settings and expand women's access, has been constrained by the stigma attached to abortion, overly cautious institutionalised frameworks, and the lack of public health responsibility for abortion services. The paper draws on documentary sources and oral history interviews conducted in 2013 and 2015.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Health Hum Rights
                Health Hum Rights
                hhr
                Health and Human Rights
                Harvard University Press (USA )
                1079-0969
                2150-4113
                June 2017
                : 19
                : 1
                : 209-220
                Affiliations
                [1]Senior lecturer in the Monash University Faculty of Law and deputy director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
                [2]Senior research fellow at the School of Health, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.
                Author notes
                Please address correspondence to Ronli Sifris. Email: ronli.sifris@ 123456monash.edu .

                Competing interests: None declared.

                Article
                hhr-19-01-209
                5473050
                ac685572-f5c5-48b8-97b5-0d1d1ff2bb0b
                Copyright © 2017 Sifris and Belton

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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