Womens rights to abortions?

Abortion is in the Crimes Act in both NSW and Queensland. The statutes are roughly similar, making it a crime for a woman to seek an abortion and for anyone else to help her procure one.
Last year an Australian woman undertook a medical procedure.

This week she and her boyfriend will face court because of it, charged with a crime. If found guilty, the 19-year-old and her 21-year-old boyfriend could get 10 years' jail.
The names of the couple don't matter. They could be any one of us. The prosecution is taking place in Australia for the crime of abortion.

That in 2009 an Australian citizen can be found guilty of undertaking a medical procedure and face jail is a scandal. A scandal that neither politicians in Queensland (where this week's prosecution will take place) or in NSW (where a doctor was convicted of the crime of unlawful abortion in 2006) intend to do anything about. Not unless they are forced to take action by a resolute medical profession and ordinary folk like you and me.

This is not the case elsewhere. In 2002 the ACT removed abortion from the Crimes Act and last year Victoria did the same. Politicians in NSW and Queensland have been ignoring advice that they clarify, modernise and liberalise abortion law for years. This includes recommendations made in a report by the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General and in a Queensland report on women and the criminal code.

Political leaders insisted - in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary - that the law didn't need reform. But when providers at Perth's main hospital downed tools, refusing to provide terminations in all but emergency situations, and two women wound up in casualty from botched attempts to self-abort less than 48 hours later, the government was forced to act.

There were supporters including courageous Labor, Liberal and minor party politicians, the AMA, family planning and legal advocacy organisations, progressive Christian groups, a well-organised and dedicated group of grassroots activists and the people of Western Australia, 82 per cent of whom told pollsters they thought abortion should be legal.
Such coalitions are only starting to form in NSW and Queensland. Only time will tell if they will be successful.

If not, the other chance for law reform will be if the NSW Government looks to history and makes a magnanimous gesture. If the Premier referred the issue to the NSW Law Reform Commission, then acted on its recommendations before the next election, women choosing abortion in NSW might finally lose the "criminal" tag.