Decriminalised Abortion: Not Coming to QLD Anytime Soon

It's a little-discussed fact that abortion is still illegal in two Australian states: New South Wales and Queensland. Both states allow for women to have an abortion when a pregnancy poses a mental or physical risk, but you'd like to think Australia is a country where pregnancy can be terminated without pre-attached stigma.

Now women in Queensland will have to wait a little longer for that privilege, with Independent MP Rob Pyne forced to withdraw two reform bills from parliament after the state's Opposition vowed to vote them down. The two reform bills—which were set to be debated in parliament Wednesday—sought to decriminalise pregnancy termination. As the Labor Government has allowed its MPs a conscience vote on the issue, meaning not all of its MPs will vote together, it would have been virtually impossible for the bill to pass without support from the LNP.

The first of the two bills proposed to remove abortion from the Queensland Criminal Code, while the second regulated how doctors performed the legal abortion procedures. Controversially, the latter bill allowed abortions to be performed on late-term pregnancies longer than 24 weeks, with the permission of two doctors. It also stated that women cannot be prosecuted for performing abortions upon themselves, without medical assistance.

LNP leader Tim Nicholls said his party felt that this went too far, releasing a statement on Tuesday saying that "this issue is very emotional for all of us and we discussed it at length," but "after this discussion every single member of the LNP party room indicated that, in good conscience, they cannot support these bills on Wednesday."

Pyne told the ABC that voters would likely take note of the Opposition's inaction on the abortion issue.

"While some of the extremist groups are very vocal, about one in four Queensland women have had this procedure at some point," he said.

"They're not going to forget when they go to vote at the ballot box if people and members of Parliament want to classify them as criminals."

The Queensland government has since promised to submit its own laws to decriminalise abortion to the state's Law Reform Commission, which means the issue will hopefully be debated again later this year with more success.

Until then, abortion will remain in Queensland's Criminal Code—where it has been enshrined since 1899. Meanwhile, in New South Wales, the state Minister For Women is publicly pro-life. So don't expect things to change there anytime soon, either.

Follow Kat on Twitter