As NSW Debates Legalising Abortion, Sydney’s Oldest Not-For-Profit Abortion Clinic Has Shut Down

We’ve made some cautious but necessary strides, in recent weeks, in advancing the right of women to legally access reproductive health services. In a deal made last week with Sex Party MP Fiona Patten, the Victorian Labor government pledged to introduce a bill which would ban anti-abortion protesters from campaigning within 150 metres of a clinic. And on September 1, ‘Cool Pope’ Francis made a qualified statement that it’s maybe, sometimes, forgivable to terminate a pregnancy.

But on the same day we lost a divine church of bodily autonomy — Sydney’s Preterm Foundation abortion clinic was sold at auction. On the corner of Randle and Elizabeth Streets in Surry Hills, the clinic opened in June 1974 to become the first free-standing clinic of its kind in Australia. It remained the only independent, not-for-profit, fully accredited and licensed abortion clinic in NSW, until it closed its doors on August 14 this year and was sold soon after. A registered charity, as opposed to a business, it set the benchmark for the clinics that followed.

In a country where abortion still remains illegal on the books in many places — and with a campaign to finally decriminalise abortion in NSW underway — Preterm’s influence on reproductive rights over four decades is still visible today, and the push for safe, legal and easily accessible health procedures for women that inspired its founding are more critical than ever.

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Making Abortion Accessible: Preterm’s Early Days

In NSW, Judge Levine’s 1971 court ruling that terminations could be justified on economic, social or medical grounds was the Trojan horse which allowed safe abortions to creep into the mainstream. But with limited hospital beds dedicated to terminations, they remained inaccessible to many women, and thousands in need were turned away. Some instead sought abortions from private, and often unqualified, practitioners who were still fearful of prosecution. To account for the risk and high demand, practitioners in 1972 were allegedly charging between $150 and $1000 per procedure. Accounting for inflation, those figures would now be around the $1500 and $7700 mark. We’re talking about a lot of money.

With the establishment of Preterm, many of the barriers which kept the lesser-privileged from safe abortions fell away. With an initial price of $50 per procedure (around $385 with inflation), the clinic provided more than 4000 terminations in its first year. Patients with limited or no financial means sometimes had the fee at Preterm reduced or waived completely, while others were able to pay on an instalment basis. And the introduction of Medibank in July 1974 refunded all but $8 of the cost to patients, too.

A 1976 study followed the experience of the first 1007 patients to use Preterm. Plenty had travelled from rural and regional NSW, interstate, and even from New Zealand to access the clinic. But of the patients from Sydney, more than half had come from suburbs with the lowest socio-economic demographics. Less than five percent had come from prestigious suburbs. Few had tertiary education and were most likely to be in a process or service occupation, while 36 percent were new migrants.

It’s unclear exactly how much Preterm has charged in recent years, as they won’t speak with media to verify the varying prices anecdotal reports suggest.  Across NSW, however, the figure is up to $800 per procedure, with the average cost being $380 — double for those without a Medicare card. Preterm may be gone, but the prohibitive costs of accessing safe pregnancy terminations that led to its establishment in the first place are still very much present.

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Leaving A Gap: Keeping Abortion Affordable

Preterm weathered staunch opposition from anti-abortionists across the decades. It survived paint-bombings and bricks thrown through its windows, and it was burned to the ground in a case of alleged arson in 1975. More recently, Preterm was the target clinic of choice for anti-abortion prayer group 40 Days for Life, who’ve announced the closure as “great news and a great victory”.

But it would be a lack of money that would spell the clinic’s eventual demise. Offering their assistance to keep the clinic afloat, more than 100 people wrote to the Preterm Foundation Board and several hundred formed the Save Preterm Facebook group to show support in the weeks following its closure. Eventually, a representative of the Board agreed to meet with them, and explained the clinic’s financial situation was dire.

“The Foundation Board was of the view that there was nothing that could save the clinic. The financial situation was untenable,” Save Preterm wrote on September 3. “The Board had no alternative but to sell.”

The Board told Save Preterm that they remained committed to continuing their legacy of safe and affordable terminations. But when I phoned the clinic a week after it went to auction, I was told it was the end of the Foundation altogether.

A voicemail message now refers customers to the nearby Private Clinic on Devonshire Street, which is experiencing a slight increase in demand following Preterm’s closure. However, patients terminating a pregnancy between five and 12 weeks at the Private Clinic are left out of pocket $250 after the Medicare rebate. Sydney4Choice’s Claire Pullen said the group is working to ensure the closure of Preterm wouldn’t lead to a substantial price rise for services at nearby clinics.

“We hope they [other clinics] won’t try and capitalise on Preterm’s closure; we don’t expect it, but we’ll be keeping an eye out,” Pullen said.

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Or We Could Just Legalise It Already

Greens NSW spokesperson for the status of women Mehreen Faruqi, is campaigning to remove abortion from the Crimes Act — as Victoria, ACT and Tasmania have done.

“There are doctors who do not offer abortion services due to the uncertainty about the law and the fear of prosecution. Removing abortion from the Crimes Act will make the law clear-cut and we would hopefully see an increase in providers that would drive prices down,” Faruqi said.

“Hopefully with law reform, we would see more abortion clinics open in rural NSW, where women face not only the cost of the abortion itself, but significant travel expenses.”

Faruqi introduced the first ever bill to legalise abortion in NSW last year, and has been travelling across the state to speak with communities to build a campaign that might actually see the reform through. In 2003, 81 percent of people surveyed across Australia said they supported the right to choose.

Unfortunately, though, state Parliament has thus far shown few signs that they are listening. Neither NSW Minister for Women, Pru Goward, nor Labor’s Shadow Minister for Women, Jodie Harrison, have a single mention of abortion policy on their respective websites. Scarier still, reproductive rights were almost substantially rolled back in 2012 and 2013 when two bills known as Zoe’s Law put foetal personhood on the table. And alas, Fred Nile is still among the ranks of elected politicians.

Though the political, legal and economic barriers for women seeking abortions are still unacceptably high, many do manage to safely terminate pregnancies. That is owed, in part, to Preterm’s legacy.

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Family Planning NSW state they are dedicated to providing reproductive health services to all marginalised persons. You can phone them on 1300 658 886.

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Feature image via midwestnerd on a Flickr Creative Commons licence.