The Senate inquiry into universal access to reproductive healthcare is due to hand down its report today.
Available to comment:
Professor Danielle Mazza, Head of General Practice at Monash University, Chief Investigator and Director of SPHERE Centre of Research Excellence in Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health in Primary Care and Australian National Women’s Health Advisory Council special adviser.
Contact: +61 423 208 747 or danielle.mazza@monash.edu
Read more of Professor Mazza’s commentary at Monash Lens
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The need to improve access to medical and surgical abortion and long acting reversible contraception.
The following can be attributed to Professor Mazza:
“The Senate Inquiry has highlighted the very profound and disturbing inequities and sometimes complete lack of access to sexual and reproductive health issues that exists in Australia. Abortion is an essential health care service and publicly funded hospitals need to provide these services.
"Workforce capacity building and regional accountability are key aspects to ensuring access to contraception and abortion services.
"Contraception and abortion services should be available at no cost and free of the regulatory barriers that hinder evidence-based practice as occurs in other countries such as England, Canada and Ireland."
Senior Lecturer, Dr Ronli Sifris, Deputy Director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law in the Faculty of Law at Monash University.
Contact: +61 3 9903 4840 or media@monash.edu
Read more of Dr Ronli Sifris at Monash Lens
The following can be attributed to Dr Sifris:
“While the availability of medical abortion should in theory help to overcome many of the existing access issues, the burdens placed on health professionals wishing to prescribe it has a deterrent effect.
“Removing some of the burdens that health professionals face and making medical abortion easier to access would hopefully resolve some of the existing access issues by, for example, lowering the cost of a medical abortion and making it easier to obtain outside of urban areas.
"While Australia's laws are progressive, abortion remains stigmatised, practitioner attitudes and lack of training may be an impediment to access, and cost is a huge issue in most of the country.
“The Medicare rebate should be extended to cover IVF conducted for the purposes of surrogacy; the fact that it does not currently do so is discriminatory and unfair to people who are already facing significant challenges in their journey to have a child.”
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