Rural New South Wales women's access to abortion services: Highlights from an exploratory qualitative study

Abstract

Rural women's access to abortion services are impacted by the availability, accessibility and affordability of services and prevailing negative social attitudes. This exploratory study provides a snapshot of women's experiences of the process of seeking an abortion in rural NSW, where they are not available locally and women have to travel out of the area to access services. Findings indicate rural women experience multiple barriers in relation to their ability to access abortion services and follow-up care, which may impact on overall health outcomes.

Abortion law across Australia – A review of nine jurisdictions

“…This means that abortion is regarded differently from other medical procedures and is not part of mainstream gynaecological care. Therefore, in most jurisdictions, the majority of abortions are performed in the private sector with resulting concerns around access and affordability . Variations in the law limit the access of many women to safe legal abortion services.…”

“…As Victoria, unlike SA has no residency requirement for accessing abortion, it has become common for women seeking late abortions from WA, Queensland and Tasmania to travel to Victoria. This results in removal of the women involved from support systems and fragmentation of counselling and follow‐up systems . The cost of obtaining an abortion is also prohibitive for many women, due to the fact that many public hospitals do not offer abortions except in case of serious fetal abnormality and refer women instead to private abortion providers.…”

Towards comprehensive early abortion service delivery in high income countries: insights for improving universal access to abortion in Australia

“…Twenty-nine papers were included in this review (see Table 3 ). Fourteen papers were from the United Kingdom (UK) [ 41 – 54 ], seven from the United States (US) [ 55 – 61 ], two from Russia [ 62 , 63 ], two from Australia [ 22 , 23 ], three from New Zealand (NZ) [ 64 – 66 ] and one Canadian paper [ 67 ]. Of these papers all were quantitative except for three qualitative studies [ 22 , 57 , 61 ].…”

“…Facilities in least restrictive states were significantly more likely to provide unprompted direct referrals ( p = 0.006) and significantly less likely to provide no referral ( p < 0.001) than facilities in most restrictive states, though these differences disappeared after prompting the staff member to provide a referral. (Doran & Hornibrook 2014) [ 22 ] Surgical abortion: New South Wales, Australia Qualitative descriptive 13 rural women who had an early surgical abortion 5 months to 15 years’ prior To identify factors that women experience in relation to their ability to access an abortion service and follow-up care The main barrier rural women experienced was travelling relatively long distances to access an abortion clinic because of lack of services in their local area. Women with limited financial resources needed to borrow money for the procedure and associated costs of travel and accommodation.…”

“…However, the lack of data and the complex legal and service delivery situation impacts upon access for women seeking an early termination of pregnancy. Recent literature cites issues related to geographical and financial access [ 22 , 23 ] and considerable gaps in women’s knowledge [ 24 ]. Services are provided across a myriad of public and private contexts where there is no accepted and standardized approach for service delivery that facilitates universal access to comprehensive abortion care.…”