By national regional affairs reporter Lucy Barbour and Lucy Sweeney
May 31, 2025
Every week, Australians seeking a legal form of health care are forced to traverse their home states and territories — sometimes crossing borders — to access an abortion.
Depending on where someone lives, and how far into the pregnancy they are, the path to this time-critical procedure can be obstructed by hurdles that amplify fear, trauma and financial disadvantage.
By Meg Whitfield
Feb 9, 2025
When Abi thinks back to her abortion, she remembers feeling deeply isolated.
"I kind of went through it in secret, and alone," she said. "And when difficult things came up, I had no-one to debrief [with]."
Accessing timely and affordable counselling services was difficult, and did not feel right for her circumstances.
Number of Tasmanians travelling interstate for abortions rises fivefold
Marie Stopes chief executive says the state needs abortion care funding reform
Calla Wahlquist
Fri 27 Apr 2018
The number of Tasmanians travelling interstate for abortions has increased fivefold since the state’s only dedicated abortion clinic shut in January, Marie Stopes Australia has said.
The chief executive of Marie Stopes, Michelle Thompson, said the number of women from Tasmania who were visiting the Melbourne clinic had increased from about two a month to 10 or 12 a month since the closure of the Hobart clinic, which offered surgical terminations of pregnancies up to 12 weeks.
Here's Everything You Need To Know About The Abortion Provision Snafu In Tasmania
The state's shadow health minister is worried there could be backyard abortions.
Posted on February 8, 2018
Gina Rushton
BuzzFeed News Reporter, Australia
The closure of a single reproductive health clinic in Tasmania has sparked a national conversation about the barriers to accessing surgical abortion in Australia.
The procedure was decriminalised in Tasmania in 2013 but now its accessibility, particularly for poorer women, is being debated by state and federal politicians on both sides of the political spectrum, drawing in the federal health minister, as well as the prime minister.
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