Responding to comments by Anthony Albanese today around abortion, Greens spokesperson on Women Senator Larissa Waters said:
 
“I urge the Prime Minister to rethink his hasty dismissal of Labor’s 2019 position of requiring public hospitals to provide abortion services as a prequisute for Commonwealth funding.

“Abortions should be available through the public health system, and Albanese has the power to deliver that through using the federal funding lever. He shouldn’t avoid responsibility for it as he sought to do today.

The Greens have renewed their call for publicly funded abortions after private service Marie Stopes announced yesterday it was shutting down four regional clinics in Queensland and New South Wales.

Lines attributable to Greens deputy leader and spokesperson on women Senator Larissa Waters:

“The news that Marie Stopes is shutting down four regional clinics in Queensland and New South Wales is a massive blow for women’s reproductive health. 

It is absolutely shameful that in my home state of New South Wales and in the state of Queensland abortion still sits in the Crimes Act. As a woman, as a mother of a young woman, and as someone who has campaigned for years to decriminalise abortion in New South Wales, I cannot and I will not accept this situation. Mr President, the existence of these laws actually exposes the misogyny and the influence of the religious far Right on our politics. Neither my religion nor yours should be allowed to deny women their rights and choices. You cannot impose your beliefs on others.