Hospital abortion body 'adds to trauma', the headline on the front page of the Canberra Times, this day in 1977.
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A Canberra doctor told the ACT Legislative Committee inquiry into abortion that she had stopped referring women to the abortion-terminating committee at Canberra Hospital because it only added to the trauma.
Dr Valerie Hill said the tendency in Canberra was to bypass the committee and refer Canberra women to abortion clinics in Sydney and Melbourne.
She told the Assembly's standing committee on the education and health that she had heard that treatment in public hospitals gave far from the 'desirable dignity'. Her patients had not taken the option to go to the termination committee for about two years.
Canberra should have free-standing clinics and the medical standards should be equal to those of the best free-standing clinics. If a woman had been adequately counselled and had decided to have an abortion, she should be offered an abortion by the medical profession as a way of solving her problem.
"This is as much her right as that the medical profession should find all avenues of support for her if she decided to go on with the pregnancy" said Dr Hill.
