WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Proposed laws will force the closure of all Christian and Catholic hospitals unless they perform abortions.
OUR VERDICT
False. The bill does not apply to private Christian hospitals and contains no mechanism to enforce compliance.
AAP FACTCHECK - All Christian and Catholic hospitals will not be forced to close if they refuse to perform abortions under proposed NSW laws, despite claims online.
Experts say the Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Health Care Access) Bill 2025 does not apply to private hospitals, including the majority of Christian and Catholic hospitals.
Additionally, the bill does not contain any mechanism to enforce compliance by the few Christian and Catholic hospitals classified as public health organisations, or remove the right of medical practitioners to conscientiously object to performing abortions.
NSW Greens MP Amanda Cohn introduced a bill to parliament that she said would increase access to abortion health care on February 19, 2025.
However, an Instagram post by anti-abortion activist Dr Joanna Howe inaccurately claims the bill will shut down all Christian and Catholic hospitals unless they perform terminations.
"The Greens have just introduced into NSW parliament an extreme bill that will force the closure of all Christian and Catholic hospitals unless they perform abortions," the caption said.
In the accompanying video, Dr Howe claimed the private member's bill persecuted Christians.
When asked for evidence of her claim, Dr Howe referred to Schedule 1 [2] (a) of the bill.
It says the minister must ensure that abortion services are provided within a reasonable distance of residents' homes, and for that purpose, they may give directions to the NSW health secretary or a public health organisation.
"The Secretary or a public health organisation must comply with a direction under the proposed section," the bill said.
Dr Howe said this section gives the minister the power to direct Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.
"This procedure is antithetical to a Catholic worldview, which is opposed to the intentional killing of innocent human beings," she told AAP FactCheck.
"Catholic hospitals would be forced to close rather than participate in this barbarity.
"It is irrelevant whether the Minister for Health will use this power today or tomorrow. The fact that this bill widens ministerial power to enable this is the problem and ushers in a distinct break with Australia's pluralist tradition and a new era of religious persecution."
However, Dr Cohn told AAP FactCheck her bill did not apply to any private hospitals, only those defined as a public health organisation under Section 7 of the Health Services Act 1997.
Several legal and public health experts told AAP FactCheck the social media claim about the bill was incorrect.
Christopher Rudge, a lecturer at Sydney Law School, said the bill specifically applied to public health organisations defined as local health districts, statutory health corporations or affiliated health organisations under the Health Services Act.
He said as most Christian and Catholic hospitals in NSW are private, the bill would not apply to them.
The Catholic or Christian hospitals classified as "affiliated health organisations" are listed in the Health Services Act (Schedule 3).
Dr Rudge said Christian and Catholic hospitals in the public system were located in metropolitan areas close to public hospitals that could provide abortions, making such a ministerial direction to the former unnecessary.
"There would never be any reason for the Minister to direct these extremely few Christian hospitals in the public system to do anything," he told AAP FactCheck.
Casey Haining, a researcher at Queensland University of Technology's Australian Centre for Health Law Research, said while the bill would give the minister the power to issue directions, it did not give further context to the nature of those directions.
"In the case of religious hospitals that are listed as an affiliated health organisation, if they're located in places where other public hospitals exist and provide abortion services, I'd suggest the likelihood of the minister issuing any form of direction to religious hospitals in these cases is slim," she told AAP FactCheck.
Furthermore, experts said the amendment bill did not contain any mechanism to enforce compliance.
Dr Rudge described it as "non-binding and non-consequential" and "the weakest bill I've ever seen", only giving "the minister power to write a letter".
He said the minister already had the power to issue directions regarding affiliated health organisations' roles, functions and activities (Section 65).
However, the minister must consult with the organisation and consider its healthcare philosophy beforehand.
The minister could also direct an affiliated health organisation to acquire services under the act (Section 126G), but only with its prior consent.
Dr Rudge said the minister had no power to shut down or delist an affiliated health organisation under the act.
The NSW governor has the power to delist an affiliated organisation (Section 62 (4)) but only with its prior consent.
"This suggests that the minister wouldn't be able to do anything like this either," Dr Rudge said.
Laws regulating private hospitals - the Private Health Facilities Act 2007 and the Private Health Facilities Regulation 2024 also do not empower the minister to shut them down, he said.
Angela Dawson, a public health expert at the University of Technology Sydney, said no mechanism in existing legislation, or the bill in question, gave the minister the ability to issue binding directions to private Christian and Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.
"It doesn't pose any threat to them," Professor Dawson told AAP FactCheck.
The proposed laws would alter but not remove the right of registered health practitioners to conscientiously object to performing an abortion under the Abortion Law Reform Act 2019.
An objecting medical practitioner must either give a person information on locating or contacting another medical practitioner who doesn't object to performing a termination, or transfer that person's care to a non-objecting practitioner or health service (Section 9 (3)).
The proposed amendment bill would remove the first option (Schedule 1[9]), meaning conscientious objectors would have to transfer a person's care to another practitioner or provider.
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