Reproductive Rights

(Adopted August 2014; updated May 2023)

Principles

The Queensland Greens believe that:

  1. Reproductive rights are human rights, encompassing rights already recognised in international law, national laws, state law and human rights agreements.
     
  2. Reproductive rights include, but are not limited to, the right to bodily integrity and to determine whether or not to engage in sexual activity, relationships, reproductive choice and the formation of families.
     
  3. Biological reproductive health is interconnected with the other social determinants of health, including economic status, power relations in decision making, social attitudes,  education, and access and barriers to information and services.
     
  4. Individuals should be able to exercise their reproductive rights free from discrimination or coercion on grounds of sex, race, age, ability, class, religion, belief, sexual orientation, gender, location or family type.
     
  5. The capacity of individuals to meaningfully exercise reproductive rights are dependent upon their access to health information and services addressing the full range of reproductive health needs throughout their lifespan.
     
  6. An individual’s rights to informed reproductive choice, free of discrimination, violence and coercion, should be the basis of all law, policy education and service provision regarding reproduction.
     
  7. Reproductive health needs should principally be met by a primary health care model which is accessible, affordable, comprehensive, coordinated, person-focused, and grounded in the principles of trauma-informed care.

Aims

The Queensland Greens will:

Reproductive choice

  1. Improve contraceptive options, and access to these options, by:
     
    1. Advocating for expansion of the list of contraceptive medications and devices subsidised by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).
    2. Advocating for increased Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) rebates for contraceptive procedures performed by GPs, and the establishment of new MBS items for registered midwives and nurse practitioners to insert and remove long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs).
    3. Establishing publicly funded, free outpatient contraceptive clinics in all Queensland regions.
       
  2. Ensure that free, non-discriminatory, high-quality abortion care is available in all regions of Queensland by:
     
    1. Ensuring confidential, objective, non-directive, secular and publicly funded counselling services for making fertility choices are accessible to all Queenslanders, including surgical and pharmaceutical termination of pregnancy, as well as continuation of pregnancy options.
    2. Advocating for MBS item number changes and PBS process changes to make bulk-billed and telehealth abortion care more available.
    3. Investigating and addressing the current barriers to provision of multidisciplinary, high-quality, timely and safe abortion care by all public hospitals which contain a maternity unit. A short- to medium-term solution whilst these public services are created or expanded is to ensure a significant increase in funding to existing private abortion providers.
    4. Promoting increased funding and rebates to completely offset the indirect costs of abortion access, including travel, accommodation and childcare costs for the patient, their dependents, and their support person.
    5. Advocating for the inclusion of training in abortion care in all medical, nursing, and midwifery undergraduate courses.
       
  3. Promote improved sexual and reproductive health literacy through the provision of quality and consistent sexual and reproductive health education in all schools, regardless of religious affiliations.

Integration of human rights and social models of care into service delivery

  1. Strengthen access to reproductive rights for disabled people by:
     
    1. Ensuring inclusive and non-discriminatory reproductive healthcare services which are accessible to all disabled people.
    2. Ensuring access to relevant, secular sex education and family planning information for disabled people, their carers, and prospective parents of disabled people.
    3. Enacting legislation that eliminates the practice of forced or coerced sterilisation, that is, involuntary or coerced procedures which remove a person’s capacity to reproduce as the primary or substantive intent.
    4. Ensuring training of reproductive health care workers on the human rights violations more likely to be experienced by disabled people, such as coercion, sexual violence, and domestic violence.
       
  2. Improve accessibility to reproductive health services for rural and regional Queenslanders by:
     
    1. Expanding rural maternity services, and equitable health funding that provides reproductive health services to all Queenslanders.
    2. Researching means to distribute a greater share of reproductive health funding to community-based and primary care health practices in regional areas, decreasing hospital service dependence.
    3. Establishing a state-wide, comprehensive hub-and-spoke model of training and peer support for rural reproductive healthcare workers.
       
  3. Address the unacceptably high rates of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality of Indigenous Queenslanders through consultation and cooperation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander administered health organisations. This would include providing a targeted and permanent funding mechanism to increase access to culturally appropriate continuity of care for Indigenous parents, babies and family support structures.
     
  4. Advocate for the inclusion of reproductive health leave in the National Employment Standards as a universal, protected entitlement.

Reproductive health services for all stages of life

  1. Improve accessibility to sexually transmitted infection prevention and management through the permanent funding of discreet and free sexual health clinics in all regions of Queensland. These clinics should focus on prevention and early intervention of reproductive health concerns in priority populations, and should include contraception, cervical screening, and sexually transmitted infection prevention, screening and management.
     
  2. Improve accessibility to menstrual products by advocating for the costs to be covered by Medicare subsidies.
     
  3. Improve accessibility to continence products by advocating for the costs to be covered by Medicare subsidies.

Supporting pregnancy

  1. Support all-risk continuity-of-care midwifery models as the prevailing model of collaborative care for all pregnant people in Queensland, and make sure that this is accessible in a variety of settings, such as at home, within community health facilities, and hospitals.
     
  2. Investigate options for publicly funding in-home intrapartum care and increase the number of birth-centres to expand the delivery options available to Queenslanders.

Workforce development.

  1. Tackle the current reproductive health workforce challenges by ensuring that the multiple factors affecting employee retention are addressed by:
     
    1. Implementing mandatory training in psychological safety and respectful communication within the public health sector.
    2. Funding a hub-and-spoke model of mentorship, support, and education within the state’s reproductive workforce.
    3. Ensuring reproductive health worker remuneration adequately reflects the high value the services provide to the community.
       
  2. Support the funding of reproductive health training for all health professionals in Queensland, focusing on non-discriminatory, non-directive communication regarding reproductive health matters.