Australian attitudes to early and late abortion.

Objective: To investigate community attitudes to abortion, including views on whether doctors should face sanctions for performing late abortion in a range of clinical and social situations.

Design, Setting And Participants: An anonymous online survey of 1050 Australians aged 18 years or older (stratified by sex, age and location) using contextualised questions, conducted between 28 and 31 July 2008.

Main Outcome Measures: Attitudes to abortion, particularly after 24 weeks' gestation.

Pregnant women with fetal abnormalities: the forgotten people in the abortion debate.

Abortion law reform focuses on early abortion. Women wanting to have a family who have a fetal abnormality detected later in pregnancy are neglected in the debate and harmed by the consequences of current legal uncertainty. Unclear abortion laws compromise: the quality of prenatal testing; management when an abnormality is found; and patient care, through obstetricians' fears of legal repercussions.

Abortion: time to clarify Australia's confusing laws.

Australian criminal law is a matter for states and territories. In relation to abortion, many laws are unclear and outdated, and are inconsistent between states and territories. Doctors practise under time constraints and on a case-by-case basis.