Half of Australian women seeking abortion had to find a new GP to get it

What just happened

A major longitudinal study published in BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health has tracked medication abortion in Australian general practice across more than one million women and 400 practices from 2014 to 2021 — and the picture it surfaces is one of genuine progress sitting alongside a stubbornly persistent gap.

The headline finding from Flinders University’s lead researcher Associate Professor Luke Grzeskowiak: “Where you live continues to play a major role in whether you can access care through a local GP.”

The numbers tell the story. Over the study period, the proportion of practices providing medical abortion grew from roughly one in 25 to one in five — real and meaningful growth. The rate of women receiving medical abortion through general practice rose from around one in 10,000 to just over one in 500. Progress is not in dispute.

What is also not in dispute: at any given point in the study period, only about one-third of practices provided early medication abortion. And more than half — 57% — of women obtaining the service were new to the practice where they received it.

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The both-and

What has genuinely changed

The TGA deregulation of mifepristone and misoprostol (MS-2 Step) in 2023 removed significant barriers that previously constrained prescribing to a smaller category of providers. The introduction of MBS telehealth item numbers for sexual and reproductive care in the same year created a funding pathway for remote provision that didn’t previously exist. These are structural changes, not incremental adjustments, and the study data — which runs to 2021 — predates them. Their full effect on access patterns will not be visible in this dataset.

Monash University’s Professor Danielle Mazza, a co-author, acknowledges that change has continued since 2021 but is direct about the gap: there is “still a long way to go,” and she does not believe enough has been done to make women with access barriers aware of the MBS telehealth items that now exist.

What hasn’t changed

Early medication abortion accounts for up to 90% of abortions in many comparable high-income countries but only around half of those in Australia. That differential reflects structural access constraints that deregulation alone does not fully resolve.

The 57% “new to practice” figure is where the access reality lands most concretely. Professor Mazza notes this is “quite concerning” in a care environment where continuity is already under pressure: “They don’t have an established relationship with a general practice, and they have to seek it elsewhere, and that means delay. When it’s time sensitive, and women have to get the service before nine weeks, that’s really problematic.”

Time sensitivity matters here because it closes doors. A woman who discovers her regular GP does not provide the service at week six has a meaningful window. A woman who discovers it at week eight does not have the same margin for locating an alternative provider, arranging a consult, and filling a prescription.

Geography compounds this. Rural and remote women are not only more likely to be at a practice that does not provide the service — they face greater practical barriers to travelling to one that does.

The training and support gap

The researchers point to the AusCAPPS Network — now open to all AHPRA-registered practitioners — and a recently added RACGP Check module on medical abortion as practical resources for GPs who want to expand their capacity to provide the service. The barrier for many GPs is not reluctance but unfamiliarity and confidence — the same pattern seen with other procedural competencies in general practice.

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My two cents

The reason this study matters is that it names the mechanism clearly: it is not primarily about whether abortion services exist in Australia. It is about whether a woman can access one through the GP she already has a relationship with, in the practice she already goes to, without having to navigate an unfamiliar system under time pressure.

Fifty-seven percent of women had to find a new practice. That is a function of two things: the uneven distribution of GPs who are trained and willing to provide the service, and the fact that most women have not had the conversation with their GP in advance.

The practical question for any woman who thinks this may be relevant to her is a simple one that is easiest to ask when there is no urgency: does her current GP provide early medication abortion, or can they refer her to someone who does? Knowing the answer before it matters removes the most consequential delay.

Verdict: yes — large longitudinal dataset from a peer-reviewed source, naming a real and specific mechanism behind an access gap that policy changes alone have not yet closed.

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Sources cited

1. Location a key barrier to medical abortion: Study. RACGP NewsGP, 21 July 2026. https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/professional/location-a-key-barrier-to-medical-abortion-study
2. Grzeskowiak L, et al. Longitudinal trends and characteristics of medication abortion in Australian general practice. BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, July 2026. https://srh.bmj.com/content/early/2026/07/10/bmjsrh-2026-203337
3. AusCAPPS Network — Sphere CRE. https://www.spherecre.org/research/current-trials/auscapps-network
4. RACGP Check medical abortion module. https://www.racgp.org.au/check/check-issues/2026/medical-abortion