ABORTION should be administered no differently than a knee replacement, an Albury forum on the decriminalisation of terminations has been told.
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Ethicist Leslie Cannold, the founder of Reproductive Choice Australia, told the event, run by the Greens, abortion should not get special legislative treatment.
"We don't have a special tonsil law, we don't have a knee replacement law or a liver cancer law, and we don't need a particular law governing abortion either,” Dr Cannold said.
"Abortion should be regulated like all other medical procedures."
Dr Cannold was among five speakers at the SS&A Club with NSW Greens Upper House MP Mehreen Faruqi and gynaecologist and Rights to Privacy Albury member Pieter Mourik also addressing about 90 people.
Dr Faruqi has introduced a bill to decriminalise abortion in NSW and enact exclusion zones at clinics to ban anti-termination protesters.
"We are still governed by century-old archaic laws," Dr Faruqi said.
She said women should not be "intimidated or harassed" at sites such as Albury's Englehardt Street clinic for seeking a "simple medical procedure".
Dr Cannold compared the campaign for abortion law changes to the fight for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which she noted took decades to achieve.
Dr Faruqi believes it will be harder in NSW than other states to nail abortion law reform because of the influence of Upper House MP the Reverend Fred Nile on the Coalition Government.
Dr Mourik said only 8 per cent of the community agreed with Reverend Nile's views on abortion and it was time to "get rid of the misogynist 83-year-old".
He revealed that he had been the subject of multiple complaints to medical authorities to have him struck off after stating having an abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is 100 times safer than giving birth at the full term.
Dr Mourik showed various photographs of anti-abortion protesters, including Albury councillor Darren Cameron and Catholic priests, outside the Englehardt Street clinic.
He called two old men with pamphlets "frightening" and finished with an image of teens holding brochures.
"These two guys should be aware when they have a job interview their social media profile will be looked at," Dr Mourik said.
The photographs have been on Rights to Privacy's Facebook page.
