And yet so far,opposition from other quarters – including socially conservative quarters of the ALP – has been unforthcoming.
Tasmanian Labor Senator Helen Polley is known for her conservative views – as a Catholic,her personal opinion is she would not have an abortion herself. But Polley supports the announcement,saying public health services for women are desperately needed in her home state.
"This is not about the Catholic Helen Polley. It's about Helen Polley who is a senator and a mother and a grandmother. And it's about women's health."
Abortion is legal in Tasmania,but the lack of services there has seen women travel to Victoria and spend thousands of dollars to get help."I think that's just cruel and unnecessary,"Polley says.
Catherine King and Tanya Plibersek have been developing a plan for women's reproductive health since the 2016 election.Credit:AAP
Plibersek and Labor's health spokeswoman Catherine King worked on the plan for more than two years before its release. It began with anecdotal reports in the wake of the 2016 election that very few GPs were prescribing RU486,and grew into meetings with health experts and women's groups,as well as Claydon's consultations with women themselves.
King notes that as the plan was developed,"a few concerns were raised along the way by some of the more conservative elements of the party". But the framing of the plan as an access to healthcare issue has helped overcome this – along with assurances that religious freedoms will be protected.
This week, Labor told the Catholic healthcare sector it would not withhold funding from Catholic hospitals that refused to perform abortions on religious grounds.
Labor insiders say Queensland legalising abortion in October 2018 helped to air issues and gave a sense that the substantive debate had been"won". A lot of work was also done in the lead-up to Labor's national conference in December 2018,bringing Labor for Choice and the conservative elements of the party onto the same page.
It was a significant compromise that while the new ALP platform resolved to improve the provision of abortion in public hospitals,the party's 1984 position that MPs have a conscience vote on abortion was unchanged.
The waning influence of the socially conservative Shop,Distributive and Allied Employees'Union also enabled Labor to bring a policy about abortion and contraception to a federal election. On Friday,the SDA – a key opponent of same-sex marriage under former leader Joe de Bruyn – said it had no comment on the reproductive health plan.
Labor MPs also say the policy reflects the fact that women now make up almost half of the federal caucus.
Meanwhile,broader Australian society is changing. The Australian Election Study has found a steady increase in the percentage of Australians who say"women should be able to readily obtain abortion". In 2004,59 per cent responded"yes",rising to 69 per cent in 2016. Other surveys have suggested support for abortion access is even higher.
Census data also shows religion is becoming less important to Australians. About 30 per cent of Australians identified as having"no religion"in the most recent 2016 census. This is up from nearly 13 per cent in 1991.
And in the wake of so many child sexual abuse scandals,it is questionable the Catholic Church still occupies the same status in these debate as a moral authority.
"I'm sorry,they don't have that space any more,"Claydon says.