A New South Wales MP has created a Facebook poll to help him decide how to vote on a bill to enact safe- access zones outside abortion clinics to protect patients from intimidation and harassment from picketers.
"I believe this is a matter of conscience and the views of my electorate should supersede my own," Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Philip Donato wrote in a post accompanying the poll published on Tuesday night.
The bill to enact safe-access zones around abortion clinics in NSW successfully passed through the upper house of the state's parliament last week and will be voted on in the lower house on Thursday.
The legislation, introduced by Labor MP Penny Sharpe and cosponsored by Nationals MP Trevor Khan, would enact 150-metre zones in which anti-abortion protesters caught intimidating staff or patients could be fined or even jailed.
By Wednesday morning almost 2,000 people had voted in Donato's poll.
Around 64% of people had voted for the MP to oppose the bill and 36% had voted for him to support the bill.
These results are at odds with polling on the issue in NSW, which shows that the vast majority (81%) of NSW residents who took part in a poll commissioned by Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi supported the enactment of protest exclusion zones across the state.
The support for the zones was even higher (93%) in regional and rural NSW, where Donato's seat of Orange sits.
"This is the first time I have used the poll on Facebook," Donato told BuzzFeed News. "It’s a sensitive social issue with wide-ranging ramifications."
Donato said he was in the process of collating a wide range of information and data on this issue and that "Facebook is just one aspect" of that process.
"It is one of many tools we use as a guide along with other communication methods," he said, adding that he has also spoken to constituents, medical professionals and "people who have been affected".
"I don’t believe [Facebook] is a proven accurate scientific way to make policy decisions but it is one of many forms of communication I use to try and encapsulate the community and get their views on sensitive social issues."
Patients entering reproductive health clinics in NSW have been filmed, approached by anti-abortion protesters and asked to reconsider the termination of their pregnancy, handed plastic foetuses, shown disturbing images and offered help with immigration on the condition they would not terminate a pregnancy.
"It's good to see you are seeking the views of your electorate on this policy," one voter Aaron John Pearson wrote. "This is what MPs everywhere should do they should seek the views of the people they represent before taking to parliament."
Commenter Izzy Smith implored Donato to oppose the bill: "The sidewalk counsellors I know are young women who want to help other women, who always conduct themselves in the gentlest way – never using graphic imagery, never yelling or harassing."
Another Facebook user, David Power, wrote: "It’s stressful enough without having to endure harassment. Personally they should be kept back one kilometre or more."
Members of the government have been given a conscience vote on the issue in which they are allowed to vote according to their own personal conscience and are not tied to their party's position on the issue. Labor MPs are bound by a partyroom decision to support the legislation.
Sharpe, who introduced the legislation, told BuzzFeed News Donato's poll was an "important opportunity for people in Orange to have their voices heard".
“Everyone who wants women to be able to access reproductive health services in privacy should respond to this poll and ask Mr Donato to stand up for them," she said.