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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-10-29 Daily Xml
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Mulligan, Dr EA

The Hon. N.F. COOK (Hurtle Vale—Minister for Human Services, Minister for Seniors and Ageing Well) (15:21): I am rising today to reflect on an extraordinary life. Prior to coming into parliament, for 28 years I worked as a registered nurse. I worked across a whole range of different areas, some of them more challenging than others and some more rewarding than others. But I reflect briefly on my time as a very young registered nurse working in the pregnancy clinic of The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and at a very early age really understanding some of the breadth of the challenges that young women and their families faced, sometimes with pregnancies that were going to compromise their health and, of course, the health as well of the baby in terms of its capacity to survive outside of the womb.

We wind the clock forward today and after many years of campaigning, fighting and advocating the world is a very different place, although we know only too well, those of us who are advocating for safe access to abortion services, exactly how challenging this right can and might remain so for the future.

I say vale to Dr Ea Mulligan MBBS, BMSc, PhD, FRACGP and FACHA. Ea passed away on 26 July this year. Ea was an abortion provider, an educator, a researcher and a stigma resistor. It was Ea who ultimately prevailed against the barriers of the Therapeutic Goods Administration in 2008 to achieve approval for the routine provision of Mifepristone in Australia and for her early medical abortions for doctors at Adelaide's Pregnancy Advisory Centre.

Ea had a prolific career at the Pregnancy Advisory Centre, a skilful doctor with access, fairness and equity always at the front of her mind. Aware of the need for more skilled abortion providers, Ea recognised that medical students' education did not include abortion and undertook to change that by speaking about abortion provision at hospital orientations, for resident medical officers, making an open invitation for interns to come, to watch and to learn. There are now many abortion-providing doctors in South Australia and beyond whose commitment to providing abortion care originated from this initiative. Ea published research to demonstrate the safety of early medication abortion and the legal barriers to its provision.

Joining Dr Helen O'Connell and The Cliteracy Project, Ea designed and developed the first anatomically correct models of the clitoris, advancing medical knowledge, but I am absolutely sure there are many uses outside of medicine that this model would be extremely useful for. I also understand that this may be the first time that the word 'clitoris' has been said in this chamber, something I think Ea would be really pleased to hear. Rest in power, Dr Ea Mulligan, vale.

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