Women Speak Australia has made a submission to the Senate Select Committee on Women’s Health, examining postpartum care, maternal health and mortality, contraception, sex-specific health data, and the monitoring of medical devices used in women’s healthcare.
Our submission begins with a straightforward principle: the woman who was pregnant remains the patient after birth. The end of a birth admission does not mean that the physical and psychological effects of pregnancy and childbirth have ended. Postpartum care should therefore remain centred on the mother and should recognise the continuing risks and healthcare needs of women after they leave hospital.
Maternal health does not end at discharge
Maternal deaths are relatively uncommon, but each death represents a serious failure of care and an important opportunity to understand where systems can improve. Australian data show that a substantial proportion of maternal deaths occur after birth, rather than during pregnancy or the birth admission. The early postnatal period is particularly important, with many post-birth deaths occurring within the first two weeks.
Our submission therefore argues that postpartum pathways should provide active follow-up during this period of elevated risk rather than relying primarily on the birth admission and a later six-week appointment.
We also examine morbidity that may continue well beyond discharge, including postpartum haemorrhage, perineal and pelvic-floor injury, maternal mental health problems, psychological trauma and difficulties with infant feeding. These issues can have lasting consequences for women and require accessible assessment, treatment and referral where appropriate.
Contraception is part of postpartum healthcare
Pregnancy can occur again surprisingly soon after birth. Ovulation may return before a woman has her first menstrual period, meaning that contraception needs to be discussed before the traditional six-week postnatal visit.
Women should have access to appropriate contraceptive advice and options during the early postnatal period, including where appropriate long-acting reversible contraception. This is part of comprehensive maternal healthcare, not a separate issue to be addressed later.
Accurate data matter
A further focus of the submission is the importance of sex-specific health data.
Women’s health cannot be properly monitored if the systems used to collect and analyse health information cannot clearly identify female patients and outcomes. Sex remains an essential variable in maternal and women’s health surveillance. Additional information may be collected where useful, but it should not replace the ability to identify and measure outcomes by biological sex.
Accurate data are necessary to identify patterns of illness, complications, mortality and disparities in care, and to determine whether healthcare services are actually meeting women’s needs.
Learning from medical device safety
The submission also addresses the regulation and monitoring of medical devices used in women’s healthcare. The history of urogynaecological mesh demonstrates why safety monitoring cannot end with initial approval. Devices need effective post-market surveillance, adverse-event reporting and mechanisms for identifying problems over time.
For Women Speak Australia, this is part of a broader principle: women must be followed through the whole healthcare pathway, not simply through the point of treatment.
Australia has strong maternity infrastructure, national clinical standards and an expanding evidence base. The challenge is ensuring that these systems translate into consistent care, meaningful follow-up and reliable measurement of outcomes.
Women Speak Australia supports woman-centred, evidence-based healthcare that recognises the continuing needs of mothers after birth, protects access to appropriate postpartum care, retains accurate sex-specific data and learns from evidence when healthcare interventions or devices cause harm.