“They make me feel like a criminal,” says Brisbane woman Zena Mason.

“I’ve been called a murderer for what I did. I have had the most vulgar comments. People seem to think I woke up one day and decided to have an abortion at 20 weeks.”

This week, Queensland is expected to repeal the 119-year-old section of the state’s criminal code that makes abortion illegal. For more than 40 years, debate about termination of pregnancy in the state has been often emotional and vicious. Women like Mason wrestle with a grim choice, then find out they’re breaking the law.

She and her husband Troy wanted a baby.

“We got married, bought a car, bought a house. We went to the doctors [before trying to have kids] to get all the tests done to make sure everything is OK,” Mason tells Guardian Australia.

“When we fell pregnant we did the normal tests that everyone does; you go for the ultrasound to make sure there’s a heartbeat. We went for the 12-week scan and everything was all fine. We had another scan at 14 weeks. That scan presented nothing. We had been together 10 years and we were finally ready to have a little family of our own, we were so excited.”

About 21 weeks into her pregnancy, Zena and Troy went for a routine scan. The doctors told the couple the baby was a girl. They also discovered the baby was severely disabled; she had spinobifida and a large amount of fluid on the brain. She would live in a vegetative state, unable to walk or talk.

They can’t make me go back and decide something different. I made that choice out of love Zena Mason

“I used to think the hardest decision I would have with a child was what school they would go to, or whether or not to breastfeed,” Mason says. “One minute we’re having a baby, the next we’re having to choose life or death.

“They handed us a box of tissues and told us we had to make the decision quickly, because of the current legislation. We cried and cried in that hospital room.”

Public hospitals in Queensland provide access to therapeutic termination on grounds of medical necessity. The Masons had to make their decision within days because the pregnancy was at a late stage. They had to seek approval from a board of doctors to proceed.

Most women who undergo late-term abortions have to go through a delivery in a hospital. Mason’s daughter Chloe was born in December, 2015.

“You have a funeral, you have to have a birth certificate, a death certificate, a cremation,” Mason says. “We had hand and footprints done.”

Zena and Troy Mason hold the urn containing Chloe’s ashes. Photograph: Zena Mason

Polling consistently shows broad public support for legal abortion. The anti-choice lobby and Christian groups have focused much of their campaigning on late-term abortion. Under the proposed legislation, abortion would be legal until 22 weeks, and thereafter with the permission of medical professionals.

Groups such as Cherish Life call it the “late-term abortion bill”.

Mason spoke to the parliamentary committee considering the bill in Cairns last month. She held her two-year-old boy, Anakin, while she waited to give her testimony. The woman who spoke immediately before told the committee: “A disability is not a justification for murder.”

“People aren’t in my shoes,” Mason said. “Not all of them have had to experience what I’ve had to experience.

“They can’t make me go back and decide something different. I made that choice out of love.

“I always talk about people putting themselves in our shoes. It’s very easy for them to talk about what should and shouldn’t happen, but not imagine they were at that … scan at 20 weeks, having to make that decision.”

‘It’s not worth risking friendships for’

Michael*, a doctor who works at a Brisbane termination clinic, won’t tell some of his close friends what he does for a living.

“I just don’t know their standpoint morally on the issue; if I find out their standpoint then I’ll usually let them know. Until I know that standpoint it’s not worth risking friendships for,” he says.

“The [criminal] legislation is preventing my GP colleagues who wish to provide that service, who can’t advertise they provide it. You won’t find practice websites at the moment advertising that.”

Michael says a large number of patients at the clinic come from regional Queensland.

“A lot of their experience is to do with other doctors in regional areas who are very anti-choice, who conscientiously object and make that known to the patient.

“In some cases if there’s a doctor who will provide the service, their colleagues won’t refer them for that service. Hopefully the legislation will go some way towards changing that.”

‘It was the right decision for my family’

Anna* grew up in western Queensland before moving to the city and having two children. She was a divorced single mother, working full-time and 36 years old when she fell pregnant to a casual partner. She went across the border to New South Wales to have an abortion.

“My personal experience is significant because it’s insignificant,” Anna says. “At that time another child was simply just out of the question for me. I was working full-time and had two other kids to take care of. It was the right decision for my family.

You start thinking that you’ve done something wrong, because if it was really all right then why is everyone so silent? Christine*

“It did surprise me what it brought up for people. A number of my friends had histories themselves and were working through some shame and some stigma of what that had meant for them.

“I can understand that most women might feel very uncomfortable talking about that. It’s certainly not something I talk about within my family.”

‘Pretty soon you’ll hear someone call you a killer’

Christine* assumed it was shameful, something to be kept secret.

“I remember thinking how relieved I was that people just kind of ignored it at the time. I left town for a week and when I came back ... my friends or their parents or my teachers, none of them asked where I’d been. They all knew I’d had an abortion.”

Anti-abortion campaigners counter a pro-choice rally in Brisbane in 2010 during the trial of a couple over a home abortion. Photograph: Lisa Martin/AAP

She was 15 when she became pregnant in 1987, in a socially conservative central Queensland town. With the permission of her parents, Christine’s aunt drove her to Brisbane to terminate the pregnancy.

“It was all very scandalous. I think it took a few weeks and the relief that no one wanted to talk about it became serious anxiety. My parents were supportive, but they didn’t want to talk either. It was like you were being shamed, punished. You start thinking that you’ve done something wrong, because if it was really all right then why is everyone so silent?

“I don’t think much has changed since then. Queensland is still a very conservative place. You only have to listen to some of the things people say about abortion laws and pretty soon you’ll hear someone call you a killer. That women are still going through that shows we haven’t come as far as we’d like to think.”

‘Unsafe and unregulated’ alternatives

The experience of regional women has been an important element of the abortion debate. Terminations are practised at private clinics, but there are very few options for women outside of the urban south-east. Women have been forced to fly interstate for procedures and public hospitals won’t provide surgical abortions.

A 2015 study published in the journal Rural and Remote Health found that women in rural areas faced huge barriers to access abortion medical services. Some travelled nine hours to attend clinics. Several women had to borrow money to pay clinic fees.

The study’s authors, Frances Doran and Julie Hornibrook, spoke to women who tried “unsafe and unregulated” ways to self-abort. They noted that “for women in this study, stigma was real and associated with shame and secrecy”.

Pro-choice supporters rally outside the Queensland parliament in 2016. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

Heather McNamee, a Cairns-based doctor specialising in reproductive health, told Guardian Australia she frequently assisted women who had been given moral or religious advice from doctors rather than medical treatment.

Jane Doyle, the manager of the Cairns Women’s Centre, told the parliamentary committee that lack of access to abortion means women may stay in violent relationships.

“Coercive reproduction happens in abusive relationships where a woman may be coerced into conceiving children against her will,” Doyle said.

“We have heard from very many women over the years that perpetrators of violence have stopped them from using contraception or sabotaged it. They seek to increase their power over their victims and reduce their victim’s own sense of control.

“If you are living in Cairns it is a bit easier, especially if you happen to be a white woman and you happen to have some money. If you are a poor, very young Aboriginal girl living in the Cape ... they do not seem to be aware that they can seek an abortion, and they certainly have very little power in their lives to go ahead and make those changes.”