PSI Australasia’s founding Director was the Australian physician Geoffrey Davis, who in the 1960s had provided discreet early-stage pregnancy termination services from clinics he operated in the Sydney suburbs of Potts Point and Arncliffe.
[5] Those rulings permitted abortion when a medical practitioner determined in good faith that failure to terminate a pregnancy posed a risk to a woman’s life or her physical or mental health.
Davis planned to meet the high-demand market opportunity with the quick-turnaround pregnancy termination procedures he had developed, delivering easily accessible, "high through-put"[20] services, both by appointment or for "'walk-in clientele'... accepted for same-day treatment".
From the outset, Davis hired feminists to staff both PSI clinics[21] in an effort to offset his negative image within the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) in Sydney over what were seen as his “controversial” views on fertility control.
The reason for speed was to shorten the period of anesthesia.”[20] In the early morning of April 7, 1975, a fire broke out on the ground floor of the premises housing Preterm Foundation.
The police arson squad investigated and various possible causes were cited in the press, including accidental or spontaneous combustion of refuse in the warehouse on the ground floor of the building.
[30] But Preterm director Dorothy Nolan later indicated "darker suspicions", telling the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that a doctor "who had run a lucrative abortion business in Arncliffe" had been making repeated threatening phone calls to her home.
[20] Interviews were concluded by late-March and the employees were set to be hired, but the launch was put on hold after hostile legislators in the Australia Parliament heard testimony that PSI had not revealed that the Phillip center would provide abortion services.
[16][42] The details of those business and property holdings were also in the possession of the six PSI staff who resigned in protest in December 1976 and were subsequently published in the pamphlet ABORTION: OUR BODIES, THEIR POWER.
In November 1978, the parliamentary opposition Labor Party introduced a motion in Australia's Senate for a conscience vote that would have overruled Health Minister Hunt's restrictions on abortion.
[51] The ACT Right to Life Association vigorously lobbied against the motion and subsequently said it was designed to remove impediments to PSI's establishment of its abortion clinic in Phillip.
[51] In April 1978, arson was suspected by police in a fire that partially damaged three floors of the PSI clinic on Challis Avenue in Potts Point.
Council members said the clinic was only registered as a medical consultancy licensed to provide minor surgery and that performing second semester abortions was not permitted under the zoning regulations.
Complaining of severe abdominal pains, she went into shock and was given a blood transfusion, before being rushed to the Royal Hospital, where a partial hysterectomy was performed and remnants of a 4.3cm foetal head left by Davis in her cervix had to be removed.
On appeal, Davis failed in his efforts to require one of the women to post an expensive bond to cover his and PSI's legal costs in the case.
"[62][60] In 1988, little more than a year after the close of the medical disciplinary case, Davis retired from practice at the age of 55 and resigned as Director of PSI Australasia,[8] which was de-registered as a company in Australia on 8 December 1992.