Mark Speakman will seek to add "modest safeguards" to legislation to decriminalise abortion in NSW.
The Attorney-General and Cronulla MP was among the first speakers on the Reproductive Healthcare Reform Bill 2019 when debate started on Tuesday.
The private member's bill, introduced by independent MP Alex Greenwich, has drawn large groups of "pro-life" and "pro-choice" demonstrators to Macquarie Street outside State Parliament.
Mr Speakman said he would join with Planning Minister Rob Stokes in moving amendments.
"Once I see the final form of the bill, taking into account the considerations identified pulling in different directions, I will then decide how I vote," he said.
The legislation provides for pregnancy terminations to be regulated as a medical procedure, instead of under the Crimes Act.
Terminations would be allowed up to 22 weeks of pregnancy, and beyond that if two doctors supported the action based on future physical, social and psychological circumstances.
Mr Speakman foreshadowed amendments "that maintain choice but also put in place some modest safeguards to address community concerns about its current drafting".
"I am troubled by the lack of reference in the bill to the informed consent of the patient," he said.
"I am troubled by the open-endedness, at least on the face of the bill, for late-term abortions, whatever might be current medical practice.
"While there is majority support for the general notion of abortion not being dealt with by the criminal law, I sense that there is great community unease with late term abortions.
"While patient health can justify requiring referrals by those practitioners with conscientious objections to performing abortions, I am troubled by the overreach of the bill in this respect."
Mr Speakman said he recognised women did not make the decision to have an abortion lightly and that every termination was traumatic.
"But the statistic that perhaps one in four pregnancies in NSW is terminated by an abortion sadly suggests that our society as a whole fails to give adequate weight to the lives of unborn children or to adequately support, with compassion, women or their families to care for children," he said.
"Ultimately, those high rates of abortion are best reduced through cultural change, education and improved support for families - not the criminal law.
"As a general proposition, criminalisation only serves to stigmatise and demonise women and delay abortions that would occur anyway.
"Would I like to see far fewer abortions? Absolutely. Do I want to see women thrown into jail for having abortions? Absolutely not.
"Where does this leave us? There remains a role for regulation, albeit a restricted one."
Health Minister Brad Hazzard, who was the first speaker in the debate, "categorically" ruled out the need for amendments to the bill.
"Today, the people's representatives in the NSW Parliament have the opportunity to right a wrong that was enacted into law 119 years ago," he said.
"It is a law that no-one since has had the courage to change.
"It is a law that put women's reproductive rights into the criminal code, and it was enacted when all the legislators in this place were men.
"It is a law that came into being 25 years before the first woman, the first feminist, came into this place."
Mr Hazzard said, "Legislating for a 22-week gestational limit allows time for the diagnosis for fetal abnormalities, providing pregnant women and practitioners the opportunity to make an informed decision".
"The bill provides that after 22 weeks, there is additional oversight by a second doctor."