On 30 November 2022, Nationals Senator Matt Canavan and Liberal Senator Alex Antic, introduced a private members bill into the Australian Parliament that would protect the rights of children born alive after an abortion. The bill was sponsored by United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet.

By Dr Emma Wood

A young Norma-Jean, early on in her career, poses for a family-friendly catalogue, wearing girlish, innocent-looking clothes, and sporting that post-war, picture-perfect, pearly-white smile. But the sultry soundtrack playing in the background – “Every baby needs a Da-Da-Daddy…” – tells us where this is going. As the montage of Norma Jean’s photoshoots progresses, each image becomes more sexualised, ending with an image of the young woman posing, bare-breasted, for a calendar.

By Dr Emma Wood

The Sydney Morning Herald recently published one of the saddest abortion stories I’ve ever read. It is the kind of story that unsettles you, whether you regard yourself as “pro-choice” or “pro-life”. If you are pro-choice, the story forces you to come to grips with the humanity of the foetus. If you are pro-life, the story might cause you to wonder, even if momentarily, whether the principles by which you stand are sufficiently nuanced or compassionate.

An Australian journalist has been told by an Instagram user to ‘go get an abortion’.

By Stephanie Bastiaan

A review into the culture of AFL Hawthorn Football Club, which surfaced a couple of weeks ago, has raised serious allegations of bullying, abuse and racism from the club's hierarchy. The most harrowing accusation is that the partners of football players were pressured and coerced into terminating their pregnancies.

Over the weekend, protestors called for “free, safe, legal, on demand” abortions in Australia “in solidarity with US abortion rights protestors”.

By Rachael Wong

The magnitude of what has just happened in the US is still setting in, and while many of us view it with hope, there are many others who see it as a tragedy. There will be more to say in the days and weeks to come, but these are my initial thoughts on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade and its implications for women and children.

Last month, the Northern Ireland Assembly passed a bill making it a criminal offence for anyone to engage in “influencing” women inside “safe access zones” (100m) around abortion clinics. The bill targets those who protest against abortion or attempt to assist pregnant women outside such clinics, in order to “protect” women from “harassment”.

A sixteen-year-old girl in the UK has described the horror of at-home abortion after a telehealth consultation miscalculated her gestation by 12 weeks.

Following the recent decriminalisation of abortion laws in some jurisdictions across Australia, the focus of abortion advocates has now turned to the issue of “equality of access”. There are calls for public funding and support to enable women who need to travel long distances to access abortions, particularly for women who don’t have the means to pay for interstate travel or whose personal situations make it difficult for them to leave home or miss work in order to attend clinics some distance away.