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’.

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.

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.

Concerns have been raised by women’s advocacy groups in South Australia following the release of new draft regulations which require comprehensive data to be provided by doctors regarding all abortions that are performed in the state.

The Northern Territory parliament has recently passed a bill which amends the Termination of Pregnancy Law Reform Act 2017, making it easier for women to access late-term abortions. But do these amendments genuinely improve Territorian women’s options and circumstances?

In Australia, the relatively recent phenomenon of ‘tele-abortions’ is being promoted to women as a safe and affordable alternative to surgical abortion, especially for women who live in regional or remote parts of the country. Women are able to access online telehealth consultations with physicians, obtain referrals for ultrasounds and blood tests if required, and then receive the required medications by way of courier to their home or pharmacies in close proximity to where they live.