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.

It is great to see the issue of males being housed in women’s prisons finally getting some airtime in Australia in a piece by Clarissa Bye in today’s Daily Telegraph.

Ignoring the evidence of the harms of decriminalisation and the sex industry more generally, the Queensland Government has tasked the Queensland Law Reform Commission (QLRC) with recommending a decriminalised model of prostitution law in Queensland. Women’s Forum Australia recently made a submission on the QLRC’s Consultation Paper, “A framework for a decriminalised sex work industry in Queensland”. We reproduce the submission in full below (you can also download a copy here).

Vulnerable women continue to get the short end of the stick in the growing conflict between women’s rights and transgender rights, particularly when it comes to female-only spaces and services.

In December 2021, Karyn Lisignoli, the newly-appointed Chief Executive Officer for the Girl Guides of WA, reached out on Twitter to Katherine Deves, the head of Save Women’s Sport Australia, for an answer to a legal question that touches the lives of many Australian women: is it still legal to define women as biological females?

A US District Court has denied a motion from tech organisation MindGeek, the parent company for the pornography website PornHub, to dismiss a class action lawsuit against the Montreal-based tech giant.

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] politics of pessimism defines the liberal consensus that prostitution should be regulated rather than abolished. This attitude is the antithesis of feminism. ‘We do not say, poverty will always exist, let’s build more poor houses,’ one survivor activist told me during the research for my book on the global sex trade. ‘Or ‘there will always be rape, so let’s focus on patching up victims,’ but we do say that about prostitution.”

Last month, after long deliberation, the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal (ACAT) handed down its decision on the appeal of radio newsreader, Beth Rep, partially reversing an earlier finding that she had unlawfully vilified former infantry Captain turned trans activist, Bridget Clinch. The ruling helps to remove lingering uncertainty about where the legal parameters of any public discussion of trans issues might lie, reducing the threat of vilification claims against individuals who venture upon this controversial topic.

As the South Australian parliament continues to examine legislation to decriminalise prostitution in the state, Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said the South Australian Police could not support the current bill even though police do “not object to the decriminalisation of sex work per se”.