Ladies, We Need To Talk - Our bodies, our choice. But are abortion rights under threat?

0:00ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Hey ladies, this episode includes stories about abortions and some distressing content. Please take care while listening and you'll find some helpful resources in our show notes. I realise abortion of course is healthcare but it's also a deeply human experience that I think many of us share maybe more than we know. A lot of people have had GPs or other providers tell them that they're doing the wrong thing, almost trying to convince people out of it. They're not going to ban abortion anytime soon, but what they can do is continue to make it this really stigmatised form of health care. Across Australia, abortion now sits firmly under the banner of health care after being decriminalised in all states and territories. WA was the last to decriminalise in 2024.

0:57But these freshly minted laws are facing challenges, as politicians in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia table motions and bills to try and recriminalise abortion in some capacity. The reasons women choose to have an abortion are varied. Whatever the reason, according to a study out of the US, an overwhelming 95% of women felt relief five years after their abortion.

1:23But now that abortion is being decriminalised across the country, what is access like around Australia? And with anti-abortion activists sharing misinformation that comes from the playbooks of anti-abortion campaigners in the United States, is it possible that we could see our enshrined reproductive freedoms overturned like they were in the US? I'm Umi Steins, ladies. We need to talk about abortion access in Australia.

2:07Abortion is a really common form of healthcare. It's estimated that, you know, one in four Australian women will have an abortion in their reproductive lives. And yet, whenever it comes up, it's framed as a controversial issue. This is Dr Prudence Flowers. Prudence isn't a medical doctor. We'll be speaking to one later this episode. But she is a senior lecturer in US history at Flinders University, author of a book on the right to life movement in the US, and a member of the South Australian Abortion Action Coalition.

2:36It's estimated that, you know, between 5% to 8% of Australians oppose abortion in all circumstances. They would oppose abortion as they would put it from the moment of fertilisation. Anti-abortion agitators in Australia are a minority. A 2021 Australian poll found that 76% of Australians support abortion access. But that minority have been actively campaigning against abortion for decades.

3:03And Prudence says recently they've been finding new ways to shift the dial, putting our hard fought reproductive rights at risk. I think what's happening are two things. One is a kind of more skillful use of social media by opponents of abortion who are flooding the zone.

3:20across social media with misinformation. And then simultaneously you have politicians in Australia who are increasingly interested in making abortion and opposition to abortion a kind of central part of their political identity. When you talk about misinformation and particularly on social media, what kind of misinformation are you talking about?

3:41So a really common one is the claim that abortion of healthy viable babies happens up to the moment of birth. That's actually a claim that opponents of abortion have been making really since the early 2000s. They've never actually demonstrated any situation where that's happening. Instead, it's the way that they manipulate what the law says. Prudence says that under Australian law, we have a compassionate approach to abortion, which means abortion is allowed in the second and third trimesters.

4:09but only in exceptional circumstances. And at least two doctors must consult with the patient and agree for an abortion to be carried out. And so this allows people to have abortions because they've received a really tragic and serious fetal anomaly diagnosis late in pregnancy or because they have been experiencing really extreme domestic violence that has prevented them from accessing care until later in pregnancy.

4:35You know, these are real life scenarios and the way that our laws are set up is that politicians have put in guidelines but they don't dictate a hard limit to how healthcare is provided. Right, as they shouldn't because they're not doctors. They're not doctors, they don't have medical expertise. There's something very particularly frustrating about this bit of disinformation because as somebody who's carried four pregnancies to term and given birth, there is no way that anybody would voluntarily keep a pregnancy until late term to decide then to terminate it? I know, and I think what you're getting at there is that actually, as well as all the disinformation about healthcare, what that kind of rhetoric does is ask people to think that women are inherently barbaric. There's an incredible account which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2022, shortly after Roe v Wade was overturned in the US.

5:30And so this is a woman sharing her story of having to terminate a very wanted pregnancy at 37 weeks because at 35 weeks they discovered that the fetus had experienced something in utero that had profoundly damaged it. This mum had to decide whether she would give birth to a child that would have an extremely short and painful life or to end the pregnancy. And thanks to Australia's compassionate laws, she had the opportunity to make the decision with her doctors.

5:59Reading the stories of people accessing care or people being denied care, it does sometimes make me feel quite emotional because I think of this as such a fundamental thing. You know, it is such a fundamental part of women's reproductive lives, our kind of vulnerability around pregnancy. As we put together this show, we wanted to hear your experiences of seeking and getting an abortion. Our inbox was flooded with emails from women wanting to share their stories.

6:30One of those women was Nora. She and her partner wanted kids, but her first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Soon after, she fell pregnant again. At the 12-week scan, I found out the baby had a very rare genetic brain deformity. I think we were able to terminate it 14 weeks. Doctors told Nora the deformity was incredibly rare and it was just bad luck. They suggested trying again, and again, Nora fell pregnant almost immediately.

6:59They went back to the same specialist at 12 weeks for their scan. At this point he I guess knew that we would terminate so he unfortunately misled us to believe that no no I can't see anything wrong with this baby's brain. Come back to me in a few weeks and I'll rescan for you.

7:20But Nora wasn't convinced that all was well. On the back of the new form that the specialist gave her, she saw he had written the name of the brain deformity and the word confirm. They returned a few weeks later. He then did the scan and was like, yeah, definitely got that. Unfortunately, by then it was, I think, I think we're at the 16 week mark and...

7:46He had chosen that on purpose because that would mean that I would be feeling the baby and would be feeling very very distressed about terminating. Nora had a termination of this third pregnancy at 17 weeks. My dad said to me not to tell anyone that I'd had it done and I remember saying to him, if someone isn't comfortable with the fact that I've had to go through this experience then they're not someone I really want to have in my life.

8:13Another listener, Mary, got in touch with us. She was in her mid-20s when she accidentally fell pregnant in 2025. I'm nowhere near ready to have kids of my own, and I believe to my core that abortion is healthcare. But I felt incredibly alone at the time. I was able to go through Medicare, and it was really straightforward. I had the at-home pill procedure, and there was something about it.

8:39being in my own space that made it feel calmer and more grounded than I expected and I know this isn't everyone's experience and I've often thought about that since but I feel really lucky to have experienced that. My friends ride around me in a way that I'll never be able to repay them for and almost every time I shared my story another woman shared hers as well. I think shame survives in silence. The moment I spoke about my abortion I realized I wasn't alone and neither were the women.

9:09around me. Abortion, of course, is healthcare, but it's also a deeply human experience that I think many of us share, maybe more than we know. I think the number one reason that we need to acknowledge is that they don't want to be pregnant. Why they don't want to be pregnant, they do not have to justify that for any reason. Ladies, meet Dr Kirsten Fitzgerald. She's a GP and is currently researching the education and training of GPs in medical abortion.

9:39Dr Kirsten is passionate about providing women with safe and accessible reproductive care. Ultimately, I think if someone tells me that they don't want to have a baby and they want to access an abortion, then I can provide that care. What I do want to confirm is that it's their decision and that they haven't been pressured into it. Yeah, great. So you're like, none of my business. Yeah. There are two ways to perform an abortion in Australia. One is a medical abortion.

10:11which is available up to nine weeks and involves taking medication, usually at home. The regimen that we use involves two different medications. One of them is called myphipristone, which blocks the pregnancy hormone and then ends the pregnancy. And then the second medication is called myzoprostol. And that's a medication that expels the pregnancy by causing the uterus to contract. Now compare that to a surgical abortion. That's obviously a surgical procedure that gets done generally under some sort of sedation. And it involves often an aspiration or vacuum aspiration procedure to remove the or depending if it's later on gestations might have a different surgical procedure to get that done. In Australia, doctors can be conscientious objectors and refuse to provide abortion care. If they are going to conscientiously object to abortion, it's slightly different state-to-state, but they are required to basically refer a patient on or point them in the direction of a provider or service that can offer that to them without delay.

11:15Dr. Kirsten says, yes, there can be a lot of judgment along the path to accessing an abortion. I think a lot of people have had GPS or other providers, even like the person who did that ultrasound, for example, tell them that they're doing the wrong thing. You shouldn't be doing this almost trying to convince people out of it. And yeah, that there's something sort of morally wrong with them for wanting to get an abortion. The number of people who come and see me and are just so ready to be judged by me. Like, even I've had people say the words, please don't judge me, as the first thing they say when they sit in my chair. Wow. Do they? Absolutely. And it's so upsetting that we are in a healthcare system where they've had experiences that mean that that's a valid thing that they feel like they have to say to me. Then there are doctors who do believe in supporting patients to access an abortion, but were never trained to prescribe the medication.

12:10A 2021 report found that less than 10% of GPs were registered to prescribe abortion medication. So a lot of GPs have gone through medical school, their GP training and haven't encountered medical abortion. So there's not...

12:25the clinical confidence to be able to start prescribing on their own. Another issue is lack of transparency of who those doctors are that do prescribe. A lot of people, if they are prescribing, don't advertise that they do it. So it's a bit of a lack of the draw of having to go and see multiple GPs trying to find someone who prescribes. And Kirsten, is that because they don't want to get harassed by anti-abortion activists? Yeah, that's definitely a concern that...

12:50some doctors report that we have a number of studies saying that doctors are scared of backlash from the community, even from other staff members. But I don't think it's limited to that. There's also a concern even from not getting support from public hospitals if there are any complications and you want to refer someone in to get management after a medical abortion has been done. If you're not having the support of your local hospital, it can be really challenging. And that's a particular issue in rural and remote areas where you have one hospital in a large area. And so if they don't provide that support, it feels very daunting to start providing without the surgical backup if it's needed. Sarah is a registered nurse and midwife in the ACT. She emailed us to share her experience working at a clinic.

13:49She sees women from the ACT as well as women who travel from interstate to access care that they cannot get in their hometowns. She tried with her GP who said that he wouldn't provide her with a medical abortion due to the fact that he was a conscientious objector and referred her to her local hospital who could provide those services.

14:16she went to the hospital to try and access those services and again she was told that all of the doctors that could provide that service wouldn't do so on the basis of conscientious objection and instead of referring that woman on to another service such as ours they basically just refused to help her so she was forced to do her own research to find our clinic travel quite a significant distance pay for that travel, including accommodation and fuel, and then pay for her service in the ACT because she was not an ACT resident. And it cost her upwards of thousands of dollars. Another listener, Laura, explained that she and her husband had already decided that they only wanted one child. She was still recovering after the traumatic birth of her daughter and dealing with perinatal depression when she realised she was pregnant. My partner and I

15:14don't really have sex. The one time we did, which was, I think about a year and a half after my child was born, we went to a clinic. Everyone there was lovely. And then when the lady did the sort of ultrasound, she was like, oh, they're twins. So that was pretty full on finding that out. But it didn't change things. Later, when I spoke to my doctor about it, she did say, you know, it's better to have three happy healthy people than five unhappy people, which is what we would have been had we gone ahead. There was this massive groundswell of outrage in Australia. There were huge protests in capital cities and rural centres. This is Dr Prudence Flowers again, the historian from South Australia. She remembers seeing Australians in 2022 reacting to Roe versus Wade being overturned in the US. I was kind of shocked at the

16:12amount of anger from ordinary Australians, particularly, you know, women and people who can become pregnant. But Prudence says there was another smaller section in Australia that celebrated. Lots of right to life groups posted these kinds of messages about, you know, if it can happen in the US, it can happen here. It was a really galvanising thing for them.

16:34In the US, anti-abortion campaigners and politicians have been working since the 1970s to limit abortion care and to influence the general public against abortion rights. They got what they wanted after playing a long game that culminated in the overturning of Roe v Wade. Prudence warns that the same long game influence is at work here in Australia.

16:59I think it's important to think about that for the Australian context. They don't expect to win overnight. They have no expectation of outlawing abortion, probably even in the next 10 years. But what they do hope is that every attack chips away at access, chips away at rights, diminishes that kind of pro-choice sentiment.

17:19A bill introduced into the South Australian Upper House in 2026 by Family First MP Sarah Game sought to tightly restrict abortions beyond 25 weeks. But there are already strict guidelines around abortion from 23 weeks under the current health laws. Prudence says that these are attempts to put abortion back into the criminal code.

17:41It's so fascinating to me to see the way the general public had this massive negative reaction to Roe v Wade being overturned, and yet some politicians at the state and federal level took that as an invitation. Prudence says that there are Australian politicians who are genuinely against abortion, but others are cynically using anti-abortion sentiment for political gain.

18:06I mean, it's making a name for yourself. It's experimenting to see whether abortion politics that are American in nature will work here. And I think it's just kind of tinkering around the edges of how much of that kind of mega cultural stuff can we import. Do you see Australian anti-abortion activists following the same playbook as the US? Yes, I do. I think if we look at the way that so much of the content focuses on abortion later in pregnancy, that is explicitly ripped out of a kind of American modeling. So abortions being decriminalized nationwide. And what is the first kind of onslaught of bills? It's almost all to do with abortions later in pregnancy. So South Australia has had three bills about this in the last 19 months. There have been what are called born alive bills in Queensland, Federally, there's one currently in WA just sitting there. These are all

19:00bills and legislative attacks that come directly from the US and are just adapted to the Australian context. Prudence says there's also been a surge in social media anti-abortion influences working to sway people's views and generate outrage. Probably the most prominent anti-abortion activist in Australia right now is a law professor from Adelaide University called Professor Joanna Howe, the publicly available amounts of money that she has spent on advertising on Facebook and Instagram over the last for years is over $500,000. And so something quite radical has changed in terms of the amount of content being produced, the kind of audience reach that this disinformation has. And I think what's important here is that traditional media is part of that, but is not really that important in terms of how these activists are gaining traction and building audiences.

19:53Earlier this year, images circulated on social media allegedly showing two tiny twin human fetuses called Emma and Ruth. Anti-abortion activist and immigration law expert Professor Joanna Howe claims she was sent the image by a woman ashamed of her abortion. The public story behind that post is that...

20:14Professor Joanna Howell, who was the person who received these images and kind of named those supposed fetuses and gendered them, it's worth noting, that she had been sent this by a distressed woman who'd aborted these two supposed fetuses. The fetuses were not human. But even after the truth was revealed in a Guardian article, Professor Howes continued to share the images and a month later during an anti-abortion protest held in New South Wales Barnaby Joyce spoke flanked by posters with the names Emma and Ruth. I think it kind of shows how little importance facts have in this debate because actually

20:55the New South Wales rally continues to be named as being for Emma and Ruth even after it's revealed that those little jelly beans were sugar glider infants. And they weren't dead either. They were alive. What? Yeah. They were sugar gliders. Yes. It's so bizarre. It's really bizarre. And like, I think what was really interesting was the way in which that didn't even cause a break in stride for the anti-bortionists organizing in New South Wales. You know, they just kind of free fashion the narrative and continued on with, this rally is for Emma and Ruth. And it doesn't matter that those pictures weren't of humans at all. This rally was held in response to a New South Wales bill introduced by Libertarian Party MP John Ruddick. It sought to ban abortions for supposed sex selection. Experts have said this bill is predicated on misinformation.

21:52And there are already restrictions in the current Health Act to prevent sex selection abortions for non-medical reasons. The New South Wales Health Department has come out, it's debunked the evidence that's been provided on that. They've said that potentially maybe three abortions out of tens of thousands of abortions might have occurred for sex selective reasons.

22:13But we don't know. And yet it's being generated as this massive crisis that everyone should be mobilized around. But it doesn't have any grounds in any of the data or evidence that we have in Australia. What I find particularly frustrating is, you know, they're not going to ban abortion anytime soon. But what they can do is continue to make it this really stigmatized form of health care, which does have flow on effects for the willingness of health practitioners to train and provide this care.

22:40Prudence says that these claims aren't original. It's from that playbook again by anti-abortion activists in the United States. There's a strong pattern in the US for what outside people call messaging bills. So bills that may not get passed, but they get attention and they mobilise people around issues. And I think the sex selective bill in particular is an excellent example of a messaging bill in Australia. So actually the whole point is not that it will stop anything, but that it helps to kind of reinsert chinks back into the kind of criminal framework surrounding it. Prudence, it's really interesting because to me it seems like most Australians support access to abortion. Why should we be concerned about abortion rights being chipped away at here in Australia? I think part of it is the adoption of those American strategies. They're doing that because it was really successful in the US. So in some ways you're sort of poisoning

23:35the ground water. You say, okay, you're pro-choice, but surely you don't support abortion for reasons of sex. You know, it's not feminist to support abortion of baby girls. Or you say, okay, you're pro-choice, but do you really support abortion up to the moment of birth? So you take these extreme examples and you challenge people with hypotheticals that aren't real, with the idea that you can chip away at that pro-choice consensus. So yeah, on the one hand, Australians are really pro-choice have been for decades. But on the other hand, it's worth remembering that most Americans supported Roe v Wade, the decision that made abortion constitutional in the 21st century. That had majority support and it was still overturned. People having unwanted pregnancies is something we want to avoid. We want people to be able to be pregnant when they want to be pregnant and not be pregnant when they don't want to be pregnant.

24:26Sydney GP Dr Kirsten Fitzgerald would like to see the conversation around abortion re-centred on contraception and education. If we can shift the focus from trying to regulate abortion, which we have shown in the United States, for example, that restrictive abortion laws cause higher mortality among pregnant people and worse outcomes. If we shift the focus from that towards actually increasing access to contraception, for example, we can decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore decrease abortions. If the anti-abortion movement really wanted to stop abortions, why wouldn't they focus on vasectomies for men? Well, I think you've highlighted the exact hypocrisy that comes through with this movement. It's focusing on

25:13one aspect of a very big problem. But I think it shows the underlying misogyny of this movement in trying to restrict the rights of women and the autonomy over their own bodies. What are some of the misconceptions that people actually hold about abortions?

25:31I think one of the main misconceptions people hold is that abortion negatively affects people's mental health. There was a really big study done in the US that compared women who were able to access an abortion to women who were turned away because they were a few days past the gestational limit. And it repeatedly showed and convincingly showed that there was no negative impact of having an abortion long term. In fact, there was a lot of stress involved with being denied an abortion at the time. And also it showed that well over 95% of people five years down the track were confident in their decision, did not regret their decision and felt it was the right thing for them. So this idea that it's going to negatively affect women and that banning abortion is going to help women is a myth. It's been years since another listener Mia fell pregnant after a fling.

26:25And she wanted to share her story with us. I had decided I did not want kids in my 20s and thought I could not have kids because I have the MOS. And so when I got pregnant, it was like I already knew what I wanted to do. And I think of it as a decision that was made with love. I did not and do not have the capacity with my particular support needs and limitations.

26:50And also just the life I want to live. Like, none of that includes the capacity to raise kids. And so I made the choice because I didn't want to bring a child into the world that I couldn't give what I would want to give a child. And it's been 10 years. And I look back on it as one of the best decisions I ever made.

27:12Abortion has nothing to do with the ambitions of politicians and should firstly start as a conversation between the pregnant person and a responsible health care provider. Here in Australia, we really need to consider whether we want to imitate the United States' binfire laws that give a foetus more rights than the human in which it resides. If you want to start a family, by all means, ruin your life.

27:39I'm just joking, kind of. But children are a lot, trust me on this. Instead of bringing ideas of morality into healthcare, how about we invest in better education? Insist on sharing the responsibility of contraception with men. Fund more accessible childcare for those who do make that leap. And fellas, if you don't want to have kids, like ever, how about seriously going and getting a vasectomy? Like seriously.

28:10If listening to this episode has brought up big feelings for you, Lifeline is available on 13.11.14, and we'll also share links to resources in the show notes. This podcast was produced on the lands of the Gadigal, Muwanina and Daruwal people. Ladies, we need to talk is mixed by Anne-Marie De Betancourt. It's produced by Elsa Silverstein and Sarah Mashman. Our supervising producer is Emma Morris. Our executive producer is Tamar Kranswick. This series was created by Claudine Ryan.