Some people spend a career chasing a single win. Lesley Vick (LLB, MA) has spent hers learning that no win stays won, especially when it comes to reproductive rights.

A legal scholar and specialist in medico-legal ethics, Lesley has worked at the intersection of law, reproductive justice and human rights since the 1970s. In June 2026, she helped launch the Lesley Vick Sub-Fund, the 19th Sub-Fund held within the Victorian Women’s Trust (VWT).

We sat down with Lesley to talk about where her conviction came from, what worries her about the rise of anti-abortion rhetoric and far-right antagonists, and why she still describes herself as an optimist. It is the kind of legacy we would all be lucky to leave, and we hope you enjoy it.

A short content note before you read on: this piece touches on abortion, unsafe procedures and reproductive coercion. Please take care as you go.

The making of a lifelong campaigner

Lesley traces her path back to a childhood home full of books. An independent thinker and only child, “I was encouraged to read, particularly by my mother,” she recalls. “Whenever I asked a question, my parents would say, ‘learn to look it up’. I did, and I’ve never lost that habit.”

That instinct not only to question but to act hardened into purpose during her law degree when Lesley learned of a hospital ward filled with women who had developed sepsis after backyard abortions. She joined the Abortion Law Reform Association, later succeeding her hero Beatrice Faust as president. The year was 1974.

For Lesley, the throughline ever since has been personal autonomy in medical decision-making. It connects her work on abortion law to her presidency of Dying with Dignity Victoria (DWDV) from 2012 to 2018, a period that saw voluntary assisted dying legislation pass in the state of Victoria. It carries through her 12 years leading the Rationalist Society of Australia, an organisation grounded in evidence and reason rather than faith. 

And alongside formal roles across Family Planning Association of Victoria (now Sexual Health Victoria), the Australian Sexual and Reproductive Health Alliance and the Women’s Electoral Lobby, Lesley also co-edited the public policy magazine D!SSENT with her late husband Ken, a forum for progressive debate. 

“One way or another, all of these things are connected,” she says. “If the law isn’t working for people, I have a great interest in working towards changing it.”

And change things she did.

 

In honour of her hero, Lesley was one of the four women who instigated Judith Brett’s biography, Fearless Beatrice Faust, which was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2026, and made possible by 50 VWT donors. 

Watch the launch conversation >

Seeing the whole picture

Education sits at the heart of the eponymous Lesley Vick Sub-Fund, and she is emphatic about it. “Comprehensive sex education and people having access to it is as important as literacy and numeracy, in terms of preparedness for life.” She sees reproductive health as a full spectrum from sex education, to access to safe and affordable contraception, and abortion access when it is needed.

“Much as I’m absolutely in favour of women’s choice with abortion, the more you could avoid the need for it, the better. It’s all part of a much better approach.” 

That belief in access is exactly what the Sub-Fund is built to protect, and to keep protecting. Abortion has been decriminalised in Victoria, yet barriers to essential care still fall hardest on people in regional areas, people on low incomes, and those who meet a provider who refuses. The Lesley Vick Sub-Fund exists to help close those gaps, backing grassroots projects that turn a legal right into a genuine, reachable option. 

Asked about her idols, she names Harriet Taylor, the often unrecognised intellectual partner of John Stuart Mill, alongside colleagues like Dr Rodney Syme, Bert and Jo Wainer, and Beatrice Faust. And her feminism has always made room for allies: 

“My view as a feminist is that if we don’t get men on side, we’re buggered,” she says plainly. “There’s a benefit to them as well, because equality is better for everybody. There’s no question.”

A fund built to last and built together

Lesley is candid that the ideals behind the fund were shared. A future-proofed investment in reproductive rights, abortion access, legal equality, and sex education for Victorian women, girls and gender-diverse people, the Sub-Fund was built on the free-thinking, progressive idealism she shared with her late partner, economist and writer Ken Davidson (1938 to 2025).

The fund is structured as a permanent endowment: each year 80 per cent of the interest earned is distributed as grants to circuit-breaking projects, while 20 per cent is reinvested so its impact grows. As former VWT Executive Director Mary Crooks AO put it at the fund’s launch: 

“The more money that grows in the Lesley Vick Sub-Fund, the more money is available for grants each year. It’s as simple as that. And it’s always going to grow. It’s going to be there in perpetuity with Lesley’s name attached to it when she’s long gone, when women are still requiring support around these issues.”

Find out more and donate to the Lesley Vick Sub-Fund.

Abortion access: back on the agenda?

From anti-abortion rhetoric resurfacing in Australia, to opponents like South Australia’s Joanna Howell gaining momentum, not to mention the global current of misogynistic online echo chambers and influence of figures like Andrew Tate, Lesley knows there is no time to waste. 

“The social media milieu is exaggerating these grievances, and they’re blaming women,” she says. “It may not be a huge number of people, but they can be quite influential with each other.”

While some of the players may be new, many of the debates are age-old, and Lesley has never been afraid to meet an opponent head-on. She has decades of practice. 

Chief among them was her long-running exchange with perhaps the most durable and divisive figure in Australia’s anti-choice movement, the late Margaret Tighe. Lesley recalls being told that Right to Life’s annual conference once featured a section called the ‘Death Lobby’, and that her name usually sat at the top of it.

“Margaret and I started debating each other back in the 1970s. We had our last debate, this time about voluntary assisted dying, in 2017 out at Monash University, and we were mulling over the fact that we’d been debating each other for 50 years, basically about personal choice.”

Fifty years on, she is neither surprised nor discouraged by critics. She simply expects them, and meets them prepared.

Optimism, with eyes wide open

“Despite this litany of complaints, I’m in fact a very optimistic person,” Lesley says. “My beloved Ken used to say I was a Pollyanna,” she smiles. “He was a glass half empty person, and I’m a glass half full person. Quite a good balance between the two of us.” In many ways, the Lesley Vick Sub-Fund carries the healthy optimism and cynicism of that partnership forward. 

At the same time, Lesley is far from naïve to the fact that the road ahead is not going to be smooth. Reproductive rights are not a settled matter, here or anywhere, and holding ground takes ongoing dedication. 

“A couple of times in my life I’ve thought, ‘Oh, that’s good, that’s done and dusted’. But nothing’s ever done and dusted, really. You have to keep an eye out and keep at it. You’ve got to remain vigilant.”

In many ways that word, vigilance, defines our ongoing efforts to secure bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom. That is the work of the Lesley Vick Sub-Fund. Because while abortion may be decriminalised here, decriminalisation is not the same as access.  

With a Victorian state election approaching and anti-choice voices, including One Nation and others on the far right, working to gain ground, vigilance is not abstract. Despite the Australian public being strongly pro-choice for decades, rights that feel settled can be seemingly reopened at any time, and the women, girls and gender-diverse people who rely on these services are the ones with the most to lose.

Where to from here

This is a conversation we intend to keep having. In September, VWT will host a free webinar on abortion access and unpacking what decriminalisation does and does not secure ahead of the state election. And our dedicated Rosie volunteers will be running a rousing campaign on the same issue as head into the election. Please subscribe to our mailing list for details.

And if Lesley’s vision speaks to you, you can help build it. Every contribution to the Lesley Vick Sub-Fund grows the pool available for grants in reproductive education, healthcare access and legal reform, this year and for decades to come. 

Find out more and donate to the Lesley Vick Sub-Fund.

Thank you, Lesley, for a lifetime of vigilance, and for trusting us to carry it forward. And to the ideals you shared with Ken: thank you for showing us what a legacy of care and conviction looks like.