On Wed 23 September 2026, the Victorian Women’s Trust hosted an important conversation about reproductive justice and body politics.

This discussion comes at a critical moment for reproductive rights in Victoria. Outside of parliament, pro-life ‘influencers’ are gaining visibility, representing a broader anti-abortion movement that echoes far right rhetoric from the United States. With an impending state election in Victoria, and the rise of anti-abortion candidates from One Nation and beyond, it’s clear that abortion is firmly back on the political agenda. 

Abortion has been decriminalised in Victoria since 2008. However, advocates have long warned that legal rights don’t equate to access: cost, Medicare status, and geographic isolation all create significant barriers. No matter how you look at it, our work is not done. History shows, when access is blocked, abortion doesn’t stop — it goes underground. It’s our job as feminists to remain vigilant about our rights and never assume they’re guaranteed. This conversation is all about keeping our feminist antenna switched on.

Speakers:

• Dr Nisha Khot: President of RANZCOG (Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists) and Obstetrician at The Royal Women’s Hospital, Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s Hospital and Bacchus Marsh Hospital
• Fiona Patten: Former Victorian MP and Leader of the Reason Party, author and longtime advocate for reproductive rights
• Hannah Bambra: Writer, peer support worker and reproductive health advocate
• Dr Kirsten Abernethy (moderator): Executive Director, Victorian Women’s Trust.

Content note: This discussion is all about abortion, so please take care as you go. If you need support, reach out to 1800 My Options:

• Visit: www.1800myoptions.org.au
• Call: 1800 696 784

Additional Resources:

• The Abortion Project
• Victorian Law Reform Report on Abortion
• Supporting Someone Through Abortion: A Handbook

Transcript (please check accuracy before quoting):

Dr Kirsten Abernethy: 
I honour the extraordinary generosity and leadership of First Nations women in sharing their country and culture. We honour First Nations women who are the knowledge holders, the healers, and the foundation that carries the stories and which nurtures their community well-being.

For thousands of generations, First Nations women have been the ultimate custodians and protectors of reproductive health and bodily sovereignty. We pay respect to the intergenerational strength of First Nations women who have fought, and continue to do so, to protect the health, choices and futures of their communities. So we’re having this conversation today at a genuinely live moment.

Victoria is heading into a state election with abortion firmly back on the agenda in a way that many, my younger self included, assumed had been settled decades ago. Now One Nation is back whose policy is to seek every opportunity to roll back abortion law, and they could very easily hold the balance of power in Victoria in November.

And the challenges to reproductive rights in this political sphere and in our communities is happening all over Australia right now. So we’ve seen it in South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, with bills being introduced into Parliament, no matter how wild, with the intent to pull abortion rights back into public political debate. We also see anti-abortion activists emboldened, spreading misinformation, including about baby sugar gliders.

Meanwhile, our current access to abortion is not sufficient and not equitable, and this needs to change. So today, we’re examining the shifting ground beneath our existing abortion law. What’s actually at stake heading into the election. What we need to do to remain vigilant and prepare while still advocating for greater access. So this discussion today is all about abortion.

So there is a content note here. Please take care as you go. If you need support, reach out to 1800 My Options. The Victorian Women’s Trust staff are going to be adding support services links in the chat. So we’re going to start our session with our three fabulous panelists. Very excited about the three we’ve got here today with us.

Thank you so much for joining us. We’re going to have a bit of a discussion for about 25 minutes, and then we’ll move into the Q&A. So, the Trust staff are going to be adding links into the chat as we go. And please also, put your questions into the Q&A function. So I’ll start by introducing our panelists.

Firstly we have Doctor Nisha Khot. She’s the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She’s the current clinical director of obstetrics and gynaecology at Peninsula Health in Melbourne. And she also chairs the board of Multicultural Center for Women’s Health, a not for profit organisation providing health education for women from multicultural communities.

Doctor Khot is a staunch advocate for abortion access without barriers for all women. From her early years of training in abortion care in India, to her participation in the development of bi-national guidelines for abortion care in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, Doctor Khot has consistently supported women’s reproductive rights to safe abortion. We also have Fiona Patten, who was a member of the Victorian Parliament from 2014 to 2022, where she championed reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.

She initiated and delivered key abortion law reform, including the introduction of safe access zones around clinics to protect patients from harassment, and campaigned for the removal of conscientious objection loopholes, particularly in religious public hospitals. Fiona’s broader reform record includes voluntary assisted dying, decriminalisation of sex work, and drug law reform, including Victoria’s supervised injecting facility.

Since leaving Parliament, Fiona has continued campaigning on social reform, including drug harm reduction, criminal justice reform, and separation of church and state, and is now CEO of the Medicinal Cannabis Council of Australia. As Victoria heads into the polls in 2026 with anti-abortion campaigners gaining ground, she remains a vocal advocate for keeping reproductive rights secure and on the political agenda.

And finally, we have Hannah Bambra. Hannah is a writer, peer support worker and reproductive health advocate. She is the national programmer of The Abortion Project, an amazing project that I encourage you to look up. And for the last two years, has led free peer support circles for people who have had abortion, which is really important work.

Hannah is also a registered counsellor specialising in fertility and pregnancy. She was awarded the Reproductive Rights Champion by Children by Choice this year. Hannah’s been published in The Guardian, the Saturday Paper, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Monthly and more. She’s the winner of the Pearl Prize for 2026 and the Thorne Harbor Health Media Award in 2025.

So yeah, you can see why I’m so excited about this panel. Me too. Incredibly impressive. Okay, let’s get started. And I think we’ll start with you, Fiona. Can you please walk us through the history that led to decriminalisation and safe access zones in Victoria? And what was it like before those reforms came into being?

Fiona Patten:
Thanks. Thanks very much, Kirsten. And thanks to the Trust for putting this on. I think it is so important right now that we’re having these conversations and we are pulling our allies together. But, you know, I think kind of, for myself included, we only legalised abortion in Victoria in 2008. It hasn’t been that long that we have had legal access.

And really when you think about how we got it, we got it because more women got elected into Parliament. That was what changed the conversation. And it was still hard. So in a really short period, we had a wonderful MP who many of you will know from Women’s Health Victoria and all the great work that she’s done, Candy Broad. She was the advocate for it, but she was stumped. You know, Premier Bracks, stopped, you know, stopped her bill from being debated. Fortunately, we had an advocate and an ally in Premier Brumby. He sent it off to the Victorian Law Reform Commission. And and if people haven’t read that Victorian Law Reform Commission report, it’s still current today and it still talks about the issues of, you know, of access that we’re sadly still facing today.

Anyway, that report was done in six months. It looked at how we would decriminalise abortion, how we would take it out of the criminal code and how we would look at access. And then there was a massive debate, and it was difficult. It was a really difficult debate. People’s offices were thrown with red paint.

It was a very brutal debate. But the unlikely allies in that debate, and I think it’s important for us to remember this now was actually regional and rural MPs. And it was the women in their electorates or in one particular case, I think his name was David Cough. His wife was a regional nurse, and they had three daughters, and he was from the conservative right of the Liberal Party, but he voted vehemently for it.

Anyway, fast forward to me getting elected in 2014. There was another woman. I mean, it was sort of the battle of the blondes they called it. There was Doctor Rachel Carling-Jenkins, who had been, can’t remember which party she was elected with then, but she was part of Christians Australia, the Australian Christian Party. I think she joined, she would be a member of One Nation now, but, I think it was the Democratic Labour… anyway.

So she was there and she had a policy to wind back our abortion laws. So there was secret women’s business, and we met in a… When I was first elected, and I barely even knew how to get around. There was a meeting of women from all parties. So we had women from the Liberal Party, the Labor Party, the Greens and myself sitting in this room saying, okay, what are we going to do. And how do we ensure that we protect our laws and we need to keep doing that. So I put up a supervised, sorry, a safe access zones bill, but I didn’t do that alone. So that was done with an alliance of people. So whether that was the AMA, the nurses, the obstetricians like Doctor Nisha, but a whole range, a whole range of organisations.

And I think that is the most important thing. That was another brutal debate. And we sat till four and five o’clock in the morning, two days in a row. We had questions about what if someone was talking about and against abortion in a balloon above the MCG, but within 150m of the abortion clinic? Would that would that mean they’d get arrested?

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
You know, I didn’t expect that.

Fiona Patten:
I mean, we copied, we really, Tasmania really was the pioneer in safe access zones. They introduced it first. We really just plagiarised their bill and spoke to the minister down there. What I hadn’t learned, I didn’t learn till after we tabled our bill, was that there was a typo in their piece of legislation.

They had always thought it would be a 50 meter safe access zone, but there was an extra one was put in there. So it became a 150 meter safe access zone. So we never changed that. And there were pushes to push it back. But fortunately on Wellington Parade, if you look at where the multi, the big tram stop is, where it’s an accessible tram stop that is within the 150, it’s like almost at 148m.

So it was agreed that that tram stop should be within the safe access zone. But yeah look, it was again, it was a really difficult debate. And I think these debates are going to get harder and they’re going to get nastier. And we certainly saw that in South Australia. Anyway, I know we’ve only got a short time so I’ll stop now.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Well, I think that sort of leads into a question for Hannah. And Nisha, if you wanted to jump in as well, because you were sort of deeply involved in advocacy around South Australia. But Hannah, how does the fight today compare to what Fiona’s just described? You know, with social media now in the mix as well. What does the struggle look like?

Hannah Bambra:
Yeah. I mean, I’d love to thank Fiona for all of your work in the past on this. I had my abortion, my surgical abortion on Wellington parade in 2018, and I was able to walk in, you know, I already had enough on my mind. You don’t also need people judging you on the way into the abortion clinic.

And also thank you to people like Barbara Baird who said that they’re here listening in in the chat. There’s some amazing kind of veterans of this struggle, here today, which is, just something I’d like to honour. I think today, it’s sad to me that we’re still talking about access at all, to be honest. And as everyone said, access is not equitable, particularly in regions, particularly for people who are managing other things like child care, particularly for people who, where cost is an issue or where access to a hospital is an issue or a clinic.

I think there’s lots of different barriers for people, and it’s really upsetting to still have to talk about access at all, to be honest. I think there is some discussion that also that goes beyond access. And that was the theme of the Children by Choice conference this year, which was really great to see. But Amanda Cohn, who’s a great Greens MP who’s in New South Wales, talks a lot about, how we need to push the fight so we’re not on the back foot. And I think something that’s really frustrating for people who’ve had abortions is that the conversation is so often governed by, this kind of dichotomy of pro-choice versus pro-life, which I prefer to refer to as forced birth. But when you’re having to struggle and to fight in that kind of in those extremes, it’s really hard to talk about the grey space and all of the nuance that stops someone from accessing a termination, or having an okay experience through that termination as well.

I think access should be the bare minimum. And I really hope that after this election and future elections, we’re also able to talk about all of the other things that serve abortion seekers well. I mean, as someone who had an abortion not that long ago, really, in the scheme of things, by the time you’re actually at that appointment, you’ve had multiple appointments with other healthcare professionals, and there’s multiple points of contact with the system that we also need to talk about and improve.

My example, I had a great GP who was an absolute champion of my rights and really sat with me and worked through that with me, and I was incredibly distressed at the time because it’s an unplanned pregnancy for a lot of people as well. So there’s a lot of questions that you have. So my GP was great.

The clinic was fine, but along the way, the phlebotomist who took my blood told me that I shouldn’t tell anyone and that if it was her, I wouldn’t tell anyone. Which is really sad that that’s her experience, but also a really unsolicited opinion that I didn’t ask for. The ultrasound, which cost me hundreds of dollars that I didn’t have at the time.

It said considering termination on the referral. And that ultrasound technician still chose to say, there’s your beautiful baby and turn the heartbeat up really loud. So there’s lots of different ways. Conscientious objection is one thing that I think we’re all continuing to fight for in terms of access changes around, but there’s lots of different ways to obstruct abortions and to delay abortions and to create shame for people as well.

So I think the fight that I see today is people still struggling to often access terminations in Victoria, which is really sad to see, but also people having these really nuanced experiences based on their life and their circumstances. And when we’re constantly forced to continue to fight for access, it’s really hard to find time to also talk about aftercare.

The Abortion Project, which I’m part of, is, to my knowledge, the only free aftercare available. And it’s run by volunteers. So even accessing counselling afterwards, even taking time off work, if that’s what someone needs, if they’re still bleeding or if they’re physically recovering, or also if the shock from an emotional perspective is something that they want to talk through with someone.

All of that is really inaccessible. I think it’s harder for someone to see their GP than it ever has been, or it has been for a really long time in terms of cost, getting an appointment, that kind of thing. So I think the other part of your question was around social media. I think that’s also adding a lot of shame and stigma for people and confusion.

Right. Like we talked about misinformation at one point. And in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen an anti-abortion person and her husband talk about consent and send a lot of confusing messages around consent. And I think it’s really upsetting to know that young people particularly have sort of unfettered access to this misinformation. So there’s lots of things that I’d like to see change.

And I think, when we’ve seen some of these bills arise in other states and territories of Australia, where, as Amanda Cohn says, we’re put on the back foot and we’re having to fight again for something so basic. And what we’re seeing in the US is, the collapse of human rights, essentially. And that’s the flow on effect of this.Women are dying.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Do you feel like, what happened with Rove v Wade has created momentum in Australia? Has that been the driver?

Hannah Bambra:
I’ll let Nisha add to that as well. But I think that everything that happens in America and Europe does have a trickle down effect here. And, you know, we’ve seen Pauline be referred to as Temu Trump for a reason.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Yep. Yep. Nisha, did you want to jump in and I’m particularly interested in kind of you’re, coming from your position with Multicultural Women’s Health Victoria and as well, RANZCOG. You know, those issues around access, but also where are we now on the ground?

Dr Nisha Khot:
So some of the things that have changed for the better, and we should acknowledge that they have changed for the better. We have more doctors been trained in being able to provide both medical and surgical abortions, so that improves access for women. We have more and more public hospitals, especially in Victoria, providing surgical abortion, which is also great for women who need surgical abortions. There’s also the expansion of abortion prescribing ability to nurse practitioners, endorsed midwives, which is all so that access is better.

So we’ve got to acknowledge what has changed for the better. On the other side, what we are seeing increasingly is the effort to recriminalise abortion. Perhaps not all of abortion, perhaps starting with the bits of abortion that would be slightly easier to recriminalise. And I think that is a very dangerous path to go down, because ultimately, if providers of abortion feel like there might be a criminal charge or there might be a possibility of a criminal charge, then that is going to discourage people from providing the abortion.

Thinking about multicultural women, actually. Who are the people who have problems accessing abortion care? It is women who come from multicultural backgrounds because for them, they may have come from systems where abortion care may look very different from where they come. So there is the difficulty in understanding how abortion is provided in Australia and then difficulty accessing the care itself.

What was really worrying and disheartening with the sex selective abortion stuff that has happened recently in New South Wales is that we are actually asking doctors or nurses or midwives to perform the role of a policeman or a detective. So if a woman comes to me asking for an abortion, I will go through all of the usual things that I would go through, make sure that that is the right choice for them. ET cetera. And then go ahead and provide the care.

Now, what I’m being asked to do is actually, first of all, make a judgment on the ethnicity of the person sitting across from me, then make a judgment based on that ethnicity to say, oh, hang on, they belong to a particular ethnic group in which sex selective abortions are more common.

And so if I’m going to be charged with criminal charges because I’ve provided them with abortion care and they’re having a sex selective abortion, that’s not the role of a doctor at all. I’m not a detective. I’m not a policeman. And I don’t want to be that. I want to be the healthcare provider. I want to be able to say to the woman who’s sitting across from me, if this is the right decision for you, then I’m here to support you with that decision.

If you want to have options, I’m here to provide you with those options. Not to say, well, you belong to this particular community and I’m worried about being charged with criminal charges. So I want to find out whether you’re having this abortion because the baby you’re carrying is a particular sex. That I think is unhelpful. If this is about making sure that women and girls have a better life and have more rights than taking away abortion rights is one of the best ways of reducing that.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Yes. Absolutely. And I guess, what’s your perspective in terms of the metropolitan rural divide and what we’re seeing? There’s been, you know, reports of regional doctors receiving threats and abuse, which sort of shuts down abortion access in those areas. Is that something that you’re hearing and is that something that’s, you know, that’s more prevalent in rural areas and in smaller towns? What’s your kind of thought on that?

Dr Nisha Khot:
Yes, definitely. That is popping its head up again, given what’s happening around us, around the country. And yes, when you are a doctor in a rural or regional area, you’re probably one of very few doctors. You’re a small community. Everyone knows you’re the local doctor, everyone knows that you provide the service, and so you’re more likely to be targeted.

But it’s not as if metropolitan doctors are spared because even in the metropolitan areas, there are a few doctors who provide that specialist services, especially in situations where an abortion is required. For example, at a slightly later gestation, there is only a handful of doctors who provide that, and these are people who are really well trained, compassionate clinicians who are providing health care that is legal in this country.

Now suddenly they fear being doxxed. They fear being targeted. They fear being punished for a service that they are providing because that is the right thing to do. Yeah, I know the stats are a little bit old, like a couple of years old. But is it, there’s only 15 providers of surgical abortions after 12 weeks, is that right?

The number is increasing steadily because, again, one of the things that we as a college that trains obstetricians and gyneacologists have done is that we have set up a specific training pathway for the doctors who want to get the training in surgical abortions, especially surgical abortions beyond 12 weeks. So those numbers are going up.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Oh well, that’s one positive.

Fiona I’m going to come back to you. You’ve got a distinct insider’s view of how these fights are won and lost. What do you see as the biggest risks and opportunities now for protecting access to abortion?

Fiona Patten:
You know, I think that the biggest risk is the make up… well, obviously, who will get elected. And how power will be negotiated in government. My, you know, I fearfully think that there’s a good chance that One Nation will have balance of power in both houses. Now, while, Jess Wilson has said she’s put a full stop, after abortion laws and she has no intention of changing them. That doesn’t stop somebody else putting up legislation.

And, you know, we saw certainly we saw Doctor Rachel Carling-Jenkins probably put up one of the first bills in modern times around, you know, curtailing abortions by, you know, by date. So trying to curtail any abortions after 24 weeks, I think it was. So, yeah, that’s my greatest concern. I’m also concerned about the deals and the compromises that will be made during the election.

You know, yesterday we just read in The Age that you’ve got the Exclusive Brethren, you know, handing down compliments to Pauline Hanson. Whether they’ll go out on the campaign trail so that you’ve got these organisations that might put their support behind these groups. And these groups, and I put the Liberal Party in that as well, will then be beholden to take on and to possibly debate abortion. So I think that is the greatest fear for me. And we’ve seen people emboldened to do it. You know, even though 87% of Australians would support legal access to abortions.

That doesn’t stop people like Pauline Hanson or Senator Babbitt or Joanna Howe talking to that base and talking to that 13%. But as far as opportunities go, you know, this is a moment in time that we do need to form our alliances again. We need to go back to some of those 1970s alliances.

I don’t necessarily think it needs marching in the streets right now. Of course, that might be part of it, but it is making sure that our alliances are strong. And I think the, the election could… I mean, the election will be won in the cities and the suburbs, but it will be the regional voices that will be so important in this debate. And it will be ensuring that those Country Women’s Associations, those regional women’s health organisations, those rural doctors, all of those organisations are on the same page with the same message.

And, you know, we did this with safe access zones. And I think, you know, certainly the Women’s Trust has a lot has a great role to play in this, as does Women’s Health Victoria. But it’s really ensuring that those messages are out there. And I do think in those regional areas, it’s, we’ve seen it in the past that that is actually where sometimes these debates are won.

So it’s having those voices and, you know, those will be the communities that the Liberal Party thinks they have to win over. And the other opportunity I think we have is looking at, you know, looking at what Queensland did. Where Queensland put up a procedural motion to stop debate around amending the abortion legislation in Queensland for four years.

Now, I would hope that we could get a commitment from both the leaders of both major parties, of Labor and the Liberals to put forward a motion such as that, and make that commitment that there will, that they will not allow debate on this. And yes, the free speech advocates and the conservatives will scream about this, but I believe that, you know, it is that important.

And, you know, there’s you know, Labor has a large number of anti-abortion supporters in their ranks, and the Liberals do as well. So it’s yeah, it’s beholden on us to vote carefully, but also to try and get some of those commitments and rebuild and build our alliances and ensure that we are saying the same thing.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Yeah. Those are really good points. I think especially in the regions, you know, they seem to be very under threat by One Nation. I’m, I’m, I live in regional Victoria so I’m hyper aware of it. And I’m wondering, Hannah, from, from your work in the people that you sort of speak to and a, you know, who have had abortions.

And then also all of the amazing reporting that you’ve done on abortion, what community sentiment are you picking up on the ground and is there is there any sort of patterns that you’re seeing? One of the things that we worry about is that there’s quite a lot of complacency, around the issue, that it’s done and dusted.You know, are you noting that there’s concern, complacency? What are your feelings as we head into the election?

Hannah Bambra:
I think there’s lots of different coverts to talk about, kind of within the community. As you said, I’m lucky enough to work with people every day, pretty much, who are either looking to have an abortion or of just had an abortion, or have recently had one in a kind of in the process of processing that.

I think people who have had abortions definitely are not complacent. And that, you know, that’s 1 in 3, around 1 in 3, 1 in 4 women in Australia. So it’s not a tiny, portion of the population at all. And I think people have stereotypes in mind of what abortion seekers look like. But in The Abortion Project, which has met for several years now and is essentially like a little group of people who come in and out as they need to to seek, to really be able to have a safe space, to be able to talk about their terminations, whatever that looked like.

We see a huge diversity of people. So I think the youngest person we have had was 18, and the oldest person we had was about 55. So few drainage, of ages and huge range of backgrounds. A lot of people, I guess. To Nisha’s point earlier, there’s a lot of people with religious families, a lot of people from different sort of culturally or racially marginalised backgrounds, and that’s affected access, but it also affects how their families might respond, how their friends might respond.

It might bring up different things about their own perceptions of terminations and unplanned pregnancy. And a lot of people may think that they never that that would never happen to them. I think it’s also important to highlight that there’s a lot of Christian and Catholic and people of different faiths who are really pro-abortion as well. For me, when I had my termination, one of the most supportive people was one of my closest friends who was a Christian.

So people can do better as well, and people can be complex and have different sort of views on things. I think the complacency comes from people who don’t really understand this issue. It’s really easy to have negative views on something you’ve never had to experience that you’ve never been in. You know, the shoes of. I think it gets really dangerous when we start talking to people about like, oh, well, what about the cases of sexual assault?

What about the cases of this, that and the other? And people then realise that it’s very nuanced and complex and that are actually there is lots of situations where they might support abortion, but if you limit it for some people, you limit it for everyone. And as Nisha said earlier, no one should be casting judgments on the reason for someone seeking abortion.

But it’s interesting to, I guess, expand the conversation and think about the kinds of people who are actually getting terminations. A lot of people are already parents. One of the biggest groups of abortion seekers in Australia is women over 35 who already have kids. And there’s a huge amount of complex things that come into that decision, right? So people I think, aren’t necessarily complacent, but they’re dealing with really complex lives.

I think the cost of living crisis is hitting people really, really hard. And maybe they’re searching for answers in the wrong places with some of these politicians. But I also used to live regionally. I was living in Bendigo, and I think Bendigo is a really great example of somewhere where abortion care and miscarriage care and, different types of pregnancy options are baked into the public system.

And I think that’s something that’s really important to talk about in terms of funding and different models of care as well. The labor government in Victoria has done a really great job of opening multiple sexual reproductive health hubs around Victoria, but my understanding is that those are only funded until mid 2027. So when we talk about, I guess, rolling back access as well, funding is really complicated. If you simply don’t refund something, it’s not necessarily always viewed as a cut from a government. It’s viewed as they’re not investing in that thing. So I think it’s really important for these services to be embedded in public health in public hospitals. I think it’s really important that those rights can’t be taken away. This isn’t a nice to have.

But sometimes when we do things outside of the system or like, launch something that is a wonderful service to the community. It can also be precarious if it’s not properly funded, ongoing. And I think I’ve seen that again and again with things like The Abortion Project, we get barely any public funding. We’re completely volunteer run. And we show up because we care, you know?

So I think on the ground, from what I see from people who’ve had abortions, they often don’t know the complexity of getting an abortion until they have to. And it can be really hard if you have an unplanned pregnancy, you don’t necessarily know that you count from the start of your period rather than conception. You don’t necessarily know that. You don’t know what HCT means when you’re getting your blood test. You’re kind of thrown into this system really suddenly, a lot of people are often surprised that they have to get a blood test and that they have to get an ultrasound, so people can be pregnant for weeks while they’re waiting. Particularly to get free or accessible services, and being pregnant for longer than you want to be is really distressing.

It’s really hard to go to work. It’s hard to talk to your friends. It’s hard to talk to your family. It’s hard to get out of bed. So we often think about abortion as like a one day event. But it impacts people in their lives and their families for quite a long time. There’s people who’ve come to The Abortion Project who’ve, you know, maybe experienced perinatal or postnatal depression.

They’ve gotten pregnant really quickly again after their first baby, and they’ve just thought, I can’t do this, you know, six months postpartum and then down the track when they’re taking their first child to childcare, people say things like, oh, when are you going to give them a sibling? You know, so there’s all of this community sentiment, I think that can add shame and stigma as well.

And I think we really just need more education. I’d love to see, sexual education in schools improve in lots of different ways. And I’m sure a lot of people would, but I think also it’s a lot of the people that I talk to, my peers in their 30s kind of have this weird trajectory of “Don’t get pregnant. Don’t get pregnant. Don’t get pregnant. Oh my gosh, I need to get pregnant. I need to get pregnant.” Yeah. So there’s, it can be really hard to navigate often. Your GP is kind of meant to be this centralised person. But a lot of people now, because of accessing cost are seeing different GPs at different times, they might not have centralised care in the same way.

So I think that’s really difficult. And I think from the political point of view, a lot of people do care, but they kind of don’t know where to start and they kind of don’t know where to channel that energy.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
And I think that that’s absolutely right. You’ve kind of, you’ve reflected what Leslie Vick was talking to us about around that importance of the education piece and just the nuance and the complexity around it. It’s not just a, you know, a yes or a no situation.

Hannah Bambra:
And it’s hard if you have a difficult experience. Like a lot of people will say I’m pro-choice, but this was a lot harder than I thought it was. Or I’m so grateful that I could access this service. But why am I, like, I’m relieved and I’m sad. Am I allowed to feel both things?

You know, so I think sometimes, again, when we’re forced to kind of stay on this, like pro-choice versus forced birth, it’s really hard for people to understand that nuance and that complexity as well.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I’m going to go to kind of our final question. And I encourage everybody who’s in the webinar to put your questions into the Q&A chat.

This one is one that I think we all have, including Melissa. About the most effective way that people can advocate for reproductive health care access, both before the election and beyond. Like, what can individuals do? I’m going to go to you, Nisha, first, because you have watched the attempts to change South Australian abortion law three times in the last couple of years. And also abortion being restricted in Queensland. And RANZCOG has been vocal on both. Would you be able to speak to what can individuals do?

Dr Nisha Khot:
Absolutely, Kirsten. I think the most important thing that all of us as individuals can do is what we do with our vote. That that is the bottom line. Ultimately, the choice that we make of who we vote for determines the choices that everyone else has.

And we cannot forget that we are in this together. Beyond the vote I think like Hannah said, we are often on the back foot and we are being reactive rather than being proactive. And having proactive discussions in every community at the dinner table, in every place that we can about reproductive health choices is really important. And that doesn’t have to be just about abortion care.

Again, going back to what Hannah says, this trajectory of don’t get pregnant, don’t get pregnant, don’t get pregnant, and then suddenly I’ve got to get pregnant tomorrow. That is also something that we need to have a discussion about as a community, as a collective. So every opportunity that we can get to dispel misinformation and disinformation and provide accurate information and have those discussions is in as many places as possible, because it is important for everyone to hear the nuances, to hear all of the different aspects of reproductive health, not just abortion, but yes, about abortion as well.

You know, often we don’t get to hear the stories of women who are having to make the decisions when their pregnancies are really wanted pregnancies. The sorts of discussions that happen outside of, you know, the clinical discussions are about you are actually killing your baby, a baby that would have survived and you are killing it. And it really pains me when people who have gone through this process, which has been really, really difficult for them, are brought back to that place by a discussion that is happening about them in the community around them.

I recently read a newspaper article which the person had written anonymously, and I thought, how sad is it that this person feels like they can’t put their name to it because this has become something that they might be targeted for and they might be judged for. That is wrong. We as a society are not like that. Australians are not like that. We believe in supporting people through compassion, supporting people through what are really difficult choices. And we should be vocal about it.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Wow. Yes. Thank you. Fiona, what are your? Would you like to follow on from that?

Fiona Patten:
Yeah. I totally agree with, with Doctor Nisha and I think you know, I think back to my own experience, like I didn’t talk it, you know, we were told not to tell anyone when we had an abortion.

And I think it… and I remember once being asked about it, and I was a candidate and I was really nervous about being open about having an abortion. You know, I was open about being, you know, I was outed as a sex worker and I was more, I was probably more concerned about talking about my experience of an abortion.

Now, that’s not the case. And I think we do need to come out of the closet. We do need to talk about our own experiences and, and provide that multitude of faces and reasons and experiences for us. But really, you know, you’ve got… I mean what did we see a One Nation candidate the other day saying, “Oh, you know, and if I’m elected, I’m going to ban gay se… oh, no, I mean abortion.”

You know, we need to bring those candidates to task. We need to ask them, what do they think? Because we know particularly, a lot of, well, I would say coalition candidates and candidates in the suburbs do not want to talk about this. They do not. This is not an… they know it’s not a vote winner. They know it’s not a vote winner. So we need to force them. And that’s when we get on the front foot. That’s when we’re proactive. Let’s ensure that we are talking about this in the election. Let’s make this an election issue that challenge them on this.

Will they commit to, you know, to disallowing any debate on abortion for the next four years? Will they commit to funding those health services past 2027? You know Liberals have a women problem. This would be a great policy for them to take to the election, that they would continue to provide that funding for those organisations. But we need to be, we can be on the front foot on this, and we can be, you know, asking every candidate what their position is.

I mean, I don’t think, I think One Nation candidates will be completely gagged throughout this. I am not sure that they will be allowed to speak at candidate forums. But we should take every opportunity to ask those questions, you know, see if we can get journalists to be asking those questions. 87% of us support the right to abortion. So, you know, it as Crisafulli found in Queensland, it is a vote loser. And that is the weapon that we have.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Yeah, that’s really interesting and speaks to one of the questions that we’ve had from the participants around, how do we check the abortion policies of candidates in the state election?

Fiona Patten:
I suspect they’re not going to have them written up front on their pages, are they?

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Exactly. So our youth, our feminist youth network, our Rosie Collective, are currently working on a scorecard of the parties. Great. To see what they have said in the past, what they say at the national level. But what they’re finding is that it’s really hard to find a policy position, especially for, you know, I think we’ve found nothing for the Nats, for example. Found absolutely nothing there.

You know, some, like the Greens have got more. They tend to make it, a distinct policy, but others don’t. So I think to address one of the questions how to check the abortion policies? Rosie’s going to do it for you. So we’ll make sure that we get that out there. They’re working really hard on it at the moment.

Fiona Patten:
Yeah. Make a point of asking, you know? Candidates will, you know, they’ll be standing at shopping centres, you know, handing out. They’ll be at your train station handing out. They’ll be out there. They’re trying to get your vote. So ask them.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Yeah. And if people do ask them and they get an answer. Let us know so then we can include it.

Fiona Patten:
Yeah, yeah.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Hannah, did you have thoughts on, you know, what you feel is the most effective advocacy, for the election and beyond?

Hannah Bambra:
I think from a political point of view Fiona and Nisha have added a lot. And I think I’d just like to add that, how shameful. How disgusting. If a politician doesn’t have a stance on healthcare, shame on them. And I think it’s important to call that out. I think often I hate having it referred to as a debate because this is not a two sided argument. This is health care. This is people’s lives.

And I think nothing else gets thrown as a political hot potato like this. Like, what are we going to ask politicians whether they’re, you know, pro cancer wards? Are we going to ask them whether they’re for supporting people with dementia? No. Like this is no different. This is people with clear healthcare needs. This is not a debate.

And I think it’s important to notice that some of these people have also changed their minds over time. Someone like Pauline Hanson said in the 90s that she supported a woman’s right to choose. And now she’s back flipping on that because it’s popular. Because she can use it as a political hot potato, and because she can put people on either extremes of what she sees as an argument. But this obviously isn’t how she actually feels about the issue. And, I mean, I don’t care how she feels about the issue. But I think using healthcare and people’s lives as a way to get votes is honestly disgusting. And should be called out as shameful, and it’s really inappropriate.

I think from my point of view, I’m more probably at the community level and talking to people about how their communities, their families, their partners, sort of respond to their circumstances. And I’ll pop into the chat, we created a handbook for supporting people through an abortion. And that was made by, 50 people, around 50 people in Victoria who co-designed this together. We spent hours on it because the main thing that they wanted was for people in their lives to respond better.

And I think we’ve seen a really great campaign from the government recently about responding to miscarriage. And I love to see that. It included things like what not to say. Like, don’t tell people at least you can get pregnant. Don’t tell people everything happens for a reason. Just listen to them. And abortion and unplanned pregnancy is really similar. People can feel a whole spectrum of emotions. And you don’t need to force your views onto someone.

And that includes, pro-choice views. Like, sometimes there’s people who will say something like, “Oh, if it happened to me, I would just get an abortion”. And it’s great that they feel like that and they think that it’s so easily accessible. But I think it’s really important to just stop and just listen. And everyone who’s listening today will have someone in their life who’s had an abortion or who needs an abortion in the future. So please think about how you can support that person. Please think about how you can positively react to that person. Please think about how you can help them access abortion, how you can be a good support person. And I hope that thing that I’ve popped in the chat is a helpful resource for you.

Or if you know anyone else in your life. If you have teenagers, if you have kids in their 20s, talk to them about pregnancy. Talk to them about fertility and reproductive health. Talk to your kids about menstruation. I think a lot of us don’t even understand how our bodies work. And if we don’t talk about something, if it’s silence, then of course it’s not going to be on a political agenda either.

And to Fiona’s point, I think we still, we need to be voting for women and gender diverse people in political roles as well, because diversity is strength. We need people’s lived experiences to be platformed. We need people who understand. I think obviously a democracy is a beautiful thing, but it’s also really hard when the majority gets to talk about something so personal that impacts you in such a big way.

Like, I’m a queer person. When we had the referendum on queer marriage or same sex marriage. It was really hard to be around people talking about your life like it’s a political issue, you know? And so I think just listening to people. It’s one thing for people to be sharing their stories and to be doing it without stigma. But it’s also another thing for the community to be receptive and kind and caring and understanding.

I think we all hold stigma and bias in different ways, and that’s just human nature. Try and sit on that. Try and reflect on that. Everyone says the wrong thing sometimes. If you’ve said the wrong thing, think about it. Where did that come from? Is that something that your parents told you when you were little? Is that something that your teacher told you that might not actually be true? Is that something you saw on social media? Let’s slow down and sit with people and be with them. And I guess, yeah, we all need to think about where some of these thoughts and views come from and try and think about putting the most vulnerable person into the centre of our decision making.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Thanks, Hannah. We’re sort of running out of time to get all the questions.

There are a lot of questions coming through. But I feel like this is a really nice kind of end point because we’ve not just talked about kind of what we can do as voters coming up to the election, but also what can we do personally to make someone’s journey accessing abortion, smoother and more supported. Fiona and Nisha, did you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?

Fiona Patten:
I was just remembering. I went to a rally around abortion in Albury. It was in Albury–Wodonga. It was on the border. And one of the people speaking was the Anglican minister Father Peter MacLeod. Now, I think we need to, you know, we need to broaden our net. We need to be looking at all of the people that think that we should have accessible healthcare. So again, I just encourage us, encourage us to not just speak to each other, but really try and reach out to other organisations. Whether it’s, yeah, whether it’s those religious organisations that you would not expect to be allies, but in fact are allies.

And I think Hannah mentioned that, you know, there’s many pro-choice people out there. But we need to run a campaign so this is an election issue. One Nation has allowed us to do, has enabled us to do that and we should be taking it. And it’s probably one of the few times when abortion is an election issue in Victoria. So let’s make it an issue. Let’s make it an election issue. And let’s challenge them on it.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Fighting words. Good. Nisha, did you have a final thought?

Dr Nisha Khot:
Yes. Just to say that we will never, ever take away abortion. All we will ever do is take away safe, accessible abortion. And this is about saving women’s lives. And I think wherever we go, we have to keep that centre of our discussions. This is about saving women’s lives. Women’s lives matter. And anything we do to roll back abortion access and rights will affect women’s lives.

Dr Kirsten Abernethy:
Thank you. And thank you to Hannah, Fiona and Nisha for an incredible discussion. I’m sure I’m with everybody here. I think we’ve got more than 100 people online listening to this today and hopefully taking a lot away from it.

I would, if you’re subscribers to the Trust, we will be sending out information about what the Rosie Collective is up to and their scorecard, and how you can support them.

I just wanted to say thank you to our amazing panelists again today, and also to all of you who have joined us. Don’t forget, there’s the support services that have been in the chat there. 1800 My Options.

So thank you for joining. It’s been a really encouraging and also very terrifying conversation. But I think we’re all feeling very fired up to build alliances, to question our politicians and to keep fighting for reproductive justice. So thank you.

End.