By Paul Sakkal and Natassia Chrysanthos
Coalition senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price wants abortion on the national agenda, declaring pregnancies ended after the first trimester are immoral and arguing late-stage abortions were akin to infanticide.
As Opposition Leader Peter Dutton sought to dodge the issue while it engulfs Queensland’s state election campaign, former prime minister Tony Abbott backed the right of Coalition members to retain a conscience vote on the matter.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price at the ARC Conference on Tuesday. Credit: Nick Moir
Abortion is legal across all Australian states and territories, but political debate on the issue has been turbocharged by conservative pushes to change the law in Queensland and South Australia.
Price, in her first public comments on abortion, said she could not support late-term abortions because “our aim should always be on maintaining life”.
“Late term is anywhere past the [first] trimester as far as I’m concerned … Full-term becomes infanticide and I cannot agree with that,” she told this masthead at the conservative ARC conference in Sydney.
Her stance challenges laws that make abortions accessible until at least 20 weeks in most states and territories. After that, pregnant women generally require approval from at least two doctors, but doctors say these make up just 1 per cent of abortions in Australia.
Terminations late in a pregnancy are typically for serious medical or personal circumstances: genetic syndromes; late-diagnosed major fetal abnormalities; severe growth restrictions; or where continuing the pregnancy would severely harm the mother’s mental or physical health.
Protesters outside the South Australian parliament last week before a narrowly defeated bill to outlaw terminations after 27 weeks and six days.Credit: AAPIMAGE
Price backed her Coalition colleagues, Matt Canavan and Alex Antic, who along with United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet have seized on the issue and tried to introduce “born alive” laws that protect fetuses when a woman seeks a late-term abortion.
Price said they were raising important issues the Coalition should not shy away from in the name of political convenience. Abbott said he was not proposing legislative changes but he, like Price, believed late-stage abortions were infanticide.
In Queensland, abortion has been injected into the state election campaign by Katter’s Australian Party leader, Robbie Katter, who said he would force a vote on walking back abortion if the LNP was elected this weekend.
While Queensland LNP leader David Crisafulli said he had no plans to change abortion laws, he has not revealed whether his MPs would have a conscience vote on Katter’s bill, keeping the issue on the agenda because many of his MPs have signalled they favour unwinding the laws.
Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton did not venture into the debate when asked by ABC radio on Tuesday whether Katter had “done the Coalition any favours” by resurfacing abortion as a political issue.
“To be honest, I don’t think it’s a debate that is shifting votes one way or the other,” Dutton said.
Senior Queensland Labor sources, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential research, said the abortion debate had, above other policy fights, helped tighten the race.
Some Labor figures were sceptical about bringing abortion into the election race, but the party decided to keep the issue alive when internal research showed voters were marking down the LNP and Crisafulli for their confused response.
Abortion has been heavily politicised in the United States since Roe v Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, and conservative politicians in Australia have followed suit by focusing on the issue of late-term abortions.
South Australia only narrowly defeated a bill last week that would have forced women seeking an abortion into induced labour after 28 weeks.
But federal Coalition politicians hold diverging views: Liberal senator Maria Kovacic spoke against Babet’s motion in the Senate in August, triggering 12,000 people to sign an online petition trying to force her from the Liberal Party.
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