Furious women, battling for America’s soul, have a warning for Australia

“We are in a dire situation in our country, in a time that I think will be looked at as a disgraceful time in our nation’s history.” Rachel O’Leary Carmona does not mince words when talking about what’s at stake when Americans head to the voting booths next week: “It’s a fight for the soul of our country.”

That’s why she’ll lead the latest iteration of the Women’s March this Saturday, when women from around the country will converge on Washington. They’re determined to help elect the first female president of the US, who they hope will be able to restore their federal right to abortion after it was stripped away two years ago.

Laws restricting access to abortion are among critical voting issues in the US election next Tuesday. Credit: Bloomberg

“I think that folks are really excited to back Vice President Harris,” says O’Leary Carmona. “But I think people are also really afraid of what happens if he [former president Donald Trump] gets back, because it’s going to be like the first time, but worse.”

O’Leary Carmona lives in Texas, one of 21 states that have banned or further restricted abortion since the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to the procedure. Doctors who perform abortions in Texas risk life in prison and fines of up to $US100,000.

Trump has given mixed messages about how he’d handle abortion rights if elected for a second term. He’s boasted about appointing Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade but has said he would not sign a national abortion ban and that his administration would be “great” for women’s “reproductive rights”.

Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March, at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, this year.Credit: Caitlin O’Hara/Bloomberg

Activists and doctors I’ve been speaking to from Georgia to California and New York to Washington, don’t believe him. Dr Meg Autry has been trying to raise money to fit out a ship where doctors could perform surgical abortions in waters off the southern states, where the bans are most restrictive. She’s put those plans on hold until after the election. “If Trump wins, we would not feel safe continuing as we need federal support,” Autry says.

Harris, the first presidential candidate to visit an abortion clinic, has made restoring reproductive rights a key plank in her campaign. Reproductive rights organisations have been rallying behind the Democratic nominee, buying digital advertising, billboards, doorknocking and making phone calls. Planned Parenthood Votes, the political action committee of the largest reproductive healthcare provider in the US, is spending $US40 million to encourage voters to support Harris.

“We know that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are the biggest threat to reproductive freedom that we’ve seen in a generation,” says the organisation’s spokesperson, Ianthe Metzger. “Everything we’ve fought for will be under jeopardy.”

Polls show abortion is the second most important issue behind the economy for voters. Even if Harris wins on Tuesday, the path to restoring abortion rights is still likely to be littered with obstacles. “It’s not going to end, no matter who is elected,” says O’Leary Carmona. “We have to be buckled in for a marathon.”

A woman’s right to choose is not only making headlines in the US. Until recently, it would have been reasonable to think that in Australia, where abortion is legal in every state and territory, we’d crossed the finish line. Western Australia became the last state to fully decriminalise the procedure last year. And while access to abortion care can still be affected by where you live and which healthcare provider you approach, I thought we’d settled the issue of whether reproductive rights should be enshrined in law.

But as I was speaking to American activists last week, Coalition senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price lit a fuse for federal politicians to weigh in on what they think Australian women should do with their bodies. Calling for a national debate, she declared pregnancies ended after the first trimester immoral and said “late-term” abortions were akin to infanticide. It was a chilling echo of the kind of language that’s featured in the anti-abortion rhetoric in the US. Trump has falsely claimed that Democrats support “executing” babies after birth.

Price’s call wasn’t the first sign that conservative forces in Australia want to put abortion rights back in the firing line. In South Australia this month, a bill that would have forced women seeking an abortion after 28 weeks to deliver the baby and keep it or put it up for adoption was defeated by one vote. Abortion became a political hot potato in the Queensland state election after Robbie Katter, leader of Katter’s Australian Party, revealed he wanted to introduce a private member’s bill to repeal the state’s abortion law.

For an up-to-date picture of what life looks like when abortion is banned, look no further than the US. While the bans have not had the effect that anti-abortion campaigners would like to see (the number of abortions has increased), there are reports of pregnant women being turned away from emergency departments, a surge in women travelling interstate for abortions and a rise in sterilisations.

At least two women died in 2022 “after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care” in Georgia. Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old mother, died after hospital staff delayed performing an emergency abortion, while Candi Miller, 41, died after trying to self-manage a medical abortion at home because she was afraid of the state’s abortion laws, ProPublica reported.

“We are still in the process of feeling the grief,” says AC Coquillas, from the Feminist Women’s Health Centre in Atlanta, Georgia. “These are individuals who could have been patients of ours.”

Many Australians have expressed shock at how the clock has been wound back in the US. But the American experience is not just one to observe from afar. It serves as a cautionary tale: ignore the early warning signs at your own peril.

“Do not underestimate,” is the advice from O’Leary Carmona. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire … and it’s so much better to be ready for a threat that never materialises than it is to be caught unawares and to lose such a fundamental personal freedom, such a fundamental cornerstone of democracy.”

Liz Gooch is an Australian journalist and editor based in New York.

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