Abortion on Australian election agenda after United States presidential poll
Pro-life activists emboldened by the Democrats’ failure at the US election will run a federal campaign aimed at unseating pro-choice Labor women MPs, while unions are gearing up to target marginal Coalition seats on reproductive rights.
Pro-life activists emboldened by the Democrats’ failure at the US election will run a federal campaign aimed at unseating pro-choice Labor women MPs, while unions are gearing up to target marginal Coalition seats on reproductive rights.
Republican president-elect Donald Trump last year boasted about appointing the Supreme Court judges who “killed” Roe v Wade and the federal right to an abortion, sparking attacks by his Democrat opponent Kamala Harris that he would introduce a national ban. Mr Trump denied the allegation, and convincingly won the election.
An NBC exit poll of voters in key states showed 65 per cent believed abortion should be legal. Of the 33 per cent of voters who believed abortion should be legal in most cases, 49 per cent were Republican voters. As the results of the presidential election reverberate around the world, political strategists on both sides of the debate in Australia are considering how the issue will be used at the upcoming federal poll.
Queensland Council of Unions general secretary Jacqueline King — who helped spearhead a campaign against the Liberal National Party and David Crisafulli on abortion at the October 26 state election — said the QCU and ACTU would run a “strategic campaign” in key seats.
“Certainly in Leichhardt (the LNP-held far north Queensland marginal seat) we’re intending to target along with the ACTU and we haven’t settled on other seats yet,” Ms King said.
“A third-party campaign on issues like health and abortion rights will assist in that campaign. It may not be the leading factor … but it’s an issue that resonates strongly with a majority of the population.”
Ms King said the unions’ campaign accusing the LNP of planning to wind back Queensland’s 2018 decriminalisation of abortion – strongly denied by leader Mr Crisafulli – helped Labor defend its Brisbane seats.
“(Federally) we’ve seen the federal Liberals come out strongly and say it won’t be an issue (at the election), including Peter Dutton, but the Nationals haven’t confirmed that, and people like Senator Jacinta Price and Senator Matt Canavan like to run negative conservative campaigns,” she said.
Senator Canavan introduced the Human Rights (Children Born Alive Protection) Bill to the Senate in 2022, arguing that babies born alive after abortions must be provided with medical care.
He told The Australian the bill would never be voted on, but he said he would not withdraw it – as reportedly requested by Opposition leader Peter Dutton in the Coalition party room meeting this week. “I wasn’t at the party room because of Senate estimates and no one asked me to withdraw the bill,” he said. “I’m pretty passionate about seeing babies be provided care, keeping in mind this bill has absolutely nothing to do with people’s ability to have a termination.”
Reproductive Rights Queensland’s Dee Spink said the Canavan bill was a “slippery slope” to the erosion of other women’s rights.
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists opposed the bill, arguing live births after abortions did not occur, and abortion after 20 weeks occurred in about one per cent of terminations, usually due to major medical problems.
Independent pro-life campaigner Teeshan Johnson – who ran campaigns at the 2019 federal election and this year’s Northern Territory poll – said she was going to study the pro-life messaging at the US election to target Labor women MPs bext year.
“There’s a lot of Emily’s List members in parliament and at the 2019 election, we really went after Emily’s List members in seats and helped flip them out,” Ms Johnson said. “It could be an electorate by electorate campaign … but we’d let them know that Labor have legalised abortion to birth right around Australia and that Labor always — without fail in every jurisdiction — always allocates more money to abortion services than any other government.”
Emily’s List funds pro-choice women political candidates; Ms Johnson says the anti-abortion campaign helped defeat Labor MPs Cathy O’Toole, Justine Keay, and Susan Lamb in 2019.
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