As the abortion debate reignites across Australia, conservatives are rejoicing β and copying the US playbook | Caution flowers
The 2022 news that the US Supreme Court had overturned Roe v Wade and ended the constitutional right to abortion sent shock waves all over the world.
For Australian opponents of abortion, who had long looked to the US for leadership and inspiration, this led to joy.
As leader of Cherish Life Queensland put itβIf the US can do it, with God’s help, we can do it too.β
In late 2024, the abortion issue suddenly erupted in Queensland and South Australia. Some local conservatives, stimulated by the fall of Roe v Wade and the example of Donald Trump, are embracing the culture war tactics that dominate American politics.
Abortion and Australian politics in 2024
In the 2020 Queensland election, the Liberal National Party promised a review of the legislation that had decriminalized abortion two years earlier. But the party has spent most of the 2024 campaign carefully avoiding this problem.
Until MP Robbie Katter of Katter’s Australian party threw a spanner in the works.
On October 8, he announced that if the LNP won, as widely predicted, he would immediately introduce a private bill to repeal the state’s abortion law.
The LNP leader, David Crisafulli, who voted against decriminalizationemphasizes that changing the law βis not part of our planβ.
But last week, Crisafulli was asked 132 times about abortion and the issue of conscience voting refused to give a straight answer.
In the final leaders’ debate on Tuesday evening, Crisafulli ultimately said there would be no change in abortion law and that he was “pro-choice”.
But this is unlikely to be the end of the issue β opposition to abortion runs deep within the LNP.
Party policy in 2018 was that abortion should remain a criminal offense. Despite being a vote of conscience, the three LNP members who voted in favor of decriminalization were threatened with βpunishmentβ then.
Some new ones this year anti–abortion candidates running for the LNP. Former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker is a particularly high-profile senator repeatedly addressed the Brisbane March for Life rally.
The furor over the future of reproductive rights in Queensland has occurred in parallel with the controversy over anti-abortion legislation introduced by Liberal state MP Ben Hood in South Australia.
His bill required anyone who needed to terminate a pregnancy after 28 weeks to have labor initiated and the baby delivered alive, regardless of the health outcomes for the pregnant person or child.
Peak medical and legal authorities condemned the billwhich critics describe as a measure of ‘forced birth’. It was narrowly defeated in the House of Lords on October 16.
Senator Jacinta Price has also called for abortion to be put back on the agenda national agenda and condemned abortion after the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. Her position is inconsistent with abortion laws in all Australian jurisdictions.
Public and party opinion
This sudden upsurge in anti-abortion politics does not reflect Australian attitudes.
A poll 2024 found that 75% of Queenslanders agreed that decriminalizing abortion had been the right thing to do.
This view was shared across partisan and geographical boundaries and was held by 73% of LNP voters and 78% of regional Queenslanders.
The historian Cassandra Byrnes shows that this pro-choice attitude has deep roots. A majority of the public opposed the police raids on abortion clinics that took place under the Nationals prime minister Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
A Survey 2020 of South Australians felt 80% supported decriminalisation. And 63% believed that later abortion should be possible βwhen the woman and her health care team decide it is necessary.β
The LNP’s hostility to decriminalization also differed markedly from the approach in other states.
Striking in both New South Wales And South Australiaprominent liberals, including prime ministers, voted to decriminalize abortion.
In South Australia, two senior Liberals, the Minister of Human Services, have Michelle Lensinkand the Attorney General Vicky Chapmanled the cross-party group that brought about legal reforms.
Importing the culture wars
When Australian states and territories debated decriminalization, anti-abortion opponents relied heavily on tactics, pseudoscientific evidence and outright misinformation emerging in the US.
In 2008, for example, a Victorian group controversially circulated graphic photographs of aborted fetuses, and American diagrams and descriptions of subsequent abortion procedures.
As Australian conservatives seek to reopen the debate, American influence is behind the debate rhetoric and framing.
For decades, American opponents of abortion focused on this issue chipping away at abortion rights and eroding access. They never accepted that abortion was healthcare.
Since 1995 their central attention was examined for the statistically rare abortions performed after 20 weeks’ gestation. This focus has been wholesale imported into Australia.
The anti-abortion activism surrounding Hood’s bill reflects these approaches. Opponents of abortion engaged in a wide-ranging discussion stigmatizing campaign against abortion after 22 weeks and six days, the legal point in South Africa after which two doctors must approve an abortion.
For decades this was the standard tactics motivating American Republicans when they introduced extreme, unenforceable bills. The goal was not to change the law, but to strengthen their rhetoric and arguments and energize conservative voters.
Opposition to abortion is also part of a broader shift to the right taking place among some liberal branches of the state.
In SA conservatives launched one seize power after abortion was decriminalized in 2021. This included a significant one recruitment campaign among Pentecostals.
A similar recruitment focus on conservative religious faith groups has also occurred in Victoria, caused by LGBTQI+ victories.
In SA there is the party takeover openly led by Senator Alex Antic. He made a name for himself through his name hostility towards Covid-19 vaccines and his opposition to trans and abortion rights.
Antique praises Trump and is making connections with conservatives who are or have been close to him, including Steven Bannon and Donald Trump Jr.
In Queensland, Crisafulli’s desperate attempts to avoid being pinned down on abortion offer a local version of the themes of the 2024 presidential election.
Because Republicans have experienced significant voter resistance over abortion, Trump has charted an uncomfortable course.
He claims sole responsibility for the ending of Roe v Wade, while at the same time denying any connection to the film abortion bans now in effect in many states.
Like Crisafulli, Trump was unclear about what his victory would mean for reproductive rights.
Political commentator Mark Kenny concludes that a βideological struggle‘is unfolding among Australian liberals.
As in the US, staunch hostility to abortion is proving crucial for these politicians as a way to communicate their priorities to voters and define themselves relative to others in their party.
