Australia – Why politicians are talking about abortions again

November 2, 2025
Hosts: Billi FitzSimons • Sam Koslowski
Podcast – 12:41 minutes

Last week, late-term abortions came up as a point of contention in Australia’s Parliament.

It’s all because of a new proposed bill that would make it illegal for companies to cancel paid parental leave if a baby dies or is born stillborn.

So what’s the connection between that and late-term abortions? And how common actually are late term abortions?

Continued: https://thedailyaus.com.au/podcast/why-politicians-are-talking-about-abortions-again

02.11.2025

parental leave for abortion

Australia – Hastie, Joyce ignite late-term abortion fight over paid leave for stillbirth law

By Natassia Chrysanthos
October 29, 2025

Four Coalition MPs have renewed a debate over “late-term abortions” in federal parliament, raising concern that laws guaranteeing paid leave for parents of stillborn children will be used by mothers whose pregnancies are terminated.

Outspoken MPs Andrew Hastie and Barnaby Joyce aired the issue during debate over “Baby Priya’s Bill” – a proposed amendment to existing laws that would ensure employers can’t cancel paid parental leave because a child is stillborn or dies.

Continued: https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/hastie-joyce-ignite-late-term-abortion-fight-over-paid-leave-for-stillbirth-law-20251029-p5n6c4.html

A doctor’s story shows ‘late-term’ abortion access is politically charged – but crucial

September 2, 2025
Prudence Flowers, Senior Lecturer in US History, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University

Review: Beyond Limits: Stories of Third-Trimester Abortion Care – Shelley Sella, MD (Random House)

In the United States, around 1% of abortions occur after 21 weeks. Yet these abortions are intensely vilified. Recall Donald Trump’s graphic and false claim that US laws allowed doctors to “rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day”.

For two decades, Dr Shelley Sella provided abortion care in the US into the third trimester of pregnancy: that is, after 26 weeks gestation. Her new book Beyond Limits offers an intimate account of health care and politics, written from the front lines of America’s abortion wars.

In Australia, abortion after 20 weeks gestation is also statistically rare – and most Australians agree that people need abortions after 20 weeks for a variety of medical and social reasons. However, in the last year or so, the focus on later abortions seems to be intensifying here, along with misinformation.

Continued; https://theconversation.com/a-doctors-story-shows-late-term-abortion-access-is-politically-charged-but-crucial-263920

02.09.2025

anti-choice lies

anti-choice terrorism

third-trimester abortion

Tony Abbott

UK – We still need to have difficult conversations about abortion

Landmark changes to abortion legislation earlier this week will doubtless spark fiery debates at heatwave barbecues. Here, Claire Cohen explains how Gen Z women can take the sting out of discussions about those who opt to terminate their pregnancies after 24 weeks

Saturday 21 June 2025
Claire Cohen

My mother remembers that, when she was a child, a friendly woman, probably in her thirties, lived next door. One day, that woman was gone. Another neighbour had helped her to carry out a “backstreet abortion” – in the days when terminating a pregnancy was illegal, but coathangers were not – and she’d bled to death in her own home.

I don’t even know her name. But I thought of that poor woman this week when MPs voted overwhelmingly to stop women in England and Wales from being prosecuted for ending a pregnancy outside the law – for instance, after 24 weeks. Thank goodness, I thought, we live in a nation where women no longer have to risk death or imprisonment in desperate situations.

Continued: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/abortion-decriminalised-24-weeks-shelagh-fogarty-b2774030.html

UK – My experience shows why women must be allowed late stage abortions

After discovering that her baby had a rare genetic disorder, Rowan Pelling reflects on choosing to terminate her pregnancy at 12 weeks

Rowan Pelling, The Telegraph
18 June 2025

There is no silence more ominous that the deadly hush of a previously chatty sonographer carrying out a 12-week nuchal scan on a pregnant woman’s belly.

I remember the sudden knitting of her brow and an ill-disguised attempt to mask serious concern. I could no longer look at the screen, so I turned to my husband Angus, whose face was dark with anxiety. He told me afterwards that he could already see our tiny, frog-like baby’s emerging features looked somehow “wrong”.

Continued (full access): https://archive.is/OpBwv
Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/18/my-experience-shows-women-must-allowed-late-stage-abortions/

18.06.2025

post-partum psychosis

USA – What Would It Mean to Defend All Abortions?

Democrats love to avoid it, and Republicans love to lie about it. But later-abortion care has never been more important.

Amy Littlefield
May 13, 2025

Ayana, 28 years old and 28 weeks pregnant, eases herself onto the procedure table at Partners in Abortion Care in College Park, Maryland. She is a Black woman with the tiny bearing and erect posture of a bird. Above her head, a flock of pink and blue butterflies decorates the ceiling. In a few minutes, a doctor will perform an injection to the fetal heart to end her pregnancy.

Ayana had spent months in turmoil over this abortion. As she chased after her two older kids while lugging her 1-year-old on family outings to the arcade and the movies, she tried to imagine hauling two car seats instead of one. While she changed her baby’s diapers, she thought about what a newborn would subtract from him. The family was already stretched thin.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/defending-all-abortions/

Late abortions are rare. The US just lost a clinic that offered the procedure for over 50 years

By KIMBERLEE KRUESI
May 11, 2025

To fellow travelers, Hannah Brehm likely looked like she was taking a belated babymoon well into her third trimester.

But she and her husband had received a crushing diagnosis: Their baby’s brain was not developing properly, upending their wanted pregnancy. Medical experts warned moving forward would likely mean her son would know only pain and suffering. The Minnesota couple wasn’t going to take that chance.

Instead, they went to Colorado, where for decades the Boulder Abortion Clinic served as a resource for women who looked to terminate their pregnancies in the second or third trimester because of medical reasons, like Brehm, or other circumstances.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-late-trimester-boulder-clinic-dobbs-56ff9a6998465e4f99b12a80e60b675c

Jersey – Abortion limit could be increased to 21 weeks

by Christie Bailey
24 March 2025

THE legal abortion limit in Jersey could rise to 21 weeks. However, terminations after 12 weeks will still not be widely available in the Island because there are “not currently” the facilities and skills required to “safely deliver later-stage terminations”, according to a recently launched consultation.

Proposed changes to Jersey’s Termination of Pregnancy Law were recently set out in the consultation inviting Islanders to give feedback.

Continued: https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2025/03/24/abortion-limit-could-be-increased-to-21-weeks/

24.03.2025

Jersey’s Termination of Pregnancy Law

UK – Nigel Farage’s frightening comments on abortion prove he is a second-rate Trump

I had an abortion the better part of a decade ago - it was a turning point in my life

November 29, 2024
By Rebecca Reid

Years ago a man told me that I was being paranoid about abortion rights. We’d been drinking wine all afternoon and for some reason I threw in to the conversation that my biggest fear about Donald Trump’s 2016 presidency was the roll back of reproductive freedom. I remember vividly him taking a drag on his cigarette and saying “not going to happen” before moving on to talk to someone else more fun. And I’ve thought about him, and his certainty, every time there has been a significant step towards the erasure of a woman’s right to choose.

So I thought of him again today when I read that Nigel Farage had weighed in on the regulations about abortion. Speaking to reporters at a Reform UK press conference, Farage was asked whether he thinks that the term limits on abortions are too late. He said: “You know, is 24 weeks right for abortion, given that we now save babies at 22? That, to me, would be worthy of a debate in Parliament.”

Continued: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/nigel-farage-abortion-second-rate-trump-3406686

29.11.2024

third-trimester abortions

South Australia’s upper house narrowly rejects ‘Trumpian’ bill to wind back abortion care

Legislation to force women seeking a later termination to be induced, deliver the baby alive, and keep it or adopt it out, defeated by 10 votes to nine

Tory Shepherd
Wed 16 Oct 2024

A child that faces a bedridden life. A girl with intellectual disabilities raped by a family member. Victims of domestic violence or reproductive coercion. There are a variety of distressing reasons women have later stage terminations.

There is no easy definition of when an abortion is considered “late” or “late-term”. It is generally considered anything after 20 weeks’ gestation, but the states and territories have a patchwork of legislation with various milestones.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/16/south-australias-upper-house-narrowly-rejects-trumpian-bill-to-wind-back-abortion-care