A recent change to the Family Law Act may still fall short of protecting women from being cross-examined about their sexual health history.
By Madison Griffiths
June 14 – 20, 2025
In the mid 1990s, Louisa* – barely an adult – made two decisions to spare herself a lifetime of pain. On two separate occasions, she slipped quietly through the gates of a concealed clinic, careful to avoid the protesters gathered out the front. Louisa had weighed up her options and knew that acquiring abortion care was her best bet. She wasn’t yet financially or emotionally fit to become a mother. Nor could she bear to be tethered to the man who had got her pregnant.
Almost two decades later, in 2021, Louisa arrived at the Family Law Court in Brisbane’s central business district. She was ready, she thought, to fight for the custody of her then seven-year-old daughter. The last thing she expected was for those choices in her early 20s to be raised in the hearings. On the sixth day, the independent children’s lawyer asked Louisa’s ex-husband if he was aware that, in a previous relationship, she had terminated two pregnancies.
Continued: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/health/2025/06/14/how-abortion-weaponised-family-court