Last month I sat on the toilet seat and stared at the cheapest pregnancy test I could find at the supermarket. My mind went blank. I knew before the white strip could tell me. I was pregnant.
I live in Sydney. Abortion was decriminalized in New South Wales in 2019. It has been almost five years since my health care decision was not legally enshrined in our criminal code. While Australia is taking painfully slow steps forward, the US is moving backward faster than anyone can say, “I have concepts for a plan.” The Supreme Court’s reinstatement of Georgia’s six-week abortion ban this week confirms this.
I dropped the test in the sink and walked to my laptop. I opened my phone to my period monitoring app and tracked my pregnancy. I counted five weeks and six days. I have no fear that a prosecutor will subpoena that information to build a criminal case against me. I can book a medical abortion within a week. I don’t have to cross state lines to legally access this health care. I’m not afraid of my browser history being searched by researchers. Even though abortion isn’t affordable, its accessibility still feels surreal.
My abortion is the result of failed contraception. The decision to terminate my pregnancy is an easy one for me. I am taking a drug that causes a high rate of birth defects in babies. This risk would not matter to lawmakers in Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Idaho, South Dakota or at least ten other US states. Although some jurisdictions make obscure exceptions for a mother’s life, no law allows the termination of a pregnancy due to the risk of infant death.
Let me be clear: I would make the same choice if this drug were not a factor. My age, relationship, and employment status should not determine the level of regret or shame I feel about this choice. My abortion is acceptable simply because it is a decision I made. The ability to make this decision about my body and future is something I don’t want to feel secretive or destabilized about. I am grateful.
Last month, South Australian Liberal MP Ben Hood tried to change the state’s abortion laws to require women to undergo an induced birth and put the baby up for adoption at 27 weeks and six days. South Australian Health data shows fewer than five abortions were performed at 27 weeks in 2023. Hood described late-term abortions as “healthy, viable babies,” ignoring the fact that these abortions occurred for reasons related to the physical or mental health of the birthing parent or to fetal abnormalities.
In August, United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet tried to get the Senate to recognize “that at least one baby is born alive and left to die every seven days after a botched abortion, and that Australia’s health care system practices this inhumane makes deaths possible; and that the Senate condemns this practice and notes that babies born alive as a result of a botched abortion deserve care.” Babet did not reveal where he obtained this information. Greens senator Larissa Waters accused Babet of spreading false claims.
As Queensland faces an election, the threat of the Liberal National Party criminalizing abortion is real, given that almost every member voted to make abortion a crime in 2018. after from Queensland Minister for Health and Minister for Women, Shannon Fentiman: “This year, every member of the LNP voted against giving rural women better access to the abortion pill.” This is the future Queensland faces.
In Australia, access to abortion remains a postcode lottery. A woman in remote Western Australia may not have the same access or out-of-pocket costs as I do in inner-city Sydney. The Albanian government should focus on providing federal funding to make abortion more widely available. Instead, we see the anti-choice rhetoric rearing its ugly head again.
Australian politicians, overwhelmingly male, are using the US election to fan the flames of a fire we thought was extinguished. As we face a federal election in the coming months, these need to be extinguished.
We must shift the shame we have been taught to internalize onto those who are meant to harbor it, the right-wing politicians who have entrenched the belief that my body is theirs to make laws. Trump can “grab women by the pussy,” but when women are given the power to make decisions about our sex and reproductive lives outside of their view and control, we are labeled sluts. In Gina Rushton’s book The Most important Job in the World, she writes about: “Every parliamentary debate I have reported in which physical sovereignty was debated by men who fetishized motherhood, the most important job in the world, while at the same time supporting policies that life harder for mothers.” It was never about children, it was always about power.
Last week I visited a clinic where doctors were not afraid of being prosecuted for providing me with medical care. The emotions I have felt are overwhelming. The gravity of this decision weighed on me – it is not something I want to repeat. But it’s also worth exploring how these feelings can be attributed to the messages I’ve been exposed to. The anti-choice movement has wrongly convinced many that abortion is evil, an act of murder. I worry that the fear, anxiety, shame, and sadness I experience have less to do with my abortion and more to do with the learned belief that if I continue with this, I will have to wrestle with my morality if I ever want to qualify.” good” again.
As Trump and JD Vance reframe their abortion policies in the weeks leading up to the election, we are reminded of how fragile these belief systems are. Everything comes for the price of power. As I sat looking at two pink lines thousands of miles away, I understood that hating myself for making a decision about my own life is a level of internalized misogyny that the anti-choice movement designed for me. Australia cannot move in the same direction. Instead of succumbing to taboo, I will use that emotional bandwidth to ensure other pregnant people feel supported to do the same.
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Hannah Ferguson is the CEO of Cheek Media Co., the co-host of news and pop culture podcast Big Small Talk, and the bestselling author of Bite Back. Her new book, Taboo, will be published on November 12