The Right to Abortion Is Under Threat: Interview with USYD Women’s Collective’s Grace Street

Right now, there is a rising multijurisdictional campaign seeking to chip away at the right to abortion in this country, and ultimately, to outlaw the practice. And whilst much of the community considered that reproductive justice was a right hard one but now secured, there is a piece of anti-abortion legislation soon up for debate in the New South Wales legislature and anti-abortion support is rising.

NSW Libertarian MLC John Ruddick introduced the Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Sex Selection Prohibition) Bill 2025, which aims to end the practice of aborting foetuses based on sex, even though NSW Health found this isn’t occurring. But the bill is designed to open up debate on abortion, trigger racial stereotypes about non-European cultures and lay the groundwork for similar laws.

The bill also provided reason to hold the Life Rally Sydney on Gadigal land in front of NSW parliament on 2 June 2026, which was hosted by the face of the anti-abortion campaign, Dr Joanna Howe, and it presented a rising One Nation with an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon, as Barnaby Joyce appeared before a crowd of about one and a half thousand to call for the unnecessary law’s passing.

Those forces who fought hard to secure reproductive choice didn’t take this lying down, however, as the USYD Women’s Collective held a counterrally nearby in Sydney’s Martin Place, which included support from The Greens, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, Pride in Protest, Solidarity, and other groups, who were all calling for the Abortion Law Reform Act 2019 (NSW) to remain intact.

Hard won and threatened

In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the ruling in the 1973 case Roe versus Wade, which had served to provide a constitutional right for all women in the United States to have an abortion. And since this federal right was abolished, various US states have been passing laws to outlaw or water down the ability for women in their jurisdictions to be able to terminate a pregnancy.

Unlike the States where a federal right had long been established, Australian states and territories have decriminalised abortion more recently. The Australian Capital Territory was the first jurisdiction to remove abortion as a criminal offence in 2002, whilst Victoria was the first state to do so in 2008, and the last state to end criminalisation around terminations was Western Australia in 2024.

A coalition of NSW members of parliament led by Independent for Sydney Alex Greenwich saw the local Abortion Law Reform Act established in 2019. This bill was cosponsored by members of both major parties and the crossbench, and it came after current Greens Senator Dr Mehreen Faruqi had attempted to progress a number of prochoice bills in the immediate years prior.

But before all Australian jurisdictions had decriminalised, the Menhennitt ruling had provided a defence to a criminal charge of abortion. Then Victorian Supreme Court Justice Clifford Menhennitt set the precedent in the 1969 case R versus Davidson, when he found that if a doctor believed an abortion was necessary to protect the physical or mental health of a patient, then it was justified.

The threat down under

Many people in this country were dumbfounded by the developments around the reversal of Roe versus Wade in the United States. Most Australians are prochoice and the idea that the right to abortion might be taken away is beyond them. However, we now have Dr Joanna Howe running a vocal campaign to have the right removed, and ultraconservative politicians are joining the fray.

The Women’s Abortion Action Campaign (WAAC) was established during a meeting held at the University of Sydney in 1972. And having been established around the same time, the USYD Wom*n’s Collective was a keen supporter of WAAC, and the collective has continued to be a vocal proponent for the establishing and now maintaining of reproductive justice ever since.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke with Sydney University Student Representative Council (SRC) president Grace Street about the Ruddick bill and its intentions, the fact that the current anti-abortion campaign has been employing misinformation to emotively garner further support and the real risk that Dr Howe and her supporters are posing to local women’s right to choose.

Recently, anti-abortion activists rallied on Gadigal land in Sydney in support of the Sex Selection Prohibition Bill, which NSW Libertarian Party MLC John Ruddick introduced into parliament back in October last year. It seeks to stop the practice of people aborting foetuses based on their sex. And the USYD Wom*n’s Collective and other organisations counter-rallied the protest.

Yet, there is no evidence that the premise of the Ruddick bill – that babies are being aborted due to their sex – is actually happening, while the idea that sex selection abortion is a problem triggers old racial stereotypes. And Ruddick himself admits the law is ultimately unenforceable.

So, Grace, in your understanding, what’s happening here? Why was a rally recently held out the front of NSW parliament to protest an abortion practice that there is no evidence is occurring and further why are these people trying to see this nonissue outlawed?

I’ve been calling it a trojan horse. There are a few things happening here.

Firstly, if the bill is passed, it would provide a backdoor to revisiting abortion legislation, because they’re looking at a clause requiring the revisiting of NSW abortion laws every three years. So, this would open them up to a lot more scrutiny and potential further changes in the future.

But regardless of whether this bill passes, they’re using it as an entry level issue, which is being presented as about ‘saving our girls’ and this is seeking to bring in a larger supporter base for the anti-abortion movement and for future bills.

Secondly, on another level, this has been great for whipping up more controversy and culture wars around migration, which is the exact kind of tension that One Nation wants to create and benefit from.

In particular, they want to show progressives looking like hypocrites because they’re supposedly not fighting against a crisis of sex selective abortions or late-term abortions or sexism within migrant communities. And with a state election only nine months away, this is a perfect springboard for them.

Overall, this just causes more stigma around abortion, in particular, around the reasons why people seek abortions, and whether those reasons are valid or not.

This also places scrutiny upon those who provide abortion, and we know this contributes to the problem of abortion deserts in NSW.

So, you’re saying that this bill regarding sex selection abortions that aren’t really taking place inserts a clause into the legislation, so that every three years, this abortion issue must be revisited in NSW?

Yes.

Dr Joanna Howe is the face of a national anti-abortion campaign. She told the press at the sizable 2 June 2026 rally that following the passing of the sex selection law in this state, the campaign would next be moving onto legislation to ban late-stage abortions.

South Australian Family First MLC Sarah Game recently introduced a late-stage abortion bill into her legislature and whilst it passed the upper house in that state last week, it was then voted down by a large majority in the lower house.

However, the leader of both the SA Labor government and the Liberal opposition voted in favour of this bill. And there have also been another two recent anti-abortion bills that were unsuccessfully progressed in SA over the two years prior.

So, what’s happening in South Australia in terms of the anti-abortion campaign down there? Should the rest of the nation be concerned by what is occurring in SA?

We should definitely be concerned. South Australia has been warding off a lot more of these attacks from anti-abortion groups through successive elections and bills. Whereas in NSW, we have had a fair few years of quietness on this issue.

Joanna Howe comes from and lives in South Australia. So, that has been the breeding ground for her campaign and its supporters.

But it also seems to be a parliament that is a bit more ripe for such legislation. As you mentioned, the upper house just passed a late-term abortion bill that was then voted down in the lower house.

In 2024, they had a similar bill that was described as “Trumpian”. It said that people seeking abortions after 27 weeks and 6 days would be forced to have an induced birth. And that was only narrowly defeated 10 to 9.

So, we can see that the prolife campaign in South Australia has more chance of getting these laws through. And the fact that it is Howe’s home state sees more of a connection there.

We can definitely extrapolate that to NSW, however, as both NSW and South Australia have Labor governments with a Labor Right majority and infamously, abortion is the issue that Labor holds conscience votes on.

There is a big connection with the Labor Right and Catholicism. And while none of these laws have been successful yet, each one seems to get more support from that conservative base.

Whether it is things like abortion rights or, in particular, migration laws at the moment, we can see that Labor and Liberal politicians keep shifting right.

So, instead of saying that abortion laws are not up for debate or countering these narratives about migration, these major party politicians are capitulating a bit more and trying to seem like the sensitive centre.

Joanna Howe has made it clear that she wants abortion to be a big issue and a deciding factor in the 2027 NSW state election.

Howe herself is running a few Family First candidates. And interestingly, Sarah Game, who moved the SA abortion bill, was a One Nation MP up until recently when she shifted to Family First.

So, Howe is running Family First candidates in this state, specifically seeking to remove candidates from seats that have voted in favour of abortion and, in particular, she’s targeting National MPs who have voted in favour of abortion rights.

I just looked at her website, and she is already organising letterboxing in six marginal NSW seats.

So, Dr Howe is affiliated with this Family First party? 

Yes. And interestingly, she is not a medical doctor, but she is a doctor of law.

Dr Howe has been aggressively pushing a prolife message that at times has people considering that babies are aborted right before birth. She’s been rallying under pictures of two aborted foetuses that she has named Emma and Ruth, which turned out to be images of baby sugargliders.

So, the prolife campaign appears to rely on a lot of misinformation. Can you talk about some of the myths that are being propagated in the community and are leading people to join the campaign under false pretences?

The two main myths we are seeing at the moment involve the stage of pregnancy when abortions are occurring and the prominence of sex selective abortions.

This NSW bill is about sex selective abortions. They brought this issue up in 2019. In terms of dispelling the myths, a 2020 NSW Health review found that sex selection abortions are exceedingly rare.

The department found there had been just under 16,000 abortions during the year to September 2020, with 13 of these abortions having been listed as being done due to sex selection. But the review also noted that 10 of these were listed likely due to reporting errors.

So, out of 16,000 abortions over that year there were 3 said to be as a result of sex selective reasons. So, this is absolutely not an issue and the data shows that.

But even when the anti-abortion campaigners are presented with the data, they still go ahead with the narrative that female foetuses are being aborted at higher rates.

On the other side, which they tend to flip to once that first myth is dispelled, these campaigners start talking about late-term abortions, which isn’t an actual medical term, but is rather a dog whistle to say ban abortion.

Donald Trump used the same term back in 2016, when he was claiming that US laws allow doctors “to rip the baby out of the womb on the ninth month on the final day”.

So, we see with the debate around late-term abortions an encroachment upon what timeframes that are acceptable to have an abortion in. They want it to be taken down to no abortions at all.

Similarly, there is a lot of misinformation online that has been addressed by peak bodies, like the Royal Australia and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

That body reported in 2024 in reference to an inquiry that only 1 percent of abortions are performed after 20 weeks and that third trimester abortions are incredibly rare and are only for exceptional medical reasons.

So, again, we know that this is not the case: late-term abortions are not an issue. In fact, late-term abortion is not even a medical term, and it is essentially just a dog whistle.

You see this misinformation with the image of Emma and Ruth, which was a bit of a catalyst for Joanna Howe’s rally on 2 June.

But that wasn’t the start of her misinformation. Back in February, she posted a photo on social media, which she claimed was a baby being born alive after an abortion. Howe said a midwife had provided it to her.

Howe has been claiming that there are a lot of babies that are being born alive and left to die after abortion.

Again, experts have come out to say that it is extremely rare for foetuses to be born alive after abortion, and if it happens, it is only due to unviable pregnancies where people have said they would like to hold the baby out of the womb while it dies.

So, there are no babies being born after abortion and left to die.

But the Emma and Ruth images were completely ridiculous. People were wondering if Howe would fact check after this incident in February, but she obviously didn’t, as she started using the images of Emma and Ruth, which turned out to be baby sugargliders.

And even though she knew it had been misinformation, they continued to feature big images of foetuses named Emma and Ruth at their rally, which was really disturbing.

Libertarian MLC John Ruddick is behind the NSW bill. Family First MLC Sarah Game progressed the SA bill. One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce recently spoke out in favour of the NSW legislation, and Pauline Hanson in her address to the National Press Club last week also spoke out against abortions.

In the understanding of the USYD Wom*n’s Collective, what sort of organisations and forces are behind this campaign, which one could believe was all being coordinated by Dr Howe if one relied on social media?

Howe is definitely the main spokesperson and the main one garnering attention. But a few of the other main culprits and forces behind the anti-abortion campaigning are the far right and Christian lobbyists.

As a women’s collective, we have long seen them as enemies of reproductive justice and liberation.

For example, we have conducted protests outside the Catholic church’s so-called “Day of the Unborn Child Mass” at Saint Mary’s Cathedral for the past few years.

The new element is the One Nation and then we also have Robbie Katter in Queensland. Those people aren’t necessarily that religious.

Pauline isn’t very religious, but she will promote Christianity, when it suits her purposes, particularly when she is rallying against Islam, migration, queer issues and now women’s issues.

Back in the 1990s, Pauline Hanson said it was “every woman’s right to determine her own body”, but now she’s backflipping on that for the electoral benefit it brings from Christian lobbyists.

So, it’s again, the far right and Christian lobbyists: the same people who are always attacking women’s rights and queer rights. So, there is nothing too new to any of this, except for the addition of One Nation on the electoral side of the campaign.

And lastly, Grace, the USYD Wom*n’s Collective is campaigning hard against these developments.

So, how much of a threat is the prolife campaign led by Dr Howe at present in this country? And with the momentum that’s building if it starts to succeed, what sort of outcomes could it result in?

At the bottom line, we are taking Howe’s campaign very seriously. We need to have a proper sit down with other prochoice groups to consider the lay of the land, and see what is next.

Most of us in the women’s collective now, because we are students, weren’t around during the prochoice protests and campaigning around decriminalising abortion in 2018 and 2019 in NSW.

But the Student Representative Council and the USYD Wom*n’s Collective are taking the rise of One Nation itself very seriously and we can see that Howe has taken the rise of One Nation and Family First as being inextricable from being prolife.

As the popularity of these groups rises, it means the threat of abortion being recriminalised becomes more real.

That might look like One Nation MPs being elected and voting on anti-abortion bills, or it could look like Labor and the Liberals trying to recapture those votes by conservatising on the issue of abortion. But either way, we face a real threat here.

We know that the majority of Australians are prochoice. But there are a large number of lobbyists involved in this campaign and they’re trying to make abortion a huge electoral issue.

So, with a state election next year, we could see something like recriminalising abortion become a serious issue. John Ruddick has expressed that this is his ultimate goal, and that the sex selection bill is rather just a gateway to these greater goals.

These people are basically using MAGA-style tactics that have worked in the United States. These campaigners have levelled up with coordinated attacks across Queensland, NSW and South Australia, which shows that they’re growing and using this attention to go further.

Much of the feminist movement, however, is on the back foot at the moment, because we haven’t faced such coordinated attacks on abortion and reproductive justice for a number of years.

These forces are definitely posing a big threat. We know that their ultimate goal is to end abortion as a practice and a right. So, the stakes are high and the risk is definitely there.

Main image: The USYD Women’s Collective led 2 June 2026 rally in Martin Place, which was countering the anti-abortion rally featuring One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce and Dr Joanna Howe outside NSW parliament. Photo supplied by USYD Women’s Collective