One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts says he will push for party to adopt blanket abortion ban | One Nation
Senator Malcolm Roberts told the Christian conference in Brisbane that One Nation must take action to ban abortion altogether.
Her comments contrast with those of party leader Pauline Hanson, who told the National Press Club on Wednesday that after 20 weeks it was “too late to have an abortion”.
A Church and State summit at the weekend heard how anti-abortion groups formed an alliance nearly two years ago to campaign for changes to the law and replacement of politicians who disagreed.
An audience member asked Roberts why One Nation wasn’t aiming to “get rid of this completely.”
“This is becoming my goal.” Roberts said.
“This is something I would present to the party. We need to rethink some things.” [but] “This will be a vote of conscience.”
One Nation’s current policy is to “seek every opportunity to roll back cruel and extreme abortion legislation.” The group’s new member, Barnaby Joyce, recently spoke at an anti-sex-selective abortion rally.
Hanson has She has previously said she is not against abortion in the first trimesterIt means 12 weeks of pregnancy, which is earlier than the 20 weeks she nominated on Wednesday.
“I’m not against women having to have abortions for medical reasons in some cases,” she said at the press club.
“I would rather educate women about using birth control than having an abortion. There are already too many abortions in this country.”
One Nation did not respond to a request for policy clarity.
During the weekend summit, Roberts said she learned more about abortion from Church and State founder Dave Pellowe, who described himself as “an author and speaker on Christian public engagement, specializing in what Almighty God has to say about complex social issues.”
Roberts was in the front row as Pellowe told the crowd that women who engage in “child sacrifice” are condemned by God and guilty of murder and that “feminism has a demonic influence on the culture that normalizes, medicalizes, subsidizes, and industrializes child sacrifice.”
“My job here this morning is not to condemn women who kill their children, because God already does that,” Pellowe said.
“Every murderer knows he is guilty of murder.”
Church and State aim to “effectively save culture” by bringing the Gospel into the public sphere and especially into politics. Pellowe has talked about the “long walk” before. Infiltrating political parties “en masse”.
“Let’s end the careers of politicians who want to continue financing the murder of Australians,” Pellowe said on Saturday.
“They need to be changed… Every day there is an opportunity to repent, to rehabilitate, and to do the right thing. But until you do that, you’re fired. You’re gone.”
The anti-abortion movement has become more vocal since abortion was decriminalized in Australia and the dismissal of Roe v Wade in the United States.
There have been numerous legislative attempts to remove it from the health code and put it back into the criminal code.
A recent Queensland bill banning nurses and midwives from prescribing abortion pills was rejected; a gender-selective bill is before the NSW parliament; and a South Australian bill to restrict abortion from 25 weeks was rejected on Wednesday night. While it passed the 22-seat upper house with the help of three new One Nation MLCs, it was soundly defeated in the lower house by 36 votes to nine.
Former One Nation MP Sarah Game, who left to form the Fair Go party in May last year, later left the party to join Family First on Tuesday night, introducing the bill in the upper house and One Nation MP Chantelle Thomas in the lower house.
Prime Minister Peter Malinauskas, treasurer Tom Koutsantonis, opposition leader Ashton Hurn, four One Nation MPs, Liberal MP Sam Telfer and Labor MP Michael Brown voted for the bill.
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in a statement that Game’s bill would “eliminate access to abortion in a range of serious and complex circumstances. It also ignores a woman’s quality of life, including where continuing a pregnancy poses significant risks to a person’s physical or mental health.”
At the summit, Matthew Cliff from right-wing lobby group Cherish Life said they had been working with the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), FamilyVoice, Australian Family Association, Answers in Genesis and anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe for two years.
“We continue to work, we are always developing strategies,” he said.
The ACL’s Rob Norman said Cherish Life was “obviously the tip of the spear” of a coalition of anti-abortion groups.
A press release on the SA bill was jointly issued by Australia Life (the company for which Howe works with her husband James Howe) and its subsidiaries BirdFlip and Tradies for Babies, as well as ACL, Love Australia, Pro-life Health Professionals Australia, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia, Family First and FamilyVoice.
The International Women’s Development Agency said Monday that the bills filed in several states are “not based on evidence” and “form part of a broader strategy to undermine reproductive rights and bodily autonomy by imposing increasing barriers to abortion care over time.”
