Right-wing populism will always default to a war on women

For those who oppose women’s reproductive rights, there is never a bad or inappropriate time to attack the right to a safe abortion.

Coalition supporters Barnaby Joyce, Andrew Hastie, Tony Pasin and Henry Pike evoked this last week by once again attacking what they called “late-term abortion” using “Priya’s bill”, a bill on parental leave for parents enduring a stillbirth or infant death.

That a group of men, including those with a personal history like Joyce’s, are once again using their parents’ unimaginable grief for their lost child to peddle the fiction of “late-term abortion” is just the latest example of the right’s willingness to attack women’s rights, whatever the political cost.