Sarah Game, a former One Nation now Family First MP, has been trying to restrict abortion rights in South Australia, but she failed again on June 17.
The health procedure was decriminalised in South Australia in 2021, but right-wing MPs and sections of Labor and the Liberals want to impose restrictions.
Game’s latest attempt is the third time conservative MPs have tried to push an anti-abortion bill through the Legislative Council. Liberal MLC Ben Hood introduced a bill in 2024 to require those needing to terminate their preganancy to deliver the foetus alive. It was defeated.
SA Abortion Action Coalition’s (saaac) Brigid Coombe told the ABC at the time that Hood’s amendments “remove the basis of informed consent and they don’t recognise at all the complexity of the circumstances that people are in when they need an abortion at those gestations”.
Game’s bill sought to legislate to ban abortions after 24 weeks and six days, unless the mother’s life is at risk or there are severe fetal abnormalities. Her bill removes mental health as a reason to seek the health procedure.
Game tabled her bill in the LC on May 20 and it passed 10-9 on June 17, supported by three One Nation MPs, four Liberal MPs and two Labor MPs.
Premier Peter Malinauskus had announced earlier that day that if the bill passed it would be immediately debated and voted on in the Legislative Assembly (LA).
LA MPs defeated Game’s bill 36-9. It is noteworthy that Malinauskus, Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis and Opposition leader Ashton Hurn voted for the bill. Labor gives its MPs a “conscience” vote on abortion matters. Unsurprisingly, the four One Nation MPs voted for it.
Saaac, the main abortion rights committee, ran a successful social media and lobbying campaign against Game’s bill. Along with Fair Agenda, its email campaign gathered opposition from more than 5000 people.
It said many professional organisations and groups had issued statements, including Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Royal Australian College of GPs, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Australian Medical Association (South Australia), Australian College of Midwives, Human Genetics Society of Australasia, Public Health Association of Australia, SA Branch, SHINE SA, Women Lawyers’ Association of SA, Law Society of South Australia, Working Women’s Centre, SA Unions, Fair Agenda and Business and Professional Women Adelaide.
After hearing that the bill would be debated and voted on in the LA, pro-choice activists, including Socialist Alliance initiated a snap protest outside the Adelaide Railway Station. They kept their distance from parliament, where right-wing academic and anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe was addressing an anti-abortion rally.
The pro-choice protesters noted that the far-right was trying to limit abortion rights in NSW and Queensland. They said abortion needs to be made free and accessible, especially for those in rural areas and First Nations women, and for that the campaign needed to continue.