Experts have said this bill is predicated on misinformation and there are already restrictions in the current Health Act to prevent sex selection abortions for non-medical

reasons.

The New South Wales Health Department has come out.

It's debunked the evidence that's been provided on that.

They've said that potentially maybe three abortions out of tens of thousands of abortions might have occurred for sex selective reasons, but we don't know.

And yet it's being generated as this massive crisis that everyone should be mobilized around.

But it doesn't have any grounds in any of the data or evidence that we have in Australia.

Why should we be concerned about abortion rights being chipped away at here in Australia?

In terms of the abortion debate, do we know if American pro-life organizations are having a direct input into the sort of policies Pauline Hanson is espousing now or suggesting she would back here?

There are groups within the US, for example, the Alliance Defending Freedom is probably the most famous, which have very powerful international arms.

And after Roe v.

Wade was overturned in the United States in 2022, and the constitutional right to abortion was ended, in the United States, those groups both continue to try and end abortion rights in the US, but they also begin funneling money outwards.

So the Alliance Defending Freedom, for example, has poured quite a lot of money into the UK, specifically into money for Nigel Farage and reform, and that is quite well documented that Nigel Farage and reform, which in some ways is like one nation's UK equivalent, have become more avowedly anti-abortion in the last two to three years.

We don't have specific evidence of the ADF, for example, giving funding to anti-abortion groups here in Australia.

But we do know that there's a long history of US influence and interest in Australia.

Wade, a lot of people here imagined that this issue was settled in Australia and What do you think happens and what's at stake here if it continues to be given prominence, to be politicised by people not only but including Pauline Hanson?

Why do you think that would be if such a, a small amount of Australians oppose it?

I think that the, the kind of current experimentation going on within One Nation around abortion is, uh, kind of reflective of broader currents.

So, you know, for most of the 21st century, when abortion legislation has come up, it has been to decriminalize or to improve access.

So the story of Australia in the 21st century is a story of kind of liberalizing abortion access and removing it from the criminal code and regulating it like healthcare.

It's really only been in the last few years that we've started to see this kind of surge in anti-abortion bills.

Um, you know, this really begins in about 2024 when you start to see them in South Australia, and you start to see it coming up in the Queensland election.

And then there were bills last year, um, and now we've got a kind of three issues all happening in June, and so I think what we're seeing is One Nation potentially hoping to capitalize on what it sees as a kind of, uh, a new way of bringing American-style culture wars into Australia.

Prudence, has the coalition, like, had a clear line on this issue in recent years?