In South Australia, women's bodies are a political battleground
By Ashlee Wilson
Anti-choice activists centre the debate around late-term abortions, but they ignore the reality of these healthcare decisions.
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A woman’s body is not a political battleground, but South Australia is turning it into one. South Australian MP Sarah Game’s proposed abortion amendments would ban most abortions after 22 weeks and 6 days, allowing exceptions only for severe maternal or fetal health risks. Currently, abortion after this period is permitted with the approval of two medical practitioners, including consideration of mental health. The new amendments would remove that safeguard. Even with exceptions, this is not reproductive freedom. Women’s reproductive autonomy should not require state approval.
South Australia decriminalised abortion in 2021 (effective in 2022), but it has remained politically contested ever since. Just last year, a proposal forcing women to deliver a live baby after 28 weeks failed by just one vote. Barely three years after decriminalisation, Game introduced her proposed abortion bill to Parliament. Hundreds rallied in support, while opponents warned it was a step backwards for women. Game claims that between July 2022 and December 2024, '79 healthy viable babies’ were ‘killed’, but numbers don’t capture the reality: behind each ‘case’ is a woman forced to fight for control over her own body. Game’s campaign is backed by anti-choice activist Joanna Howe, a law professor at the University of Adelaide who is at the helm of the local movement. The earliest Parliament could vote on this bill is next month. Until then, women are left to sit and wait while their rights hang in the balance.
While South Australian GPs like Dr Clare Keogh warn that this bill will reinforce the ‘politicisation of reproductive healthcare’ , Game insists that once a baby is ‘viable’ it deserves legal protection. But the medical idea of viability is not stable or clear: at 23 weeks, fetal survival rates are only 23 to 27 percent. Even at 24 weeks, the point most doctors consider viable, survival requires intensive medical intervention. Over 70 percent of 23-week-old fetuses cannot survive without the woman’s body. This bill prioritises fetal life over women’s reproductive autonomy. Howe claims that ‘we are living in a dystopia where babies have no human rights protection right up until birth.’ The real dystopia? That fetuses gain rights whilst women lose theirs.
Reproductive autonomy is a woman’s right to control her fertility and sexual health without interference or coercion. When respected, it ensures women have access to safe, uncoerced healthcare. American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson argued in 1971 that no one, including a fetus, has the right to use another person’s body, even to keep it alive. A decade later, legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon observed that “the problem has been that if the fetus has any standing in the debate, it has more weight than women do”. More than 40 years on, this remains the problem; a fetus is deemed a higher priority than a woman. It is the 21st century, yet women’s social progress continues to collapse under ideology - and alarmingly, women themselves are tightening the noose around their own autonomy. Abortion rhetoric should not be back on political agendas like it is the 1970s.
Some try to frame the bill as ‘reasonable’ because it allows exceptions. But exceptions don’t make it fair, they politicise healthcare. Instead of doctors and women deciding what is safe, politicians get the final say. A woman in crisis is forced to plead her case, as if her body were up for debate. Imagine lying in a hospital bed, knowing time is running out, while strangers argue over whether you deserve care. Every minute lost could cost your health, your fertility, even your life. That isn’t compassion. That is cruelty disguised as compromise. The political aim here is clear: to incrementally push back the rights of women, make doctors second-guess whether they are falling foul of the law and ultimately take away choice without outright bans. This is strategy that was long used in the U.S. prior to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
What we are seeing here is reproductive coercion, the deliberate prevention of a person from making decisions about their reproductive health. This is structural violence, operating through laws and policies that disadvantage women leaving their health and decisions at the mercy of others. Women’s health becomes powerless under the law, and every ‘exception’ normalises control.
Australia may not have reached the extremes of the U.S., where 10-year-old rape victims are denied abortions, 13-year-olds are becoming mothers, women are dying from medical neglect and brain-dead women are kept alive as fetal incubators. But the 23-week amendment is a warning. Roe v. Wade did not fall overnight, but through the slow erosion of ‘reasonable’ restrictions until rights disappeared altogether. South Australia risks following the same path. Passing this bill sets a precedent for further restrictions, such as earlier gestation limits, hitting women without financial means or supportive healthcare the hardest.
Abortion is healthcare, not a privilege. Restricting it is about control, not protection. Conditional rights are not rights; they are privileges the state can revoke. South Australia’s proposed amendments threaten women’s reproductive autonomy and health. Abortion is more than ‘a choice’, it ensures equal healthcare access and recognition as citizens. While the bill enforces systemic control over women’s bodies and makes decisions contingent on ideology or exceptions. Women are not breeder citizens or bargaining chips for political gain. Our rights cannot be negotiated away. We deserve real, unconditional freedom. Anything less is just structural violence disguised as policy.
About the author
Ashlee Wilson
Ashlee is an Honours student in philosophy at Deakin University, where she researches reproductive rights, abortion laws, bio-politics, and feminist political theory. Her work examines how law and policy intersect to shape and regulate women’s reproductive lives, with the aim of supporting women in securing and exercising their rights.
I can’t believe Joanna Howe can still be employed by a university with her anti woman views, while people can lose their jobs for supporting Palestine. How can she teach law when she is trying to tear down our legal rights? The world is upside down.