In this blog Dr Cassandra Byrnes discusses Queensland’s historic use of the vilification of abortion as a political tool to support conservative values.
On a global scale, we have seen how abortion is a contentious issue in the United States, particularly after Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) and the state-by-state response to that Supreme Court decision. Abortion has been used as a political tool to signal support for conservative values, often vilifying those publicly supporting, providing, and seeking access to terminations.
Abortion is a renewed election issue in Australia too. South Australian MP Ben Hood introduced a Bill that would see pregnancy induced after 27 weeks and 6 days instead of termination, Queensland MP Robbie Katter stated he would “test parliament” on abortion issues, and Senator Matt Canavan refuses to withdraw his so-called “born alive” bill.
Despite these moves to restrict or re-criminalise abortion, the majority of Australian voters are pro-choice, and research shows that the criminalisation of abortion does not reflect mainstream community views in the present nor in Australia’s recent past.
Examining Queensland as a case study allows us to survey the last few decades of tumultuous abortion politics. In the Sunshine State, the vocal minority who oppose abortion continue to platform it as a political issue, even after its decriminalisation in 2018.
Pregnancy Termination Control Bill 1980
Under conservative National Party Premier Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, who was the state’s premiere between 1968 and 1987, abortion law in Queensland had not changed in almost a century and was governed under the Criminal Code 1899. Despite appetite for decriminalisation in other states and territories, the Pregnancy Termination Control Bill 1980 (originally titled “Unborn Child Protection Bill”) was introduced by Minister for Health William Knox in a move to further restrict abortion access.
The tangible changes to abortion law would be manifold. While the Bill would reduce the penalties for people procuring their own abortion, it would have made access much more difficult overall. For an abortion to be legal under the proposed Bill, the serious risk of death or foetal abnormality was required, and the termination could only be performed by authorised doctors in specific hospitals.
Additionally, while the Bill had provisions for rape- and incest-induced pregnancies, abortion would only be legal in these circumstances if the rape or incest was reported to Queensland police within fourteen days, and police then verified the assault. A legally qualified medical practitioner would then have to ascertain that the pregnancy was the result of the assault before being allowed to perform an abortion, and only if the pregnancy was no more than twelve weeks.
One Wednesday May 7,1980 the London Guardian reported that Bjelke-Petersen himself was behind the formation and introduction of the Bill, to maintain political support from the Right to Life Association and the Catholic Church. Not all politicians were content with the Bill, as Liberal Party MP Rosemary Kyburz believed the proposed abortion legislation was “the most frightening piece of fascist legislation I have ever seen in my life”.
The vilification of the act of abortion saw MPs describe terminations and clinics as “production-line baby-killing centres,” “social genocide,” and “that final, inhuman step that would involve the killing of our young like base animals”. Despite the polemic, the Bill was ultimately defeated, with a 40-35 vote largely due to the mobilisation of pro-choice organisations.
Police Raids
The proposed 1980 Bill was not the end of Bjelke-Petersen’s crusade against abortion, however. On 20 May 1985, his government ordered police raids on two of the only operating abortion clinics in the state, seizing over 47,000 confidential medical files relating to abortion, vasectomies, tubal ligations, and other reproductive health services.
Acting on the directions of the state Justice Minister and Queensland Attorney-General Neville Harper, police arrived in unmarked vehicles and entered clinics, with patients running out into the street. This was captured by expectant television cameras and media reporters in Brisbane and quickly became national news.
Dubbed “Operation Lost Cause”, more than fifty police officers raided the Greenslopes Fertility Control Clinic in Brisbane and its Townsville counterpart. Right to Life Australia chairperson Margaret Tighe said that the news of the raid “was the best thing I’d heard in a long time and I wish they were happening in every state”.
In the immediate aftermath, a Courier Mail survey revealed a seventy-eight per cent disapproval rating of the raids, with the general public opposing both the invasive nature of the police and the indiscreet approach of the state government. Varying research conducted in Queensland in the 1980s consistently found that approximately sixty per cent of the state supported abortion within the first trimester.
Despite the outrage at the raids, the police search culminated in obtaining evidence that led to charges against abortion provider Dr Peter Bayliss in the landmark case R. v Bayliss and Cullen (1986), in which Judge Frederick Maguire set the precedent for future abortion law in Queensland. Dr Bayliss and anaesthetist Dr Dawn Cullen were charged with “having unlawfully used force to procure a miscarriage” performed on Tracey Torrisi on 25 January 1985. Prior to Bayliss and Cullen, the last trial in Queensland using section 224 of the criminal code occurred over thirty years prior, in 1953.
The jury returned a unanimous not guilty verdict. The verdict was indicative of the tacit acceptance by most Queenslanders that the state was attempting to progress alongside other Australian states and internationally. Judge McGuire was the first judge in the eighty-six-year history of the state Criminal Code to make a ruling on abortion law.
R v Brennan and Leach
Abortion law in Queensland would not be tested again until 2009 when Tegan Leach and Sergei Brennan were charged for attempting to procure an abortion using misoprostol and mifepristone. Surveys showed that almost 90% of Queenslanders supported access to first-trimester terminations, yet Brennan and Leach were still committed to trial.
At trial in 2010, Brennan and Leach both pleaded not guilty, and the verdict delivered by the jury found them not guilty on both counts.
While the “not guilty” outcome is reflective of a majority of twenty-first-century attitudes towards bodily autonomy and independent medical choice, the trial’s very existence reveals critical intersections in Queensland’s recent history.
Many media outlets, politicians, activists, and members of the community commented on the surprising nature of such an indictment in a “modern” country that ostensibly valued women’s reproductive choices. Although many believed the continued criminalisation of abortion was indeed “obsolete”, there was also undeniable support for the charges against Brennan and Leach.
Despite abortion decriminalisation in 2018, It is this fervent strain of anti-abortion politics held by a vocal minority that is rearing its head again in recent times.
2024 State Election
After the LNP win in Queensland in October, the 2018 decriminalisation of abortion could be overturned. During the 2024 state election, Robbie Katter, MP for Traeger, contended he will not only push for voting to amend decriminalisation, but that this would only be the start.
Katter has flagged a range of ways that he would test abortion law, starting with his private member’s bill. Despite LNP Premier Crisafulli’s last-minute declaration that he believes in a “woman’s right to choose,” he has also stated abortion issues “are a conscious vote” and voted against decriminalisation in 2018.
After Katter’s reintroduction of abortion as an election issue, polling found that 75% of Queenslanders supported decriminalisation in 2018. The last-minute swing to Labor has also been viewed as a movement to support reproductive freedoms.
The Crisafulli-led Queensland state government has taken a decisive, if somewhat surprising, stance on the abortion debate, by banning MPs from amending the extant Termination of Pregnancy Act, or even debating abortion in parliament for the next four years. But, as we have seen internationally, abortion regulations led by all-or-nothing governments do not always go to plan—will this decision backfire?
Cassandra Byrnes is a historian that specialises in researching the gendered nature of reproductive rights and fertility control. Her past research examined reproduction regulation in Queensland in the mid-to-late twentieth century, illustrating how political, moral, and social control over contracepting bodies influenced broader attitudes regarding agency and autonomy. She researches and teaches Australian history, gender history, and histories of sexuality. Cassandra has published on the history of ‘gender’, the history of women’s higher education, and the family, household, and health in the nineteenth century. She was a National Library of Australia Summer Scholar and a Global Change Scholar at UQ, collaborating with peers in interdisciplinary networks.
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