I still remember the bright lights of the hospital ceiling, the cold, artificial white that makes time feel suspended. People stared as I screamed with physical and emotional pain. The sterile smell, the quiet rush of nurses, the doctor’s voice breaking through the hum: “I’m so sorry, but let’s work through the choices you have.”
Everyone in the room knew those weren’t really choices. They were kindnesses dressed as options, and the kindness mattered, but the outcome was already written.
As I was prepped for emergency surgery, I can still see my mother’s face as she spoke with the specialist. She was in doctor mode, calm and decisive, protecting me every step of the way. I felt relief because she was in control. Then I looked up at my distressed father and said, “Dad, I’m really afraid.” He tried to smile, and held my hand “Kath, we are so lucky mum is in charge and she can explain everything to us and what we can expect”.
That memory sits at the edge of every so-called “debate” about reproductive care in Australia, the personal truths buried beneath political noise.
Watching senior MPs twist the intent of Baby Priya’s Bill into a culture war about abortion, I felt that familiar hollow ache. It wasn’t outrage. It was recognition. Once again, grief had been turned into a headline.
The Fair Work Amendment (Stillbirth and Miscarriage Leave) Bill 2025, known as Baby Priya’s Bill, is a compassionate and commonsense reform. It is about grief, not politics.
And yet within hours of its introduction, Barnaby Joyce and Andrew Hastie were out clutching pearls about “normalising abortion,” performing outrage for cameras while families across the country quietly remembered the children they lost. It was theatre. It was a deliberate attempt to turn compassion into controversy and distract from the truth.
The truth is simple. As Minister Amanda Rishworth made clear, the Bill doesn’t touch abortion law. It closes a cruel gap in workplace protections so parents aren’t forced to choose between their grief and their job.
But facts have never been the fuel of these debates. Fear is. And fear sells better than empathy to those still fighting yesterday’s battles about women’s bodies.
According to Children by Choice, between 70,000 and 90,000 abortions occur in Australia each year, roughly the same rate as other developed nations. Over 90 per cent happen before 14 weeks. Only one to two per cent occur after 20 weeks, almost always for catastrophic medical or fetal reasons.
When South Australia modernised its abortion laws in 2024, the same voices warned of “late-term abortion on demand.” In reality, the reform allowed termination after 22 weeks and 6 days only in exceptional circumstances, with the approval of two specialists. These are not casual decisions. They are acts of survival made in heartbreak.
So why do some politicians keep reaching for outrage? Because outrage is easier than empathy, and performance is easier than policy.
The damage is not theoretical. I have seen how these headlines ripple outward. The patients who hesitate to seek care. The doctors who field harassment. The parents whose trauma is reopened by public debate. When a miscarriage or medical termination is recast as a moral failure, it isolates those who have already lost everything.
In my work leading the Working with Women Alliance, I hear from women every week who are navigating systems not built for compassion. Some cannot access reproductive healthcare in their postcode. Others face thousands in travel costs, weeks off work, or the silence of stigma. They are not asking for politics. They are asking for care.
That is what makes this week’s rhetoric so hollow. These men are not defending life. They are defending a narrative that keeps women’s experiences invisible and controllable.
I think back to that hospital room, the too-bright lights, the quiet kindness, the truth everyone already knew. What people need in those moments isn’t judgment. It is dignity. And dignity should not depend on the luck of geography or the noise of politics.
We should be talking about access. About consistent reproductive healthcare across every state and territory. About funding for clinics and training for providers. About removing the postcode lottery that still defines women’s health in this country.
Because the real threat isn’t compassion. It is the ease with which compassion is twisted into controversy and the willingness of some politicians to turn private grief into public theatre.
Every time a politician tries to reignite this war on women’s bodies, it tells us less about morality and more about desperation. Australians are not buying it. We know the difference between policy and propaganda.
Baby Priya’s Bill has now passed Parliament, as it should have. But let’s not ignore the political pantomime that surrounded it. The votes are counted, but the damage of the spectacle lingers. The debate revealed what happens when empathy is treated as weakness and when truth is no match for theatrics.
This Bill was never about ideology. It was about the most human thing we have: the right to grieve, to heal, and to be treated with respect.
And when the lights are too bright and the fear too big, that is what every woman deserves.
Feature image: Katherine Berney.