Late-term abortion bill slammed as ‘conservative dog whistle’
Fair Go leader Sarah Game is introducing a late-term abortion bill to SA parliament in the last sitting days before next year’s election, drawing criticism for sowing division as the state election looms.
Former Greens and now Independent MLC Tammy Franks has labelled the Upper House bill a “conservative dog whistle and a bid for votes”.
Game – a former One Nation MLC – announced on Friday she would introduce the Termination of Pregnancy (Restrictions on Terminations after 22 Weeks and 6 Days) Amendment Bill 2025 during the last sitting days of parliament before the March state election.
She confirmed that controversial University of Adelaide professor and anti-abortion campaigner Joanna Howe helped Game – who earlier this year launched her party Sarah Game Fair Go For Australians – draft the bill.
Howe was banned from parts of SA parliament’s upper house last year after allegations she pressured politicians on the night of a previous vote on late-term abortion law.
Howe denied the allegations at the time, and in a post to social media today said allowing late-term abortions where the mother’s life was not at risk is “a tragedy which needs to be urgently fixed”.
Game said the bill also had the input of obstetricians, neonatologists, psychiatrists, and midwives and would “prevent healthy, viable babies from being aborted after 22 weeks and six days”.
But Franks was critical of the move, saying it was “a massive step backwards”.
“For Sarah Game to anticipate that she knows each and every difficult, complex situation that’s going to face someone going through a pregnancy and can predict the exact day at which all information will be available is a furphy,” she said.
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“It’s actually disrespectful to the lives of South Australians to make those choices for them, rather than leave them in the hands of not just one medical professional at that point, but a team, usually, and that person who has to make that really difficult decision.”
Franks also raised concerns that late-term abortion bans could encourage less-informed, earlier-term abortions.
She said before abortion was decriminalised in 2021, women were “forced” into early abortions because there were provisions in the old laws that meant women didn’t have medical information to make an informed choice.
“Around that 20,21,22,23,24-week mark, there’s different medical technologies now available to women,” Franks said.
“They should be allowed to wait for that full medical information; their doctors and those people should not be rushed into these really difficult decisions simply by an arbitrary date that a politician says.
“Some of the most heartbreaking stories were women who, while they were waiting for the latest medical advice, watched that ticking clock of the previous time at which they could no longer access termination and were forced to decide whether or not to abort, knowing that there was possibly an incredibly dire prognosis ahead of them.”
Franks believed South Australians were tired of the abortion debate popping up in the election cycle.
“I’ve observed South Australian politics for decades, I think there’s no doubt that abortion is front and centre on the agenda for each and every election coming up in South Australia,” she said.
“I think South Australians will be horrified by that and reject it at the polls.”
Game said the bill would still permit abortion to save the mother’s life or in circumstances of serious health problems.
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“After viability, babies are fully formed and deserve legal protection,” Game said.
“It is time our laws protect the most vulnerable—healthy, viable babies—without compromising the care mothers need.”
Game will introduce the Bill on September 17, and said she is confident it will “pass swiftly” ahead of the state election in March.
Her move followed Conservative Liberal MP Ben Hood’s private member’s bill in October last year which was lost by one vote.
Hood’s Bill would have required women wanting to terminate their pregnancy after 28 weeks to deliver their baby alive.
Game said her bill was “completely different” from Hood’s and that though she’s “fairly confident” she has the numbers “, we won’t find out until we get there”.
Game has been a long-time supporter of pro-life causes, and was pictured at an anti-abortion group’s “Love Adelaide” event with Hood and several other state government ministers and MPs in 2023.
After Hood’s vote failed, Opposition leader Vincent Tarzia warned his party not to bring up the topic again.
“We’ve released our key priorities for the 2026 election and this is not one of them,” Tarzia said on Friday.
Tarzia today said Game’s Bill would be put to a conscience vote.
A Malinauskas government spokesperson said such debates are traditionally a matter of conscience for individual MPs.
