Opinion
Earlier this year, Senator Jane Hume pointed out what she correctly called a “strange anomaly” in the gyms in Parliament House – condoms were provided in the women’s bathrooms, but not the men’s. The faces of the public servants opposite her at Senate estimates were portraits of bafflement.
Nicola Hinder, chief operating officer of Parliamentary Services, jumped in with a rallying cry: “Senator, I believe it is absolutely wonderful women are taking care of their own sexual health!”
Hume asked: “I just wonder why men aren’t taking responsibility as well?”
It’s so telling, that in the building where important decisions are made about our health, our bodies, that it was somehow assumed that even male contraception was the responsibility of women.
It reminded me of Gabrielle Blair’s excellent book called Ejaculate Responsibly, in which she argues that blokes, who can get someone pregnant at any time with around the clock fertility, and have cheap prophylactics they can buy in supermarkets and convenience stories – unlike women, who need prescriptions and doctors’ appointments – should be the ones shouldering responsibility for unwanted pregnancies.
Which brings me to One Nation. I appreciate it is somewhat chaotically developing, honing – and even backtracking – policy on the run, but its desire to ignite debate about abortion in this country seems misguided, misinformed, futile. And often conflicting.
Pauline Hanson has said she is not opposed to first-trimester terminations. But this week at a rally, One Nation’s new NSW leader, Mike Newman, said his party wanted to stop all abortions. He later described this as a “foot-in-the-mouth moment”.
The party’s official policy is to “seek every opportunity to roll back brutal and extreme abortion law so that both unborn babies and pregnant women will have a level of legal and medical protection once again”. The party wants to reduce the gestational limit for abortions, and target practices that are either already discouraged by clinical guidelines– like sex-selective abortion – or are not currently legal, such as the organ harvesting of aborted fetuses.
Isn’t it kinda nuts to start debating things that don’t currently occur?
And after all, sometimes the best solutions are the simplest.
Why not just hand out condoms at public meetings? Place them in bathrooms at pubs and clubs? Cheap, mostly effective, direct.
One thing we have learnt from the bitter fights in America over reproductive rights is that focusing immense legal, financial and cultural resources on banning abortion through the courts or legislature has been counter-productive.
Since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, the number of abortions has risen markedly in the US, even though it has been harder to obtain them in several states. According to data from Guttmacher, in 2020 – the last year with comprehensive national estimated figures before Dobbs – the number of clinician-provided abortions in America was about 930,000. It rose to 1.05 million in 2023 and by 2025 was 1.13 million, a 21 per cent hike from 2020.
From 2020 to 20225, the abortion rate for women aged 15 to 44 climbed, from about 14.4 terminations per 1000 to 16.7. There are numerous reasons for this, but it’s mostly due to the telehealth consultations where doctors in states with “shield laws” can prescribe abortion pills to women in states with bans on them, and a swift expansion of this kind of medication abortion.
You’d imagine such figures might give political operatives pause.
But clearly an inchoate group of anti-abortion activists, buoyed by the rise in support for One Nation, has renewed efforts to pull back access to abortion after it was decriminalised in all states and territories.
One of the smartest arguments I have seen about how to try to sensibly bring down the rate of unplanned pregnancies is that of Gabrielle Blair. She posted the now viral thread – which became the book – correctly suggesting that if men ejaculated responsibly, the abortion rate would go down.
She argues that we have long misplaced the bulk of the burden of managing the risk, cost and stigma of pregnancies on women. Every unwanted pregnancy starts with a man ejaculating, and women are only fertile for a day or two a month, while men are fertile all day, every day, from puberty. This makes men uniquely positioned to prevent pregnancy. Additionally, man’s pleasure is essential for pregnancy, a woman’s is not.
So, instead of the constant, often ugly, to-and-fro over women’s bodies and the laws that control them, Blair suggests asking men to control their output instead. Sure, condoms can slightly reduce pleasure – but the potential pain of not using them is far greater.
The pill, she points out, has a long list of often brutal side effects, does not allow much for mistakes or forgetfulness or disruption, and is not easily accessible.
Vasectomies are safe, relatively painless and reversible.
But how many men are held responsible for abortions? A 2017 Australian study found one in six women and one in 10 men had experienced or been a partner in an abortion, a curious gap. In 2025, American analysis found one in five men of reproductive age reported “abortion involvement”.
It should be obvious that the way to drop an abortion rate is not by shouting at women walking into clinics, but by boosting use, and availability, of contraceptives. A Norwegian study found shifting non-users to consistent condom use should have a “substantial effect” on the abortion rate.
Yet in Australia, after an increase in the 2000s and 2010s, fewer young people are using condoms –the national Australian Secondary Students and Sexual Health surveys found that the percentage of sexually active high school students who used condoms fell from 46.3 in 2013 to 38.5 in 2018.
The decline is sharper in the US.
Hume and Blair are asking the right questions.
Red-wrapped “I’m HUGE” Donald Trump condoms, which first appeared in joke stores when he was vowing to roll back reproductive rights, are now part of the official collection of the National Museum of American History. Yet when asked by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd if, “when he was a swinging bachelor in Manhattan”, he was “ever involved with anyone who had an abortion”, Trump ducked. “Such an interesting question. So, what’s your next question?”
Julia Baird is a journalist, author and regular columnist. Her latest book is Bright Shining: How grace changes everything.
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Julia Baird is a journalist, author and regular columnist. Her latest book is Bright Shining: how grace changes everything.Connect via X, Facebook or email.
