{"id":23515,"date":"2026-06-02T22:46:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T22:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/23515\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T22:46:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T22:46:17","slug":"barnaby-joyce-speaks-at-sydney-rally-ahead-of-bill-to-outlaw-sex-selective-abortions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/23515\/","title":{"rendered":"Barnaby Joyce speaks at Sydney rally ahead of bill to outlaw sex-selective abortions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine months out from the New South Wales state election campaign, One Nation recruit Barnaby Joyce has appeared in Sydney, declaring politicians are fearful of losing their jobs.<\/p>\n

The New England MP was the headline act at a demonstration in front of state parliament on Tuesday evening, which demanded tighter controls on abortion.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know much about lots, but I know lots about politics,” Mr Joyce said.<\/p>\n

“And the one thing politicians fear is losing their job.<\/p>\n

“What I see before me here is about 1,500 people who can hand out how-to-vote cards.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The crowd on Tuesday called for stricter abortion controls. (ABC News: Nick Dole)<\/p>\n

A private member’s bill to ban abortions for the purpose of sex selection is due to be debated in parliament on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The practice was already banned under NSW Health policy and formally opposed by parliament in 2019, when MPs voted to decriminalise abortion.<\/p>\n

However, Libertarian MP John Ruddick wants to explicitly outlaw abortions for sex selection reasons, and introduce penalties for medical practitioners who perform them.<\/p>\n

Under his bill, they could face fines of up to $22,000 or up to five years in prison.<\/p>\n

Mr Joyce, who travelled from Canberra for the event, told the crowd they must “keep the fire burning”.<\/p>\n

“If, by some perverse form of logic, it was legal to kill toddlers if they were the wrong sex, we’d have a demonstration that would go from here, over the Harbour Bridge, all the way over to Manly, and all the way out to Blacktown,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Yet, for some unknown reason, if they’re in utero, it’s OK.”<\/p>\n

\"Mr<\/p>\n

A private member’s bill will be introduced to NSW parliament on Wednesday. (ABC News: Nick Dole)<\/p>\n

Mr Joyce conceded speaking out on the issue could be a turn-off for some voters.<\/p>\n

“Politically, does this make you popular? Nup,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But you know why you do it? Because it’s the right thing to do.”<\/p>\n

NSW Health says sex-selection abortions ‘rare’<\/p>\n

Supporters of Mr Ruddick’s bill pointed to a study last year from Edith Cowan University, which aimed to find indirect evidence of a link between sex-selective abortion practices and higher-than-expected rates of male births in some migrant populations.<\/p>\n

The study \u2014 which examined birth data from 1994 to 2015 \u2014 determined there were “patterns consistent with male biased [sex birth ratio] among certain immigrant groups in Australia, particularly from countries with a strong son preference, such as India and China”.<\/p>\n

“While this may be indicative of prenatal sex-selection, our study does not establish causality,” the study concluded.<\/p>\n

NSW Health said a 2020 review found the practice was not widespread.<\/p>\n

“The report found that terminations are rarely performed for the sole purpose of sex selection in NSW,” a spokesperson said.\"john<\/p>\n

Mr Ruddick’s bill seeks to introduce penalties for medical practitioners who perform sex-selective abortions. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

The review found that between October 2019 and September 2020, 15,973 terminations were reported.<\/p>\n

Of those terminations, 13 were reported to have been for the “sole purpose of sex selection”.<\/p>\n

However, the review found that 10 of those cases were likely to be reporting errors, because the pregnancies were terminated within a nine-week gestation period, during which time there was “no readily available and reliable way of determining gender”.<\/p>\n

Liberal upper house MP Susan Carter told the rally’s crowd she would “like to believe” sex selection abortions were not occurring, “but it’s just not true”.<\/p>\n

“There is no justification at all for saying that someone should die because she is female,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We have to stand against this.”<\/p>\n

Mr Ruddick said if politicians believed abortions were not occurring for sex selection reasons, there should be “no harm in creating a law to say you can’t do it”.<\/p>\n

MPs will get conscience vote\"A<\/p>\n

Health Minister Ryan Park says he will not support the bill. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

While the bill is set to be debated in parliament, a vote is not expected in the near future.<\/p>\n

Both government and opposition MPs will be allowed a conscience vote, meaning they will not be required to vote along party lines.<\/p>\n

Health Minister Ryan Park said he would not support the bill.<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to see this part of health care back in the criminal code and back in criminal legislation,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not allowed at the moment.<\/p>\n

“Many of these issues have already been prosecuted, debated, discussed and resolved.”\"A<\/p>\n

Amanda Cohn says the results of the university study do not justify rewriting the laws. (ABC Sydney: Andrew Whitington)<\/p>\n

Greens health spokesperson Amanda Cohn said introducing criminal penalties for medical practitioners would scare them off providing abortion services.<\/p>\n

“It’s already against NSW Health policy for abortions to be provided on the basis of sex selection,” Dr Cohn said.<\/p>\n

“To that end, NSW Health staff would face disciplinary proceedings in their workplace, which is how you appropriately regulate a health procedure \u2014 without criminal penalties.”<\/p>\n

She said the Edith Cowan University study was “no basis to rewrite our laws” because the data was collected before abortion was decriminalised in NSW.<\/p>\n

“It’s not reflective of abortion being provided under the current legal framework,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine months out from the New South Wales state election campaign, One Nation recruit Barnaby Joyce has appeared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15149,22065,22060,22059,4918,22062,22074,22067,22075,22071,1856,22068,22072,22063,596,10071,22076,7747,11474,1955,22069,22061,22064,22066,12211,22073,247,1324,22070],"class_list":["post-23515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-abortion","tag-abortion-bans","tag-anti-abortion-protest","tag-anti-abortion-rally","tag-barnaby-joyce","tag-conscience-vote","tag-debate","tag-decriminalised","tag-dr-amanda-cohn","tag-edith-cowan-university-study","tag-health-minister-ryan-park","tag-libertarian-mp-john-ruddick","tag-migrant-populations","tag-new-england-mp","tag-nsw","tag-nsw-health","tag-nsw-health-policy","tag-nsw-parliament","tag-nsw-politics","tag-one-nation","tag-penalties-for-medical-practitioners","tag-politicians-afraid-to-lose-their-jobs","tag-private-members-bill","tag-sex-selection","tag-state-parliament","tag-susan-carter","tag-sydney","tag-sydney-news","tag-womens-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}