Gina Rushton

The Monthly • 31st January 2022

The first victim

Does the legal system put people through unnecessary trauma? The judge, who took up most of the screen, began slowly summarising the 16 charges of sexual touching. In one square a man wearing a face mask stood in the docks of a Sydney courtroom...

The Guardian • 8th February 2024

The world is turning away from Diet Coke. But you will pry it from my cold dead hands | Gina Rushton

Our fizzy friend, our spicy milk, our chemical comfort. Our afternoon amulet, the silver bauble we reach for on deadline, the Grey Lady who revives us when we have no pep left. In the first week of January, Americans acknowledged the anniversary of a...

Crikey • 10th October 2024

Yes, journalists should publicise each others’ mistakes — we deserve that and so do you

Journalists are just like you — humans who make mistakes. At a time when they’re under increasing pressure, should reporters be writing about each other’s mistakes? That’s the question our debaters are tossing around in today’s Friday Fight. Arguing...

Missing Perspectives • 22nd January 2024

Endometriosis: The Silent Rage and Chronic Pain

A chorus speak of the horrific pain, the organs that fused together in adhesions, the butchered operations, the fraught sex, the bowel complications, the side effects of treatment.

The Sydney Morning Herald • 19th December 2023

Why are doctors still telling women with endometriosis to become pregnant?

One of the first times endometriosis was mentioned in Australian media was in a 1949 article in the Catholic Weekly. Doctors in the piece prescribed pregnancy as a treatment for “one of the most crippling of female diseases”, which they claimed was...

Crikey • 27th November 2023

Conservatives don’t love babies the most — I do! 

“Babies are life, babies are adventure, babies are the future, babies are brothers and sisters for other babies.” — Greg Sheridan, The Australian, November 21, 2023 Like many good conservatives, The Australian’s foreign editor loves babies and is...

The Guardian • 8th December 2023

Mothers, of course, have abortions. And it’s time to accept they are the experts in their own lives | Gina Rushton

There are mothers and then there are women who have abortions. It might be the most powerful and pervasive myth anti-abortion lobbyists, politicians and their disciples have ever authored. When every termination becomes a decision to reject...

Crikey • 9th April 2024

Let's be sceptical of the right-wing culture war on fact-checkers 

Apparently debunking Bob Katter’s claim that every Australian child was given a rifle in the aftermath of World War II, or contesting Malcolm Robert’s claim that there are jail cells underneath Parliament House “benefits the left”. Confused? Me...

Crikey • 19th December 2024

Crikey’s editor says farewell, shares some gossip, and argues why independent media has never been more important

In early 2022 I unblocked Crikey’s political editor Bernard Keane on Twitter. I figured it was only polite before I began editing him. He graciously unblocked me too and neither of us acknowledged it. Little did I know, the first thing that would...

Crikey • 29th May 2023

Information is a national resource: Crikey's submission to the FOI Senate inquiry

Below is Crikey’s submission to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee’s inquiry into the operation of Commonwealth freedom of information (FOI) laws. This submission was made alongside our REDACTED series. Read the introduction and...

The Guardian • 29th October 2020

Women who require late-term abortions are being demonised in Australia – again | Gina Rushton

It wouldn’t be a debate about abortion without a flagrant misinformation campaign about terminations after the first trimester. A bill to decriminalise abortion was this month introduced in South Australia, the last jurisdiction to do so, and...

Crikey • 6th November 2024

Americans voted for Trump. Many also voted for abortion rights. What happens next?

In a country where a majority of people support legal abortion, American voters have chosen for president a man who bragged about his role in appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to...

Crikey • 28th July 2023

Labor is running out of excuses not to solve Australia’s biggest abortion access issue

This month marked a major win for reproductive healthcare in Australia. The Therapeutic Goods Administration finally made it easier to access abortion pills by following expert advice and allowing doctors and pharmacists without specialist...

The Guardian • 14th July 2020

Abortion drugs remain inaccessible, unsafe and unaffordable for many Australian women | Gina Rushton

It has been 24 years since the federal government chose the partial privatisation of Telstra over the rights of Australian women to safely terminate a pregnancy with abortion drugs. In 1996, anti-abortion independent Brian Harradine, who held the...

Crikey • 23rd September 2024

Women are dying without safe and legal abortion in the US. But will this shift votes?

“Promise me you’ll take care of my son.” Those were Amber Nicole Thurman’s last words to her own mother. The 28-year-old woman in Georgia died of sepsis after she waited 20 hours at an Atlanta hospital for medical care, as doctors delayed...

Crikey • 1st June 2020

The fight for reproductive rights isn’t over in Australia until there’s equity in access

Abortion may be disappearing from criminal codes across Australia, but a lack of access to providers means the fight is far from over. You can see how long these battles have taken in the faces of the women who were on the front line. A few days...