Gina Rushton

Late on a Wednesday night in April before Queensland’s coronavirus restrictions had eased, Brisbane grandmother Jo Bolger answered her phone and inadvertently became Australia’s first practising abortion doula. The next morning, she packed her hand sanitiser and drove to a hospital to meet the client about whom she knew just snippets – international student, completely alone, second-trimester termination.

Australian Christian Lobby Queensland director Wendy Francis could not clearly define what an abortion for "social reasons" actually was. "It's a very good question," Francis told BuzzFeed News. "Social reasons does not preclude any reason is my understanding. "Social reasons are acceptable for abortion at any stage of pregnancy."

Brisbane woman Kate made an appointment for an abortion at Options Clinic in the city's north in November 2015. The pregnancy was the result of a sexual assault two months earlier, and the mother-of-two said it was a difficult decision to end the pregnancy. "I didn't want to explain to this kid where they came from," the now 29-year-old, whose last name has not been published for privacy reasons, told BuzzFeed News.

Federal member for Petrie Luke Howarth's mother Denise used his electorate officer's computer and email address to send a flyer to a constituent. Denise Howarth writes that she is planning on letterboxing certain electorates with her flyers, which she attaches, ahead of next week's debate on a bill introduced by the Queensland Labor government to decriminalise abortion.

Last month, at the largest anti-abortion march the state has seen, Australian Christian Lobby Queensland director Wendy Francis and other anti-abortion organisations praised a young pro-life generation of women "rising up" to fight against abortion law reform. We spoke to some of these young women about their campaigning and beliefs.

"My mum is allowing me to share this story for the first time today ... in the hope that no woman will ever experience what she did, and that we change this legislation," the Labor MP told Queensland's parliament on Tuesday night, during a debate on a bill that would remove abortion from the state's criminal code.

Were it not for an "Unplanned Pregnancy Help Line" sign and phone number emblazoned across the front, Priceless House might pass as a Brisbane cafe.

As Queensland inches towards removing abortion from its criminal code, federal anti-abortion politicians have weighed into the debate. Senator Cory Bernardi last week took to the floor of the Senate to talk about sex selective abortion, ahead of voting in support of a motion moved by Toowoomba senator Barry O'Sullivan to condemn the Queensland government for its proposed legislation to decriminalise abortion.

Christensen wrote to treasurer Scott Morrison to ask that $9.5 million allocated to an international family planning organisation be redirected to pregnancy counselling services for young Australian mothers. At an anti-abortion rally in Queensland he encouraged the crowd to take action against that state's government, which is set to reintroduce legislation to decriminalise abortion once it receives recommendations from the Law Reform Commission.

The organisation's "About Us" section says the service redirects callers to "life affirming pregnancy support centres". Samantha believes it isn't clear to those who land on the page via a search and dial the number that the counsellors are anti-abortion.

To get an abortion in the Sunshine State you will need hundreds of dollars at short notice, because they are mostly provided by private clinics – Queensland Health estimates only 1% of abortions are performed in public hospitals. There is a Medicare rebate but it doesn't cover the whole cost. Last year Queensland pro–abortion rights counselling service Children by Choice raised $90,000 for clients who needed financial assistance via grants, donations from other organisations, and no-interest loans. "None of the money we provide to women comes from government funding," the organisation's Kate Marsh told BuzzFeed News. "The no-interest loan scheme we run was set up with capital that came from a philanthropic grant and most of the rest is fundraised, by us or by other organisations."

A few weeks before abortion was decriminalised in Queensland, Jackie Trad sat her electorate officers down and discussed whether she needed to hire security to protect them from protestors. "I had prayer groups turning up to my electorate office, people coming in and hurling abuse," Queensland's deputy premier told BuzzFeed News the morning after legislation introduced by her government to decriminalise abortion passed through the state's parliament. "My staff don’t deserve to come to work and

"God hates the hands that shed his blood," the protester tells the woman. "Just shut up that is so traumatic," the patient responds. "That is so fucking traumatic."

"One of my four-year-old's jobs is to check and bring the mail in, and she picked up a letter and a leaflet and brought it over to me and I saw it was this cartoon of a baby being dismembered," Thistleton, 37, told BuzzFeed News. "It is not something a child should be seeing."

Staunch anti-abortion federal senator Barry O'Sullivan this week made a speech in which he perpetuated what women's health providers say is the "biggest myth" about abortion in Australia. The Toowoomba LNP senator moved a motion to condemn Queensland government for its proposed legislation to decriminalise abortion, which he said liberalised abortion in his home state "all the way through to late-term partial-birth abortion".

A third of women experienced financial difficulties – and more than two-thirds relied on financial assistance – to pay for a termination, according to a study of more than 2000 women published today. The study was led by La Trobe University's Judith Lumley Centre. "Women are having to make very difficult financial choices and forgo essential items in some cases in order to pay for a medical or surgical abortion," the Centre's director, Professor Angela Taft, told BuzzFeed News.

Queensland surgeon Dr David Grundmann went to work on the morning of May 20, 1985, at the Townsville clinic at which he was the medical director. By midday he was holed up in a police station. "It came completely out of the blue when the police came into the premises and requested that everything be stopped, produced a search warrant and charged me with performing illegal abortions," Grundmann, 70, told BuzzFeed News.

The Australian Christian Lobby's Queensland director Wendy Francis said it was biggest anti-abortion rally the state had ever seen. "This is a personal crusade for [deputy premier Jackie Trad] and she is not in tune with what Queenslanders want," Francis told BuzzFeed News.

Brisbane archbishop Mark Coleridge has released a video in which he defends comparing the decriminalisation of abortion in Queensland to the eugenics program of Nazi Germany. On Sunday, the Courier Mail published an article in which Coleridge said he opposed an independent bill seeking to decriminalise abortion in Queensland because he was worried women would have later term abortions and use abortion for gender selection and for cosmetic reasons.