Gina Rushton

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...

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 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 • 18th August 2022

The one-man newspaper fighting for regional journalism

Most days, Peter Holmes can be found scouring the streets of Orange to fill the pages of the smallest newspaper in Australia. “I spend a lot of time driving around town getting yarns,” he says from the city of 42,000 in the Central West of New South...

Harper's Bazaar Arabia • 20th July 2022

When Is The Right Time To Freeze Your Eggs?

A woman sent an innocuous tweet from the frustration and isolation of the pandemic lockdown. “As a 35-year-old single woman who would like to have a family one day, these months dictate whether or not that can happen for me,” the July 2021 post...

The Monthly • 1st November 2021

Lockdown loaves and hampers

Rosanna Barbero passes a woman weighing raisins, then skirts around a pallet of Vegemite jars to enter a cavernous hall where a chain of volunteers is pushing hampers along tables – adding flour, vegetables and sanitiser wipes. The head of Addison...

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...

The West Australian • 19th September 2020

The smirking ‘psychologist’ who might change WA law

Victims speak out about Tyson Vacher, the Perth man accused of being a fake psychologist.

Victorian Women's Trust • 15th September 2020

The Anatomy of Assumption

“I’ve never had an abortion,” I corrected another friend. “I just assumed you had because you’re so obsessed with it.” They mentioned that I had barely reported on anything else for years.

Crikey • 6th September 2020

Women facing violence need protection — and their visa status shouldn't matter

Women affected by domestic violence should have access to all the social support they require. Visa status shouldn't get in the way of that. Anjali* had to make a terrifyingly quick decision in 2016 when her husband held a broken glass and threatened...

The Monthly • 1st August 2020

Doula by choice

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...

The Saturday Paper • 18th July 2020

Childcare centres at financial risk

Early in the pandemic, Dani Dafoulis tried to save some money by pulling her two kids out of childcare to look after them while she worked from home. It was “just impossible”, says the Geelong high-school teacher, to try to teach while balancing the...

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 • 12th July 2020

Lockdown pregnancies creating a 'shadow pandemic' of complications

Reproductive health and abortion providers say they are preparing for a 'shadow pandemic' following a wave of unintended pregnancies during the world's lockdowns. A heavily pregnant 19-year-old with high blood pressure lost her baby and went...

Crikey • 7th July 2020

The government has improved abortion access during the pandemic. Doctors are fighting to keep it that way

To help women safely access abortion services via telehealth, the government would need only to keep doing what services say it has been for decades: nothing. In March the government introduced temporary Medicare rebates for telehealth appointments...

Crikey • 28th June 2020

NSW victims of crime now have a new obstacle to collecting compensation

Thanks to cost-cutting, victims of crime will essentially take on the work of public servants. This month the NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman passed landmark reforms to child sexual assault proceedings. He declared the changes could never take...

The Saturday Paper • 27th June 2020

Victoria’s spike in Covid-19 cases

A cluster at a Brimbank meatworks, a teacher at an Albanvale primary school, outbreaks at two Melbourne hotels where travellers were quarantined, a Coburg family, staff at a McDonald’s and an H&M, a toddler at a Prahran childcare centre, a Coles...

Crikey • 21st June 2020

Employers have a duty to keep staff safe, no matter where they work

A landmark ruling has brought into sharp relief the potential responsibilities of Australian employers to workers experiencing violence. As the line between work and home continues to blur during the coronavirus pandemic, a landmark ruling has...

Crikey • 9th June 2020

Mesh-injured women win in the courts and Senate yet still wait for compensation

Women injured in vaginal mesh procedures have won a class action against Johnson & Johnson, but as the case drags on to an appeal, they are still waiting for compensation. When more than 1300 women with pelvic mesh devices won a seven-year legal...

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...