One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts says he will push for party to adopt blanket abortion ban

One Nation should move to ban abortion entirely, Senator Malcolm Roberts has told a Brisbane Christian conference. His comments are at odds with those of the party’s leader Pauline Hanson, who told the National Press Club on Wednesday it was only “too late to have an abortion” after 20 weeks.

At the weekend summit Roberts said he had learned more about abortion from the Church and State founder, Dave Pellowe, who describes himself as a “writer and speaker on Christian engagement in the public square, specialising in what Almighty God says about complex social issues”.

An audience member asked Roberts why One Nation wasn’t aiming to “get rid of it altogether”, to which Roberts replied that it is something he’ll be putting to the party and would be a conscience vote.

One Nation’s current policy is to “seek every opportunity to roll back brutal and extreme abortion law”. Its new recruit Barnaby Joyce recently spoke at a rally against sex-selective abortion. Hanson has previously said she is not against abortion in the first trimester, which is up to 12 weeks’ gestation, earlier than the 20 weeks she nominated on Wednesday.

The International Women’s Development Agency said on Monday the bills being introduced in various states were “not based on evidence” and “form part of a broader strategy to chip away at reproductive rights and bodily autonomy by introducing incremental barriers to abortion care over time”.