''There is no such thing as a safe abortion,'' he told The Sydney Institute on February 19, the week before he introduced his bill. ''Someone always dies.'' Madigan's bill is unlikely to go anywhere but he has done us all a big favour by reminding us what life was like under Howard and Harradine and how it could well be again under Abbott and Madigan. (For those with poor memories, please remember how Harradine won a ban on RU486, the so-called abortion drug, as his price for allowing the partial privatisation of Telstra). Don't say we haven't been warned. Then last week in Victoria, the maverick member for Frankston, Geoff Shaw, effectively sacked premier Ted Baillieu by going to the crossbenches and depriving the government of its working majority. He let it be known his two conditions for supporting the new government of Denis Napthine: reform of the parliamentary superannuation scheme to make it more generous for recently elected members such as himself (he only won his seat in 2010), and repeal of the state's laws that decriminalised abortion in 2008. Shaw is an evangelical and is, not to put too fine a point on it, rabid when it comes to abortion. When then premier Baillieu called him in to reprimand him over the infamous car-rorting scandal, Shaw turned the tables and abused the premier for having voted for abortion decriminalisation, according to a report in The Age this week.

Premier Napthine has said he respects the decision of the Parliament on the abortion law: ''I have no plans of changing abortion law to a new state,'' he said somewhat confusingly this week. However, actions may speak louder than words. Napthine, who voted against abortion decriminalisation in 2008, this week dumped Mary Wooldridge as his Minister for Women's Affairs. Wooldridge, who voted for the abortion law reform, was replaced in that role by newly promoted minister Heidi Victoria, who voted against it. ''There are two places where I think children should be safe: one, in the womb; and two, in the home,'' Geoff Shaw has said. All eyes will be on Victoria in coming months to see the extent to which Shaw uses the balance of power to hold the government to his demand for abortion law change. And if he does, Tony Abbott will have nowhere to hide. The recent women-only Galaxy poll that found two-thirds of women ready to vote against Prime Minister Julia Gillard still found deep levels of distrust towards Abbott's views on abortion. Overall, 39 per cent of the 800 women polled were concerned about his views, while with younger women, aged 18-34, a full 46 per cent were concerned. Abbott has recently tried to recast himself as tolerant towards abortion. Now, instead of believing, as he has said in the past, ''up to 100,000 abortions a year is this generation's legacy of unutterable shame'', he now blithely thinks abortion should be ''safe, legal and rare''. It beggars belief that he, or his advisers, felt it wise to take this language from Bill Clinton on this subject.

Abbott might just as well go around repeating that other famous Clinton utterance, ''I did not have sexual relations with that woman Miss Lewinsky'', for all the relevance that the ''safe, legal and rare'' comments made in the United States in 1992 have for this country and our context. Clinton's comments were inserted into the Democratic Party platform as a means of trying to lower the temperature on the fierce partisans discussions on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 US Supreme Court decision that legalised abortion at the federal level. In Australia, where abortion is a state law, a federal politician has no power to determine abortion's safety, legality or frequency. It is a red herring for Abbott to use such language. Perhaps no one told him that the words were removed from the Democratic Party platform in 2008. No one uses them any more and for a very good reason: women find them offensive. Dawn Laguens, of US Planned Parenthood, said earlier this year that language about making abortion ''rare'' polled very poorly because women found it judgmental and shaming. Similarly, Planned Parenthood has made the momentous decision to drop the language of ''pro-choice'' after research that shows most Americans feels the pro-choice/pro-life polarity fails to represent the actual complications of what it's like to find yourself with an unwanted pregnancy. Women complained that the word ''choice'' made the decision seem frivolous. If you haven't been there, you probably will never understand so just get out of the way and let women decide what is best in the circumstances in which they find themselves.

And as for men like John Madigan and Geoff Shaw, they need to understand that holding the balance of power does not give them the right to seek to control women's lives. It is shameful they should for one moment think it does. Anne Summers is a journalist and editor. annesummers.com.au