This week, prime minister Julia Gillard chose to narrowcast Australia's reproductive rights conversation along an unspoken line: "what will Tony do?"

I'm a woman and a feminist. I was a member of the ALP. I have plenty of reasons not to vote for Tony Abbott; I'm looking for a reason to vote for someone. Thirteen years ago, I also had a two-part surgical abortion. I was approximately 16 weeks pregnant and living in London, and I don't regret my decision. I had a choice, and I exercised it. The National Health Service covered everything. Part of my heart exploded as my cervix was artificially dilated the day before I was operated on under general anaesthetic, but my conscience – then and now – is clear.

Despite this, Gillard's call rang hollow in my ears – it was an insulting, incendiary dog whistle on an area of policy where the population and both major parties are in broad agreement. Why use abortion in a US-style moral panic political wedge? Why cast the argument that the only person women can trust with defending a woman's right to safe and legal abortion is a female prime minister, when successive female federal health ministers have achieved little in providing Australian women with better reproductive health choices since the ALP won the 2007 election?

While a generic low-dose contraceptive pill has been subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), private prescriptions can cost between $45 and $70. Surgical abortions cost about $400. RU486 (the "abortion pill") is still not readily available to Australian women. Since its prohibition was overturned in 2006, a handful of doctors have been able to import and prescribe the RU486 at a cost of up to $800. No pharmaceutical company applied to market the drug – it was registered by the Therapeutic Goods Administration 10 months ago after an application by reproductive health organisation, Marie Stopes International. Only medical practitioners recognised by the group will be able to prescribe the drug.

In April this year – seven years after the ban was lifted - the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommended the medical abortion drugs Mifepristone and Misoprostol for listing on the PBS. Health minister Tanya Plibersek described the move as "an important first step". A caveat applies. The government will consider listing RU486, "once (it) has examined evidence on its safety". A final decision is due before the election. Quelle surprise.

A 2012 paper published in the Monash Law Review shifts the debate from hypothetical to the reality of an Australia where women's reproductive rights are impeded daily by the intersection of fixed inputs, such as postcode, income, age, race, culture and language with the vagaries of conscience of medical practitioners, and state and territory MPs. Whose conscience takes precedence? A doctor's conscience or personal belief is enough for them to refuse to perform an abortion in every Australian jurisdiction. It doesn't matter what a pregnant woman's conscience tells her, or what rights she has under Australian and international human rights law – the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

To build and protect the best reproductive rights framework for Australian women, the Gillard government could have introduced uniform, national legislation on abortion, something the Australian Medical Association called for back in 2005. They could have tackled medical practitioners who force women to go doctor-shopping based on a literal reading of the AMA's policy position to "inform" patients that abortions may be available elsewhere, rather than "refer" patients to doctors who will perform abortions. They could have done so by removing the conscience vote from the federal parliamentary caucus. After all, the party's 2011 national platform states that Labor will support the rights of women to determine their own reproductive lives, particularly the right to choose appropriate fertility control and abortion, and ensure that these choices are on the basis of sound social and medical advice.

So why not remove the conscience vote and legislate? Because the prime minister knows full well there are men and women in ALP parliamentary caucuses across all Australian jurisdictions – and the powerful men who back them for preselection – whose "consciences" run as dark blue on abortion as Abbott's does. No one disputes Abbott's conservatism – however, before the 2010 federal election, he committed not to change abortion law if he won, including the legal status of RU486.

There is a very real battle being waged for reproductive rights in Australia, but it is one the prime minister ignored when she lit a one-word touch paper on the eve of the introduction of a bill to remove abortion from the Tasmanian criminal code. Instead, abortion was deployed as a wedge issue, an invocation to Australian women not to vote for "that man".

I hear your dog whistle, prime minister. I respectfully ask that you put it down.