Anonymously authored anti-abortion flyers that compare women who have had abortions to Nazis are turning up in letterboxes around Sydney, ahead of a vote on a bill that would decriminalise abortion in New South Wales.

The flyers ask "When is it OK to kill an innocent human being?" and make the misleading claim that the proposed new law would legalise the killing of an unborn child "up to birth, for any reason".

Darlinghurst woman Michelle Dennis found out about the pamphlets before she’d even arrived home on Monday night, when her neighbours texted her about the "crappy flyers" waiting in the letterbox.



"My three neighbours in my apartment block were so upset about it and got really offended," the student and tutor told BuzzFeed News.

Dennis, 33, was frustrated that it wasn’t clear who printed and distributed the flyers. The flyer had "END VIOLENCE AGAINST UNBORN BABIES COALITION" printed along its bottom edge, but the phrase returned no Google search results. It meant she didn’t know where to complain about the material.

"There’s no election at the moment so you can’t complain to the Australian Electoral Commission and there’s no signature so you can’t complain to the police about it," she said. "It is like a hit and run kind of pamphlet; like what am I supposed to do with this information? And thanks for ruining my week."

Dennis said one of her neighbours, a doctor, was especially upset because "there were so many medical lies about the actual procedure".

"It uses really graphic and violent language with really offensive imagery, like they say abortions involve tearing a foetus ‘limb from limb’, which is pretty full-on," she said. "I feel sorry for anyone else who got the pamphlet and doesn’t have anyone to talk to about it."

The flyers accuse New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian, who voted for the decriminalisation bill but is not one of its co-sponsors, of wanting to make abortions more accessible "for any reason, up to birth".



This claim has been repeated by Church leaders and opponents of the bill but rejected by doctors and lawyers, as well as by the co-sponsors of the bill. The legislation allows abortions up to 22 weeks after which two doctors must approve the procedure, which is rare after the second trimester.