Image: Nauru
Asylum seekers to Australia have been deported for years to the tiny island of Nauru, where abortion is illegal, since at least the 2010s. Women who experienced rape and sexual abuse there were then often denied abortions in Australia, as abortion is/was totally illegal on Nauru and there was/is a lot of sexual violence
All abortions were and remain illegal on the island of Nauru, which Australia has been using as an open prison for refugees and asylum seekers for many years. An advocate has recently claimed the Abbott government in Australia was concerned that women asylum seekers and refugees were using medical transfers as a back door to get back into Australia. Whether or no, the fact was that there was a lot of rape and sexual abuse on Nauru and women and girls needing abortions.
Scott Morrison, immigration minister in 2014, overrode medical advice in the case of an asylum seeker in offshore detention trying to access an abortion. Ministerial advice and documents released under freedom of information laws reveal he had previously sought to prevent access to terminations on the Australian mainland entirely, including legal abortions under Australian law.
In 2016, Guardian Australia released the Nauru files, a collection of 2,000 leaked incident reports detailing harrowing instances of abuse on the island between May 2013 and October 2015. More than half of the reports (51.3%) involved children, even though children made up only about 18% of those in detention on Nauru during the time covered by the reports.
The deputy CEO of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Jana Favero, said in a news report this year that an audit on medical transfers at the time found that it sometimes took up to 12-18 months for an asylum seeker to get help on the mainland.
SOURCES: The Guardian Australia, by Krishani Dhanji, 7 June 2025. For the history, see: Bill-to-legalise-abortion-for-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-only-mixed-up-with-immigration-and-asylum-issues-withdrawn-by-Nauru-government, ICWRSA website, 15 November 2016; and Nauru: Three pregnant refugees and nearly 50 others denied medical transfers, ICWRSA website, 7 September 2017. PHOTO: Nauru, Rémi Chauvin/The Guardian.