​Co-hosted by Sexual and Reproductive Health Australia (SRHA), MSI Reproductive Choices and SheDecides' Abortion Archives.

​We acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Peoples of the Kulin Nation, Traditional Custodians of the unceded lands of Narrm (Melbourne), where WD2026 will gather. 

​Yarning our histories of bodily autonomy

​Australia's abortion rights movement has its own history of courage, struggle, and transformation — from landmark legal rulings to state-by-state decriminalisation battles, from street-level activism to the voices of First Nations women whose experience of reproductive violence has shaped a distinct and essential chapter in this story.

​The movement that won those battles is now navigating new ground: an organised anti-rights movement gaining strength, advocates carrying years of exhaustion, and a generation of younger activists who inherited the victory but not always the stories, strategies and cultural expressions behind it.

​This session marks the formal beginning of the Abortion Archives' Australian collection. Australia is not a footnote to the global movement — it is part of the same wave of change that brought Ireland's referendum, Argentina's marea verde, and Nepal's landmark decriminalisation. And like those movements, Australia's history has produced its own visual culture: the images, the objects, the posters and photographs that carried the movement forward before social media, during campaigns, on the steps of state parliaments. The Abortion Archives collects that visual and material record alongside testimony — because these are not illustrations of a political argument. They are the movement's own symbols. They have never had a permanent home. Until now.

​Inspired by First Nations yarning methodology, this is not a panel. There is no stage, no script. You come with what you carry — a memory, a name you want the next generation to know, an object or image from the movement — and you speak and listen in turn. What is shared in this circle — with consent — becomes part of a living, community-authored national collection. Movements from across the globe are invited to listen and share in solidarity.

​We will be guided by six questions:

• ​What drew you to this movement?

• ​Whose shoulders are you standing on?

• ​What moments do you carry: victories, losses, turning points?

• ​What do you want the next generation to know?

• ​What has the movement not yet said out loud?

• ​What is one image or object that represents the movement to you?

​Space is limited to 30 — RSVP to secure your place.

​Community calls us here.