It is easy to despair when we see how we far we are from reproductive justice, but we must take heart in the mass demonstrations against the overturning of Roe. The numbers, the anger, the persistence, and the recognition that we only get change by organising.

Ultimately the creation of safe access zones required legislative change, drafted by a coalition of women from a variety of political stripes, and subsequently endorsed by the High Court. The struggle is not yet over – access, particularly for women outside major cities, remains a significant problem. But the truth remains that we are in a much better place to agitate around these issues than we were two decades ago.

On Thursday, I moved through my busy day at a remove. Being occupied was best. At every other moment of my day, I felt two things racing through my body. Fear and anger.

After these events, women still went back to jobs where they aren’t paid, protected or promoted as much as their male counterparts, and they went back to their homes with just as many chores and threats of violence as before.

It is tempting to look from Australia to the result on the Emerald Isle with excitement and momentum, wondering where might be our next focus for reform in reproductive healthcare rights. But before we do, it is worth spending a moment reflecting on how the campaign to repeal the eighth succeeded.

I might need counselling, I’m not sure. But I do know that I have a future that I can be grateful for, thanks to hard-won abortion rights. For any woman (one in three, I read), who will encounter the vertiginous experience of an ‘unplanned pregnancy’ and who will consider abortion (or already has), I feel for you. I want you to know that there is a large community of women who have suffered the same problems, and that we live in a world that makes it hard to exercise autonomy over our bodies.

We live in an age of paradoxes: a time when Australia tries to conceal its mistreatment of refugees through various nefarious methods – for example, criminalising the disclosure of child abuse in the Nauruan detention system ­­– even as it trumpets its concern for violence against women, which is, according to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, ‘unAustralian’. Yet, in the case of ‘Abyan’ – the refugee on Nauru flown to Australia for a termination following a rape on the island and then deported before the procedure could even occur – violence is the direct result of Australian government policy.

When, during his run for office in 2010, a local paper asked Geoff Shaw to reveal his ‘secrets’ – things people in the area might be surprised to learn about him – he replied, ‘I’m a third Dan blackbelt in karate … I play footy for the Frankston District Tiger Sharks. I play the bagpipes and the drums. I love Phil Collins. I’ve seen him live.’ And so on.

When Victorian senator John Madigan trained his raygun-of-righteousness on the rate of ‘gender-selective’ abortion in Australia last week, the response was, largely, bewilderment: there is no evidence that the practice even occurs in Australia.