Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has declared that abortion should not be politicised as he campaigned with a Liberal candidate who has previously criticised his views on the issue.
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In the ultra-marginal Victorian seat of Corangamite on Tuesday, Mr Abbott said that Australia should never go down the "American path" and turn abortion into a political issue.
Mr Abbott was campaigning with Liberal candidate Sarah Henderson who in a 2004 column, wrote how she disagreed with the abortion view of the then health minister.
"I vehemently disagree with Tony Abbott's views on abortion. His characterisation of abortion as the "easy way out" makes as much sense as blaming men for causing all those unwanted pregnancies in the first place," Ms Henderson wrote in a column for the Herald Sun.
On Tuesday, Ms Henderson said that she did not resile from her views on abortion but said that the Liberal Party was a "broad church".
She also told reporters that she and Mr Abbott were "quite at one" on the abortion issue.
Mr Abbott has said his stance on abortion is that it should be "safe, legal and rare".
"No one should be making this a political issue, frankly," the Coalition leader added on Tuesday.
"It hasn't been a political issue in our country for years and years and years. The last thing we should want to do in this great country of ours is to politicise issues like this and go down the American path," he said.
"This is one area in which I say to the Americans, you do it your way, fine, but we're never going to do it that way here in Australia."
In one of her last speeches as prime minister, Julia Gillard suggested that abortion would become the "political plaything of men who think they know better," if the Coalition was elected.
Ms Henderson - a lawyer and journalist - is contesting Corangamite for the second time, after running a close second in 2010. Labor's Darren Cheeseman currently holds the seat on a margin of just 0.3 per cent.
