Anti-abortion groups exist in Australia, and stage protests outside clinics providing abortions. However, the wider public seems largely happy with the status quo, and most politicians prefer to avoid the topic entirely if possible. Exceptions to this include Senator Ron Boswell, Senator Barnaby Joyce and the former federal Health minister Tony Abbott, who describes the current scale of abortion as a "national tragedy" and has proposed the addition of a Medicare item number for counselling to lower the national abortion rate.[2] Abbott later pledged to make no changes to abortion law, before becoming Prime Minister.