Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said on Thursday that Australia will not allow pregnant asylum seekers to enter the country from its refugee camp on Nauru island. The statement came following claims by a few activists’ groups that seven pregnant asylum seekers have been refused treatment on the island. The activists have urged the Turnbull government to allow them to come to Australia for treatment.

Dutton told 2GB radio that Australia has paid AU$26 million to the Nauru government for the betterment of medical services at the hospital on the island, as well as another AU$11 million for a hospital within the regional processing centre. He also said that the asylum seekers are using “blackmail” tactics to come to Australia.

"The racket that's been going here is that people at the margins come to Australia from Nauru," he said. "We can't send them back to Nauru and there are over 200 people in that category."

He said that if sufficient treatment is not possible on Nauru, then the international hospital in Papua New Guinea is another option for asylum seekers to seek treatment at.

"If people believe that they're going to somehow try to blackmail us into an outcome to come to Australia by saying we're not going to have medical assistance," he said. "We're not going to bend to that pressure. I believe very strongly that we need to take a firm stance."

Earlier this week, a pregnant Somali woman arrived in Australia to get an abortion done, which is not possible on the Nauruan island. She fell pregnant after she was allegedly raped on the island and Nauruan laws do not support abortion unless the pregnancy is critical to the mother’s health. The 23-year-old woman is a part of the Australian facility for asylum seekers on the Nauruan island.

Greens Senator Sarah-Hanson Young has flagged the situation as “hideous” and said a number of asylum seeker women are suffering from serious health conditions which could be detrimental. She told the ABC that those women do not want their children to be born in prisons, while the conditions of treatment facilities on Nauru aren’t exactly unknown facts either.

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