Pratt mum on her next role
Louise Pratt will soon no longer be a Labor senator for WA but she will have a new job - being a mum.
The openly gay senator and transgender partner Aram Hosie are expecting their first child in mid- October.
After years of trying to fall pregnant, another round of IVF - conducted in the months leading up to the Senate election - proved successful.
On top of the difficulties and emotional turmoil of an election campaign, Senator Pratt was dealing with the hopes of starting a family.
April 5, the day of the Senate re-run election at which Senator Pratt lost her position, marked the first trimester of her pregnancy.
In face of tensions with her Labor running mate, social conservative Joe Bullock, Senator Pratt mentally divided politics from her pregnancy.
"I was pretty focused on the election, but I was also focused on the pregnancy," she said.
"I tried to keep them as separate thoughts but it wasn't easy.
"When you work so hard for it, you just have to organise your life around it."
That sort of approach has been part and parcel of Senator Pratt's political career that included time in WA's Upper House.
In her 2001 maiden speech to the WA Legislative Council, she highlighted her aim to change State laws that prevented same-sex couples from accessing reproductive technologies such as IVF.
The changes, in the face of fierce opposition from conservative critics, were put in place in 2002.
Over the years she has known many gays and lesbians who have shared the joy of having a family because of those legislative changes.
"I always wished I could join them," she said, adding that starting a family had always been a plan for her and Mr Hosie.
The sperm donor, a long-term friend, will be important in the child's future.
"The friend will be active in the baby's life," she said.
When the most recent Senate election count showed she would not continue in the Upper House, Senator Pratt railed against Mr Bullock.
She described him as "deeply homophobic" and "anti-choice".
Asked what she would say to Mr Bullock or others who dismiss her life and impending motherhood, Senator Pratt was equally blunt.
"The evidence speaks for itself," she said. "There are so many happy families that have been created because people have been able to access the technology.
"These children are really wanted, their parents put so much into looking after them."
The 42-year-old's greatest disappointment is that she will not be in the new Senate that takes its seats from July 1.
"I just wish I could be in the Senate after July 1 so I could fight the Government and its attacks on ordinary people, on children," she said.
