(Cross-posted at Hoyden About Town).
The only thing more ridiculous than a law never upheld is a law suddenly applied to an individual case. It is estimated that at least one in three women in Australia will have an abortion in their lifetime. And yet we also currently have a nineteen year old woman and her similarly young partner on trial for procuring an abortion in Queensland.
Clearly we need to reform abortion laws so that they reflect reality, that is, that abortion is frequently required and used by Australian women (and their partners). Why all the stalling?
Think you know, think again! As Dr Katharine Betts shows in her fascinating research examining twenty years worth of surveys, polls and studies – some of the barriers for reform are myths. (Betts’ interview on ABC radio is well worth a listen and it inspired this post).
Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory are the only state and territory in Australia to have decriminalised abortion. Why won’t the other states? And more particularly, why won’t Queensland where abortion law hypocrisy is terrorising some poor nineteen year old?
Because there will be an electoral backlash?
Nup. Opinion has been liberalising on abortion over the last decade. Almost everyone in Australia believes abortion should be available – either readily (55-59%) or with some limits imposed (roughly a third). A lot of people don’t know that abortion is even illegal in most parts of Australia.
Because Queensland is more conservative?
Nup. Queensland is as pro-choice as the rest of the country, and Brisbane voters are actually more progressive on abortion than Australia as a whole.
Because there will be a huge public outcry?
Nup. There wasn’t one in Victoria.
Because there will be a backlash from Catholic voters (Catholicism being a particularly influential religion in the Australian Labor Party)?
Nup. About 45% of Catholics think abortion should be readily available.
Because there are no votes to be gained, only votes to be lost on reforming abortion law?
Nup. In Queensland a recent poll showed that the pro-choice Labor candidate would gain net 1% and the pro-choice Liberal National Party candidate would gain net 2% of the votes.
Because politicians are more conservative than the community?
Nup. Surveys of candidates standing for federal elections* show that they are actually more pro-choice than the people who vote for them (notable exceptions being the more conservative parties like Family First).
* Similar research on candidates standing for state elections is not available. The Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh has publicly stated her pro-choice position but she also maintains (and she is right) that she doesn’t have the numbers in parliament (including on her own side) to reform abortion laws.
I can think of 5 friends straight off, and I’ve had one, and married at the time.
Afghanistan has the highest birth-rate in the world.
Make a list of groups who most definitely would not avail themselves of the procedure, and you will see what it’s all about.
I feel so sorry for that young couple.
Contraception should be available everywhere all the time for anybody.
My gosh, those myths you list make me even angrier than usual that we are letting ourselves be held hostage to these views!!!
It’s not all peachy in the ACT even… one of our big hospitals was taken over by Catholics a couple of years ago and somebody just quietly decided that termination procedures would not be offered at the hospital anymore. Even though the majority of terminations were for women with wanted pregnancies that had problems.
Okay. My case against abortion is entirely secular.
I was adopted.
Need I say more?
Nanna Blight, your comment is not relevant to a discussion about abortion law reform. Maybe your comment is about what influences your personal feelings about abortion (to which the usual applies, don’t like abortion then don’t have one) but that has nothing what so ever to do with the broader issue of abortion law reform in Australia.
First and final warning on this thread, particularly given your trolling behaviour on other posts.
Nanna Blight, I’m not sure if you are trolling or serious, so I will just say this.
For yourself, personally, in your completely individual and specific life situation, perhaps you don’t need to say any more. And that’s understandable.
But for others, yes, you do need to say more. I need to say more. Everyone needs to say more. Adoption is not a simple, one-size-fits-all, automatically-appropriate response to the issue of unwanted or unviable pregnancies.
I’m pretty sure I have seen Anna Bligh state publicly that one reason not to try to do anything about the abortion laws right now is not just because she wouldn’t have the numbers to get changes through, but because the current political situation means the laws might go the OTHER way if this can of worms was opened.
Which sends a shiver down my spine but is probably true.
Nanna Blight, you do know, don’t you, that if you had never been born, you would not be doing any thinking (or that matter, existing) and you would therefore be completely unable to be sad about never having being born? Unless you are one of those people who believe in little souls flitting around the stratosphere somewhere, waiting for a body to just pop into. In that case, I can’t really help.
you know, I have been wondering for months now where the big media storm has been on this particular issue. Why havent ‘they’ come out lamblasting this archaic law. IOn th eside of this poor young couple who seem to have just had soe rotten luck somewhere, where everyone else has jsut slid under the radar. Is seems totally archaic to me, probably to all of us, who have come to expect that abortion is an ‘old’ issue but really, its not coz the law just doesnt stand up to contemporary opinion. i have to admit that I wasnt really aware of the legal standing of the issue of abortion in my own state, yet i managed by the picking up of a phone, just 6 months ago, and looking through the yellow pages to organise my first abortion in my 39 years and 3 children under my belt. Pure chance. Bummer. Most awful thing i have had to decide in my whole life but dont regret it.
why do so many women will need an abortion in australia? there most be a crack somewhere, liberalization is necesary but abortion is not a simple procedure… to take with such ease
for example, see american abortion law (women’s agency) being used in favor of all the medical corporations to use women’s body as merchandise for the reproductive market… a complex issue indeed
“contraceptive for all” certainly will render more control to those medical/pharmaceutical giants over our reproductive
health, for decades women in the west fell ill by fighting their fertility with pills and women in the global south became the guinea pigs for it… thanks to the myth of “overpopulation” raids against women are carried on every day.
i like to think about that time not so far behind when women used to follow the moon cycle, immersed within their bodies and their natural flow, in total control of their life…
” liberalization is necesary but abortion is not a simple procedure… to take with such ease”
It really is. Medically speaking, abortion is one of the simplest procedures there is. The technical aspects can be learnt very quickly indeed.
“i like to think about that time not so far behind when women used to follow the moon cycle, immersed within their bodies and their natural flow, in total control of their life…”
I think you have a romanticised notion of the past that bears little or no relation to reality here. Which women, where, were in “total control” of their lives?
Sanuka – I do wish you had a blog of your own I could get to via your name up there. Very frequently in this area of discussion, I find blog-less commentors and I always suspect they simply have “Google Alert” for the a-word, and come flying into a place never visited before.
the topic for discussion is:
we need to reform abortion laws so that they reflect reality
Disclaimer: I have given up an infant not wanted by it’s father, in an era (1968) when there was NO support at all from family or society. Pro-Lifers appear to think that my subsequent decades of pain and anguish, are my punishment for being a slut who had sex before marriage, so you can only guess what I think of Pro-Lifers,
none of whom appeared before me with food, money or baby clothes.
I don’t like all the ‘abortions are treated as casually as…’ comments here, they sound judgemental of women. If you want to make some comment about how casually you treated your own abortion that is one thing but to generalise about how women are treating their abortions is another.
These comments have been deleted.
I preferred to have a tubal ligation and no more children rather than an abortion which was my option had I become pregnant again. There is no way my personal feelings would make me judge another woman seeking an abortion. What I would do is make sure she went through the procedure without mental or physical trauma because I do remember the bad old days which in Queensland seem to be not that far away.
The entire Pro-Abortion argument boils down to one BIG FAT LIE: that what is growing inside the womb is not a human being.
If it IS a HUMAN BEING, then the CIVIL RIGHTS to which all Australians are entitled MUST EXTEND TO THEM. They have the RIGHT to LIVE, to keep have their bodies protected from being VACUUMED and CHOPPED into a soup.
Moreover, these CIVIL RIGHTS must extend to unborn children WHETHER OR NOT they suffer from any deformity or disability, just as those in our society who suffer deformity and disability are rightly protected from extermination. Few people realise that Hitler executed over 350,000 deformed and disabled people in his ‘camps’, labelling them as “Life unworthy of life”. The Pro-Abortion movement in Australia advocates a similar vision to Hitler’s when they freely use the term “unviable” pregnancy to pretend that they are NOT advocating the execution of INNOCENT HUMAN BEINGS. What MONSTERS have they become!
Society, and the laws enacted by it, exist for a simple purpose: to protect the WEAK against injustice perpetrated by the STRONG. NO ONE in our society is more weak, and requires more MERCY, than voiceless, defenceless UNBORN CHILDREN. Every CIVIL RIGHT in Australia is predicated on the fundamental RIGHT to LIVE: to BE BORN IN THE FIRST PLACE to enjoy their protection. MAny Pro-Abortion Australians would burn with anger at Capital Punishment, or the crimes of paedophiles, of child pornography, mass murderers, etc and yet IN THE VERY SAME BREATH will passionately argue for the PREMEDITATED EXECUTION of CHILDREN IN THE WOMB who are INNOCENT and who can’t even WHIMPER to BEG for MERCY. What HYPOCRISY!
Pro-Abortionists have accepted the LIE that what is growing inside the womb is NOT a human being: an INNOCENT CHILD. ALL human beings are “viable” – are ‘Life WORTHY of Life’. I support Pro-Choice: Women have the right to choose what to do with their bodies. THE BABY growing inside their womb is NOT THEIR BODY. They have no right to MURDER it in COLD BLOOD: PERIOD. It is INNOCENT: it had NO CHOICE but to exist. There is simply NO EXCUSE – no matter how it is argued – for murdering INNOCENT CITIZENS of our country.
If it were publicly known that an Australian were to be executed ANYWHERE in the world, and his/her innocence were publicly established beyond reasonable doubt, then there would be a media frenzy and ALL Australians would be rightly outraged. We would ask Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his ministers to step in and do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to IMMEDIATELY STOP that execution. This is a call on PRIME MINISTER KEVIN RUDD and his Government to IMMEDIATELY, PUBLICLY and FORCEFULLY step in to HALT the execution of 250 INNOCENT Australians every day, occurring right here within our borders.
The situation is worse than from a Frankenstein film: in Australia, the womb has become an EXECUTION CHAMBER for over 90,000 innocent Australian children each year. I repeat: there is simply NO EXCUSE – no matter how it is argued – for murdering INNOCENT CITIZENS of our country.
Jessica, the topic is abortion law reform in Australia, NOT the moral debate about whether you believe in the right to abortion or not.
Also quit the capslock shouting in your comments.
Please stay on topic if you wish to comment. Final warning.
what a surprise that Jessica above has no blog to follow her back to. I would go there to plead with her to apply the above passion to a campaign to stop young men spilling their seed where they have no interest in feeding or raising the result.
Jessica please read this post on bashed and battered toddlers and the frightening number of them in the USA, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, and apply your zeal to saving those larger embryos, PLEASE.
Abortion law in Australia needs reform for the sake of impregnated women for whom the condition is not a safe happy feasible one.
[...] Elsewhere, religion is causing problems as Deborah tells us about a pharmacist in Griffith who thinks he has the right to impose his own version of morality on everyone else. While not strictly a post on religion, this is a post about impositions of morality: blue milk outlines the reasons why all Australian states should reform abortion laws NOW. [...]
Anna Bligh states that she will not take the decriminalisation of abortion to the vote in Queensland parliament, even a concience vote, while the doubt of losing ground on the excisting laws is there. It is a total cop out as number crunching would indicate that success is there if she showed courage to go forward rather than stagnate.
The Cairns Womens Network has been working at creating pressure on parliamentarians in Queensland, with support from groups in Brisbane and interstate, and will continue until some commitment is reached. Many of us have background with the same issue in Victoria, a sense of deja vu is pervading.
The young couple are committed to stand trial on charges of procuring an abortion and assisting to procure an abortion. No date is set, early 2010 is the most likely.