Lara Pullin
Federal health minister Tony Abbott's push to restrict (and eventually outlaw) women's access to legal abortion services continues to gather momentum, with more Coalition and some Labor MPs joining in the call for a "public debate" about the issue.
Despite their silence during last year's federal election campaign, over the past few months Abbott and other members of the religious right have launched a series of attacks on women's reproductive rights, including the unprecedented meeting of MPs and religious leaders on January 31 at Sydney's Salvation Army headquarters.
They have raised repeated calls for an inquiry into the "abortion epidemic" in Australia. Anti-choice campaigners are seasoned in their attempts over the past 30 years to remove or restrict the partial Medicare rebate for abortions, limit abortions to pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, reduce the period in which a woman can have a legal abortion or restrict abortion procedures to a few hospitals.
Prime Minister John Howard has been seen to be trying to contain the religious right's push to restrict or remove Medicare funding of abortion, and many women Coalition MPs have called for an end to the debate.
On February 6, however, Howard declared that he would support a parliamentary debate on abortion if there was a private member's bill to limit funding arrangements.
Two days later, a range of Coalition MPs raised concerns about the renewed debate during a joint Coalition party room meeting, according to the February 8 Sydney Morning Herald. It reported that Senator Judith Troeth told the party room it was not for the government to dictate to women on such issues.
"The majority didn't see the need for a debate and were putting the case that we had reached an equilibrium and there had been a very contentious debate on this in Australia in the past, and essentially that the status quo should prevail", a Coalition spokesperson told the SMH.
Howard's agenda
Of course, if Howard didn't actually want this debate he could have easily reined it in. As Dennis Glover, an honorary visiting fellow at the school of social sciences at La Trobe University, observed in the February 11 Melbourne Age: "Rogue backbenchers from the Coalition's right wing just won't give up: putting questions on notice, attending inter-faith meetings and now cobbling together a private member's bill. Given Howard's record of crushing dissent within his party, this is an unprecedented failure. Or is it? ...
"The truth is, John Howard has never had any intention of closing down debate on abortion. Just the opposite — he wants the debate to run and has taken the tongue clamps off his caucus members ...
"This is not because he wants to change the law ... He knows abortion is a state issue ... and that legal change would perhaps provoke the few remaining small-l liberals in his party to break ranks.
"What the PM wants is to keep the debate going to send a political signal to a key set of voters", that is, to supporters of the religious right.
The context in which Howard has allowed the religious right within his party to attack abortion is the systematic peeling back of working people's wages, working conditions and social welfare, and where any resistance to this agenda by trade unionists is labelled "bloody-minded" and "self-seeking", where poor welfare recipients are branded "bludgers", migrants and asylum seekers are "queue jumpers", Aborigines are receiving "special treatment" and women choosing abortion are being "immoral".
National Party Senator Ron Boswell has placed on notice 16 questions to Abbott, ensuring the matter will continue to be raised in federal parliament.
Pro-choice campaign
Meanwhile, outside parliament, pro-choice activists are beginning a counter-campaign to that of the religious right. Speaking to Green Left Weekly, Margaret Kirkby from Sydney's Women's Abortion Action Campaign (WAAC) asked: "When will federal politicians and religious leaders realise that no matter what barrier is placed in front of women they will still seek abortion? The maternal mortality rate prior to liberalisation in NSW and Victoria is testament to this. Just take a look at the Reports from the Royal Commission into Human Relationships of 1977. Take a look at maternal mortality reports from the 1940s to the late 1960s." WAAC is urging women to get involved in the campaign to win the repeal of NSW anti-abortion laws and to secure funding for a free-standing, feminist-run women's clinic.
The Victorian Pro-Choice Coalition was formed last November to respond to Abbott's attacks, and will be holding a public meeting on March 8 with a number of pro-choice speakers, including Leslie Cannold and Jocelynne Scutt.
Pro-choice organisations in other states are responding similarly, with many expressing the view that they want to secure women's unimpeded access to abortion.
Dr Kamala Emanuel, a Socialist Alliance member and family planning doctor in Tasmania, points out that abortion levels usually fall when there is access to good contraception and good sex education, yet that is another area that Howard's government has been attacking.
Repeal the laws!
It is nearly 30 years since the mass women's liberation movement first put the demand for abortion to be removed from the state criminal codes, and our response to the current "debate" must put abortion law repeal back at the centre of our demands. Mass public support was won for abortion rights through the campaigns of the 1970s and increased as a result of the more recent Western Australian and ACT campaigns — so much so that it is common for people to express amazement when they learn that abortion is still on the books as a crime.
Support for abortion rights is currently at 85% among GPs and 82% among the general public. Yet the Northern Territory and all states except Western Australia still retain the 19th-century sections of their criminal codes that make abortion illegal. While there was success in repealing the criminal laws in WA in 1998, this was immediately countered by new laws regulating abortion that deny the right to abortion beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy and to women under 16 years of age. No other surgical procedure as commonly performed as abortion — it is among the top 10 surgical procedures — is subject to separate laws. The regulation of the medical profession is considered enough of a safeguard for other medical procedures, so why not abortion?
In the ACT all specific abortion laws were repealed over a period of about 10 years. The original law that was introduced in 1978 to allow women regulated access to the procedure was the first piece of legislation to be repealed, in 1992. Religious crusaders were most uncomfortable with this and the Osbourne Bill was passed in 1998. The vibrant and mass campaign to overturn this WA-style law led to the removal of abortion from all ACT legislation in 2002. It was the only logical way to stop the tinkering, the amendments, the administrative and policy limits being applied to abortion access. There must be no laws applied to abortion other than those that govern general medical practice.
The national networking taking place between pro-choice groups at the moment looks likely to lead to the formation of a national abortion and reproductive-rights activist grouping. Combined with the federal MPs for reproductive rights grouping initiated by Greens Senator Kerry Nettle and the various health peak bodies, pro-choice supporters will be in a stronger position than at any time since the 1970s to put the issue of abortion law repeal on the public agenda. We must use this opportunity to complete our unfinished business and demand full decriminalisation in each state and the NT, with no other laws to take their place, and with no tampering with federal Medicare funding.
We will not go backwards. We will not return to the days when women's lives were destroyed by unsafe abortions. We will not see women using coat hangers, knitting needles or toxic drugs as abortifacients again. Nor will we succumb to the "populate or perish" rhetoric being pushed at women to stay home and have babies "one for husband, one for wife and one for country"! The message to those who profit from restricting women's social and economic independence must be firmly told: Women will decide our fate, not the church, not the state.
[Lara Pullin is a member of the Canberra branch of the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 16, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.