By Anne Casey
A woman's access to abortion is a fundamental precondition to having control over her life. If a woman cannot make decisions on if, when and how many children she will bear, then she has little control over other aspects of her life.
Being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term imposes irreversible circumstances that can alter a woman's relationship to her body, her sexuality, her self-esteem, her friends, family and lovers, her work, her financial status, her life goals.
This doesn't counterpose abortion to contraception. But no contraceptive is 100% guaranteed. Rape and incest are certainly not under a woman's control.
Without access to abortion, women become prisoners of their reproductive systems, and prisoners to a stereotype and culture that promote motherhood as the valid role for women.
Our bodies, our lives, our right to decide.
Unfettered reproductive choice is more than a matter of individual rights. It involves social questions and the social conditions necessary for women to make real decisions about their lives. Legal abortion without safe, cheap, medical services being available is just as discriminatory as having children without access to economic support and cheap, quality child-care. In both cases, the rich can afford to choose and the poor have to make do. Economic and social resources have to be guaranteed by society to ensure access and informed choice.
The gains won over the past 25 years mean that women in Australia today enjoy greater access to safe abortion. That's a tremendous advance for Australian women when, worldwide, more than a quarter of a million women die each year from illegal and unsanitary abortions, and 15 times as many suffer some form of physical injury.
But there is certainly no room for complacency here. Most access to abortion rests on legal precedent. Abortion is still a criminal offence in most states. Abortion is permitted in certain instances where a judge has made a liberal interpretation of when abortion may take place and not be considered criminal.
Abortion is the only medical procedure which is a crime and the only one which doctors and other health professionals are excused from providing if they oppose it on the grounds of
"conscience".
Abortion is also one of the few political issues where parliamentarians of all major parties (and many of the smaller ones like the Australian Democrats and the Australian Greens) have the right to vote "according to their conscience" even when the party has a pro-abortion policy.
Abortion is governed by various state and territory Crimes Acts and Criminal Codes.
In South Australia and the Northern Territory, the laws have been reformed or amended to allow abortion under certain circumstances.
South Australia is a good example of why fiddling with the laws, rather than removing them, is unable to guarantee women's access to abortion.
Legislation was passed in 1969 to legalise abortion. This was a tremendous victory for women, yet one with very real limitations attached. The legislation stipulates that abortions can be performed only in designated hospitals and thus prohibits the establishment of free-standing clinics, which have so far provided the best services for women. A woman must have the consent of two doctors, and she must be a resident of South Australia for at least two months.
After 23 years, South Australian women who are 10 weeks pregnant still face the prospect of travelling to Sydney because of the delays in being admitted to hospital and the severe shortage of doctors and nurses who will perform or assist with operations .
In NSW, Victoria and Queensland, common law rulings (Menhennit, 1969; Levine, 1971; McGuire, 1986) have interpreted the laws liberally and set legal precedents giving women access to abortion. In Tasmania, Western Australia and the ACT, the laws have never been tested.
The Abortion Rights Network of Australia (ARNA) was set up in December 1992 at a conference called to establish closer collaboration between pro-abortion activists and groups.
The national body aims to coordinate activities on abortion rights (defence or appeal), promote abortion rights, pursue links with international organisations, establish a national newsletter and organise a national conference to be held in November 1993. A national day of action around abortion rights is also planned, though no date has yet been set.
Women from nine different organisations across Australia reported
on the current situation and activities within their state or region and summarised this information for the first issue of the ARNA Newsletter, Jan/Feb 1993.
Western Australia has two free-standing clinics — the Nanyara clinic at Rivervale, Perth, and the Zera clinic at Midland, which is used by many Aboriginal and European women.
Women in WA often have to travel long distances to obtain an abortion. Among the 400,000 women aged between 15 and 54 in the state, 6000-7000 abortions are carried out each year.
Because of the uncertainty resulting from the abortion laws, medical services feel insecure, and not enough information is circulated regarding services. Women from non-English speaking backgrounds and young women in rural areas are not being targeted and may be completely unaware of the clinics. Former premier Carmen Lawrence had been approached about abortion law repeal, but said "now was not the time". Unfortunately, time ran out.
A feminist abortion service has been established in Tasmania after eight years of efforts. The Women's Health Foundation Clinic owns the building from which it operates and flies in an interstate doctor to do abortions. Clients pay twice the fee of that in Sydney because of the costs associated with this. So far the clinic has been open for one year, for one operating day per week, and has always been fully booked on that day.
In NSW, where abortion services are considered to be the best and most accessible in the country, abortion access is under threat. There are only three metropolitan hospitals, all in Sydney, that perform abortions. With the continual underfunding of health services, abortions performed in hospitals are some of the first services to be cut. Waiting lists increase the health risks women face because timing in abortions is so crucial.
Outside the hospital, there are two kinds of clinics — feminist-run clinics or free-standing clinics run by doctors.
There are two feminist free-standing clinics, Everywoman's and Bessies, which are not operating to capacity. A big part of the current problem is that there aren't enough doctors to perform abortions — the right wing has largely succeeded in stigmatising and denigrating the procedure.
It's not just Sydney women who rely on these clinics and are affected by this shortage of service. These clinics are also used by rural and interstate women — women from South Australia and an estimated 1500-3000 women who travel from Canberra to Sydney annually.
In Sydney the beginnings of a repeal campaign were set in motion in December 1992. Representatives were present from the Women's Abortion Action Campaign, the International Women's Day Committee and a wide range of women's, civil rights and migrant women's groups, the Uniting Church, workers in abortion clinics and politicians. A coalition is in the process of being established and meetings planned to gauge the level of support for a broad campaign to repeal all abortion laws.
Wollongong health services still refer women to Sydney for abortions. The Wollongong Abortion Rights Campaign (WARC) was formed in June 1992 and has since participated in a debate on the issue with the Right to Life at Wollongong University, organised a campaign to get 20,000 signatures from the Illawarra and produced a number of leaflets.
The election of a Labor government in Queensland in 1989 was expected to lead to abortion laws being repealed. This has not happened. Premier Wayne Goss established a Criminal Law Review, but the abortion clauses in the Criminal Code were specifically exempted from the review and public submissions on them were not allowed. Children by Choice continues its invaluable community education work, and Women's Abortion Campaign has been very active since it was re-formed in April 1991.
The ACT Legislative Assembly passed a bill to repeal the Termination of Pregnancy Act on June 23, 1992. However, the August 1992 territory budget allocated no funds for an abortion service, offering instead $50,000 for "pregnancy counselling". The group Options and the Family Planning Association are working on how best to approach the establishment of a holistic abortion service for women in the ACT.
Abortion in Australia is presented as a highly controversial issue that polarises the community. In reality, opinions are not so divided. Surveys have continued to show widespread support for abortion rights.
The most recent poll, in March 1991, conducted by Anderson McNair and commissioned by the NSW Abortion Rights Coalition, found that 81% of those surveyed supported a woman's right to choose and only 12% opposed it. A survey conducted in Queensland in 1992 revealed that even 56% of Catholics support women's right to abortion.
Yet a minority controls the debate. And it is a minority, backed by political forces that do not want to see women's role in society advanced or changed, that allow groups like the Right to Life Association to exert such influence.
Attacks by right-wing campaigns have continued ever since
liberalised access was won. These have included attempts to remove Medicare rebates for terminations, to limit abortion to cases of incest and rape, to limit abortion to designated public hospitals, to define the beginning of human life as the moment of conception. The attacks have also included physical and verbal harassment of women seeking abortions at clinics, of doctors and medical staff providing abortions, of women who have had abortions.
Consequently, clinics are extremely cautious in commenting on the situation, and there are tactical differences among activists on the most effective way to campaign.
Some are convinced that working closely with sympathetic politicians and lobbying for parliamentary support is the best option.
Others see a need for a more visible campaign which mobilises public sentiment. This view is held by Michelle Hovane, Democratic Socialist candidate for the seat of Perth. "Winning the right to free, safe legal abortion is not a matter of putting up a bill in parliament and stopping there", she says. "It's going to take a lot of time and effort, of reaching out into the community and consolidating public sentiment into action.
"We need to exert pressure on all the vacillating, spineless politicians who don't support women's right to abortion and sit on the fence by hiding behind the 'conscience' cop-out vote. Winning the repeal of the anti-abortion laws is going to take a lot of collaborative planning to involve broad layers of individuals and groups to develop a campaign that can be run on a number of fronts."
Conservative forces stand to lose a great deal if women gain control over their bodies. It may well lead to demands for control over other aspects of our lives. While abortion remains in the Crimes Act, women's access to this fundamental right is grievously undermined.