Susan Austin, Hobart
Sixty people attended a pro-choice public forum in Hobart Town Hall on April 27. The forum was organised by the International Women's Day collective, and sponsored by the Fertility Control Clinic, Gynaecology Centres Australia, Hobart Women's Health Centre, and the Council of Single Mothers and their Children.
Speakers at the forum were Susie Allanson, a clinical psychologist working at the Fertility Control Clinic in Melbourne, who has published research into the psychological impact of abortion on women; Barbara Baird, the gender studies coordinator at the University of Tasmania, who has researched women's abortion experiences; and Kamala Emanuel, a doctor who has worked in abortion provision and referral services, speaking for the Socialist Alliance. Apologies were received from state Greens MP Peg Putt and Labor attorney-general Judy Jackson.
Allanson described the global impact of unsafe, illegal abortions — which claim the lives of an estimated 78,000 women annually. She debunked the myth that abortion harms women psychologically, explaining that for the overwhelming majority of women, the primary emotion after an abortion is one of relief at no longer having an unwanted pregnancy.
Allanson said that in her clinical work she spends a lot of time with women referred to her from other staff because of ambivalence about their decision. She stressed the importance of non-directive support to ensure that such women decide whether to continue or terminate the pregnancy. She criticised the telephone directory listing of anti-abortion "pregnancy counselling" services that don't disclose their real agenda.
Baird drew parallels between role of the "abortion debate" initiated by Tony Abbott and the immigration debate in Australian public life, and drew out the racism in the abortion debate: that only white babies were welcome. She emphasised the "ordinary, every-day" nature of abortion for large numbers of women — those who fall outside the image created by the "abortion debate" of angst-ridden and distressed women.
Emanuel ridiculed the idea that the "abortion debate" had been re-started as a matter of free speech or that Abbott really wanted just to "see where it goes". "In politics, you don't start a debate if you don't know where you want to take it", she said.
Emanuel demolished a range of myths and proposals being put forward by the anti-abortionists since Abbott rekindled the "debate", criticising the proposals to restrict late procedures and to force women to view an ultrasound of the foetus, or to be required to undertake "counselling". Instead, she emphasised women's right to decide for themselves whether or not to continue a pregnancy.
She argued for a grassroots community campaign to stand up against the threats to abortion access.
From Green Left Weekly, May 4, 2005.
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