The not-guilty verdict in October for a young woman and her partner put on trial for using the drug RU486 to induce an abortion came as a big relief to many. The Cairns jury took less than an hour to deliver long-awaited justice.
Now the campaign has turned to smashing the anti-abortion laws that put the Cairns couple on trial in the first place. The case showed the urgent need to decriminalise abortion and realise that the right of women to control their fertility is a fundamental human right.
Most Australians support a woman’s right to choose. But conservative “pro-life” groups have a disproportionately influential voice.
The fact that abortion remains criminalised in several Australian states — but not in others — shows the power of this lobby.
Despite being a minority viewpoint, the “pro-life” line gets more media time, government attention, and resources and funding than pro-choice opinions.
Right to Life Australia works to lobby governments and campaign on the issues of abortion, euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research. It claims to work at a national level on all issues aimed at protecting “human life” — although they do not campaign on issues such as war, global poverty or the government deporting refugees to their deaths.
Its website states the group “does not hold a position on issues such as contraception and sex education” — a peculiar contradiction when it comes to birth control and sexual health.
In 2007, the then government (which had current opposition leader Tony Abbott as health minister) pledged $15 million of taxpayers’ money to fund the Catholic Church to advise women about what to do when they have an unplanned pregnancy.
It is known that the Catholic Church does not support abortion or any artificial contraception. With this in mind, it is reasonable to say it cannot provide genuine, all-options pregnancy counselling and the government should not pretend that they can.
Church-controlled pregnancy counselling services instead perpetuate myths and fallacies like “post-abortion syndrome” and depression as a result of terminating a pregnancy.
As a result, the idea that all women feel guilt and grief after ending a pregnancy, and that abortion causes emotional harm gets unwarranted profile.
Women seeking pregnancy help or guidance are looking for all-options advice on what they can do when they fall pregnant. It is frustrating that this is not available.
Historically, the rise of private ownership also led to women being seen as the property of the men in her life, and the family carer — looking after husbands and children. This meant that choices and personal control concerning sexuality were restricted.
The first and second waves of feminism did, in large part, help eradicate women’s status as “pariah” restricted to the home, and extended many opportunities in almost every aspect of life.
Access to abortion and contraception was a cornerstone of these struggles, as being able to control when and if to bear children fundamentally challenges the idea that women “belong in the home”.
This social conflict between freedom of choice and the valuable economic role women play by being the expense-free carers of everyone else is the reason the right to choose remains under constant attack.
The disproportionate influence minority anti-choice groups have in politics and decision-making (aside from being heavily funded and highly organised) is due to the role they play in holding back women’s rights.
It is all about reinforcing the ideology that women are wrong to go against their “natural” purpose to bear children, look after family and stay in the home.
Abortion is a woman’s decision to make and no one else’s. Resistance believes that every woman should have total control of her body and the decisions she makes about it. This means comprehensive sex education, access to birth control, condoms and emergency contraception, and full and affordable access to abortion.
There must also be well-resourced and unbiased counselling, accessible information about the facts, and education that enables women to have the confidence to make these choices, that challenge the lies of the anti-choice “pro-life” lobby and government complicity, and shows women that reproductive choice is nothing to feel guilty about, but is a basic human right.