| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Meteorite Debris" |
| Date: |
17 Feb 2005 04:24:48 PM |
| Object: |
Oz - Abortion ‘debate’: Women must have right to choose |
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/615/615p9.htm
Abortion ‘debate’: Women must have right to choose
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.
--
epicurus1*at*optusnet*dot*com*dot*au
apatriot #1, atheist #1417,
Chief EAC prophet
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pk1956/
Apatriotism Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apatriotism
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves
were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in
Hell.
-Mencken
.
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