With federal parliament meeting today for the first time since the federal election, MPs will no doubt be talking about abortion, a subject that several of them have pre-emptorily placed on the political agenda – why? who needed this? – and seem determined to force a fight onto us. In the following excerpt from a speech I gave last week, I look at the political firestorm that has gathered around this subject:
o The federal health Minister Tony Abbott has asked Do we really think 100,000 abortions a year is a good thing? and has claimed that women are being railroaded into abortion by parents, husbands, boyfriends and the culture of convenience
o The deputy prime minister, John Anderson, has called for a debate to re-examine our understanding of medical science and the law.
o The South Australian Liberal MP Christopher Pyne has asserted that in one wing of hospitals 24 week old fetuses are being aborted while in another wing, 23 week old babies are being nurtured in neo-natal units; he has called for a total ban of abortions beyond 21 weeks and questioned the need for terminations at all
o Tasmanian Liberal Senator Eric Abetz has said he opposes public subsidies for terminations via Medicare
o Queensland Senator-elect, and the man who gave John Howard control of the Senate, Barney Joyce said he wanted an end to public funding of abortion as the price for his vote to privatize Telstra
o The Governor-General, Michael Jeffery, has called for the number of abortions to be reduced
o Only one woman, Veterans Affairs Minister De-Anne Kelly has joined in the call for a limit on abortions; at the weekend she said The death of 100,000 Australians is a national loss and tragedy and argued that the loss of these potential young Australians was a problem for our ageing society.
If you dont think this cacophony adds up to a determined political assault on womens reproductive freedom then you are being very nave. This is the breeding creed at full roar. And this is unprecedented.
We have never had a federal health Minister crusade against a legal medical procedure in this fashion before. We have never had a deputy Prime Minister and the Governor General jump in as well.
And are they being curbed? Hardly. A few women Liberal MPs have stood up for womens right to choose, which is necessary and about time, but where are the male political heavyweights. I dont find it all reassuring that the treasurer has jumped in merely to remind people that abortion law is a state matter. Coming from the man who on the night he announced a $3,000 Baby bribe as a key part of his budget told women to go home and have one for the father, one for the mother and one for the country, I hardly think this constitutes a rebuttal of what his colleagues are up to.
Until yesterday the prime minister had been conspicuously silent, but his intervention was ambiguous and it is by no means clear that he is trying to prevent this further assault on womens reproductive rights.
And lets be clear as to what it is about.
Tony Abbott and his cronies want to force women back to the bad old days of safe abortion being a prerogative of the rich. They dont of course have the power to change the law and ban abortion but they do have the power to make abortion expensive by removing the Medicare rebate.
They also have a broader and more ambitious agenda. In saying they want to have a debate, they are in fact trying to get the states to reexamine their laws. They say they want to have a debate on the issue; in reality they want to generate anxiety and disgust by concentrating on the issue of late-term abortions rather than on the reality of abortion in Australia today.
Tony Abbott says there are 100,000 abortions performed in Australia today. I challenge him to back up this figure, and I will be very surprised if he can since there are no national statistics kept. He has made this number up. It is a clear, easy to remember round number that has in a few short weeks become fact. The reality is that Medicare rebates were paid for 73,191 abortions in the twelve months to June 2004.
The further reality is that the number of terminations in this country is declining. That is certainly the case in South Australia, the only state that publishes data on pregnancy terminations. According to a newspaper report, in 2003 there were 5214 abortions performed, down from 5463 in 2002 and 5572 in 2001. The same statistics show that less than one per cent of these terminations took place after 20 weeks.
It would be useful to know more about who is having abortions, and why, just as it would be useful to have reliable national statistics on violence against women, but we do not live in an age that values such information.
from what we do know from South Australia it seems that the majority of abortions are sought by women who are married or in a relationship, many of whom already have children. It may be that women are terminating pregnancies simply because they cant afford to have another baby.
If we were serious about helping women to have babies, we would be looking at a far wider policy palette than just the Medicare rebate. We would be looking at the range of issues I have already raised: access to full-time employment, equal pay, child care, maternity leave.
Instead of advocating a breeding creed, we would be listening to what women themselves say they want: lives that encompass a range of things marriage, children, careers, travel and some time for themselves. But in pursuing these, they are paying a high price emotional, financial and even physical because our society has become one that penalizes women who want to be equal.
I regard this new threat to womens equality as extremely serious. Women everywhere, and especially our women MPs, and the men who agree with them have to stand up and be counted on this one. If we dont stop them now, the notion of womens equality will become a fleeting historical memory, something that occurred for a few halcyon years in the late 20th century but which was overturned by ruthless zealots in the 21st.
It is a history I hope never to read, let alone live through, but all the signs are there. When I named my book The End of Equality I meant it to be a wake-up call. I assumed, perhaps naively, that if I showed things as they really were, not as we imagined them to be or hoped they were, that change would follow. Instead the reverse seems to be happening. I hope we can head it off before the end of equality become a permanent reality and women are relegated back to where too many men obviously believe we belong.
Anne, I cannot believe this is happening in 2005. I keep hoping to walk back through the Looking Glass!
The agenda is clear: back to the 50s: out of the workforce and start breeding nice clean white Australians.
How do we fight this?
Reply to previous comment: Make a lot of noise.
Anne, thanks for the facts, but personally I don’t care if the abortion rate is going up or down. It should not be a relevant statistic (except in so far as it measures the progress of contraceptive technology).
What is relevant is my right to determine the course of my life in the same way and to the exact same extent that any man in this country can do.
This post has been removed by the author.
“Make a lot of noise”.
Yes, a very good idea. But isn’t that exactly what having a debate is all about – to make a lot of noise and to get people to listen to you?
It is a good idea to discuss this matter, and loudly.
There’s a lot more to it than just a “woman’s right to choose” or a woman’s right to “control her own body” – lots more.
For a start, just like any man, a woman has the right to choose and take control over her own body at the time she has sex. It’s called “No!” The same rights and responsibilities as any man has – yet we know that many men and women, in reality, are not responsible in the control of their own bodies or choices.
Why should society be expected to pay for these irresponsible people’s mistakes?
It needs to be debated.
Next, there are major inequalities between the rights of men and women under current legislation concerning abortion. Presently, a man’s right to choose isn’t considered at all. A woman has the right to continue with the pregnancy, give the baby up for adoption or to abort it. A man has no such equal right to choose, even though he will be held responsible, financially and morally, to support the child for at least the next 18 years should the woman decide alone to take the pregnancy to birth.
Where’s the equality in that?
There isn’t any. It needs to be debated.
And, what if the father wants to keep and raise the child whilst the woman doesn’t? It’s his child too. What about the father’s rights to his own child?
He doesn’t have any. It needs to be debated.
And then there’s the major point of who pays for the medical procedure of abortions?
If the government pays for the procedure (Medicare), then the government has a right to be involved with the decision making process – and the government is the voice of the people, so those people hold that right to be involved in the decision making process.
And many people disagree with abortion on moral or religious grounds.
So what about their rights?
Presently they don’t have any. It needs to be debated.
So there’s a lot to debate about on this matter of abortion, much more than just simply some “woman’s right to choose” – an awful lot more.
So I agree, let’s make lots of noise about abortion. It’s been hushed up, hidden away and discretely swept under the carpet for way too long now. It’s time to get it all out into the open and shine the good light of day upon it.
I’m with you, let’s all make lots of noise!
I know I will.
John Gardiner
Wouldn’t most late term abortions be for medical reasons? especially where a foetus is found to be not viable?
In my own case the foetus had been dead six weeks. I would surely be dead without the induced abortion.
John Gardiner:
We had the debate many years ago. If it interests you, you could save us a lot of trouble by going back to read all about it.
1) People are reckless with their bodies in many more ways than having sex. Smoking, driving dangerously, playing football, drinking beer, eating too much salt, cholesterol, sugar etc. Maybe you think we should have no public health care at all?
2) The child will not exist until it is delivered. Until then it is basically a parasite feeding upon the woman’s body. The reality in this world is that once the child is born, the mother will do 90% of the work required to raise it. She is the one whose career will be put on hold and whose days and nights will be taken over by the tasks of child rearing. What you are asking for is the right of men to make decisions about what will happen to the woman’s future (both during the first 9 months and for many years – possibly a whole lifetime thereafter). Until men are prepared to contribute equally to the work and women are no longer hampered in their career prospects by having children, there can be no such right for men.
3) Children are not possessions that you decide to keep or abandon. They are human beings with the right to have the best possible chance in life. They do not deserve to be condemned to poverty or an unloved existence because one or more of their parents have made a mistake. Nobody should ever have kids until they are absolutely ready to make the commitment.