What Reproductive Rights?

Our (current) PM, SCOMO, recently announced "We want to see women rise. But we don't want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse."

Only in Australia, one of the most undemocratic democracies on earth, would a "leader" feel the need to qualify a concept like "equality".

"Benevolent sexism"... positions men as protectors of women,

while keeping women in non-threatening roles where they need the protection of men.

SCOMO also let us down in the area of reproductive rights.

You can find this SBS article here:

This article mentioned SCOMO's disapproval of "abortion". His attitude is disappointing on many levels, not just because abortion has never been decriminalised in NSW.

(In NSW, the "Levine ruling" allows doctors to approve an abortion if a woman’s physical or mental health is in danger, and taking into account social, economic or other medical factors.
As The Guardian recently reminded us, unlawful abortion is still a criminal offence in the state, and is punishable by up to 10 years jail under the state’s Crimes Act. Unlawfully supplying a drug or instrument for an abortion is also punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.)

The following comment popped up in my social media feed:

“Abortion is killing an unborn child that does not get any choice if they live or not. So how is abortion good?”

This is my response:

The full expression used in the UN motion, is “safe abortion and reproductive rights”. To immediately rule out "reproductive rights" and focus on abortion when you believe abortion is wrong assumes women are only interested in abortions, and this is counterproductive. If you would prefer women have access to contraception, then please make your support of this public.

Like many important issues that often divide communities, the issue of abortion cannot be reduced at a community level to a SIMPLE choice of “good or bad” because the very word “abortion” is associated with different assumptions in different people’s minds.

For example, you say “Abortion is killing an unborn child”. That implies a moral obligation for us all to observe some kind of reverence for all foetuses. At what age does a foetus become “a child” worthy of reverence? Is it from the moment of conception? Fertilised ova are spontaneously aborted by female bodies the world over weeks or months after “the act” but the spotting /waste that results from this is not treated with reverence – rather it is seen as part of the life cycle by many.

Would you allow for safe abortion if a foetus was not yet viable? Is the morning after pill (effectively a termination) okay?

Now let us turn to the request that abortions be “safe”: Hopefully we are not just assuming that all abortions are a matter of convenience for someone too careless to plan ahead. Would you say, if a pregnancy threatened the life of the mother (e.g. in a case of pre-eclampsia), that we must choose the foetus over the mother? Could we, perhaps, choose on the basis of who was most likely to survive the threat? Should the father of the foetus or the mother of the foetus have greatest right or equal right to choose? Let's not assume that if the mother dies there are no other children or dependents who will be deprived of her care.

Recently I saw that in the state of Arkansas a rape victim, if she wants an abortion, must have permission from the rapist who impregnated her. Is this a case in which the rights of the child (as assessed by the father) should be greater than the rights of the mother? And no, you don't get to dismiss this question just because you claim rape is "rare". One woman is murdered in this country every week (more if you agree Indigenous Women dying in custody are just as important as the white victims the media actually gives a shit about.)

Would you prefer that women have access to safe contraception? It’s difficult for me to imagine a totally abortion free world even if contraception is readily available, because contraception sometimes fails, men and women each sometimes fail, and sometimes nature steps in to make a pregnancy dangerous.

Until “safe” abortion was legalised in most Australian states, women still had to contend with two major problems (amongst others). The first was that contraception was not then freely available because of National Security Regulations (Contraceptives & Venereal Diseases) 1942.

Secondly, even when the pill finally became “available” the assumption still prevailed that single women were chaste and that married women required the permission of husbands before a doctor would prescribe the pill.

Sadly, there are places in the west where the gains made in giving women access to contraception are being clawed back – the US is a good example (which makes me fearful for Australia). Further, many of the other social reforms that made pregnancy less frightening have also been clawed back. On the one hand, we may be told constantly by governments that taxpayers should not have the burden of supporting single parents, but on the other, we must again be careful what assumptions we make about why parents may be single. Many of the social reforms now criticised as irresponsible, unaffordable and so on are reforms fought for by men who knew what it was like to be raised in poverty – perhaps because a father had died, or their mother had left a violent spouse.

If we must show reverence for unborn children

why do we have no reverence for life once a child is born?

You say the unborn child does not get any choice if they live or not. I say the unborn child does not get any choice about what the quality of their life will be for far too many of their early years. Birth is a lottery, and too often becomes a life sentence. Shouldn’t a child’s lack of choice continue to matter to us after they are born?

Is the race of a child a significant factor in determining the worth of a life? Is age a significant factor? Gender? A child’s citizenship status? At what point do a community’s or an individual’s rights begin and end?

The greatest tragedy is that all of these questions are being decided by a predominantly male parliament, while the most immediate impact, when there are no safe abortion of reproductive rights, falls on women and children.

These decisions are being made by people whose deeds, with respect to far too many parliamentary matters, show their respect for life is limited and selective at best.

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Reproductive Rights in Post-Invasion Oz

Yes, it’s usually the woman’s fault. In December 1942, National Security Regulations gave Health Reps and Cops power to force a “person” to have a test for VD. The same regulations also made it mandatory to provide the names of any soldier who had been infected.

(Can’t imagine for the life of me that any soldier would, in 1942, admit to being infected by a male “person”.)

 

 

The same regulations also effectively made contraceptives unavailable in states where their promotion had not already been banned. Rather ironic, no? The thinking was that the best way to use contraceptive protection was to make contraceptives unavailable. All the women who were currently so keen to have sex with soldiers would give up, and no one would get none. In the minds of some government genius, a ban on contraception was pretty much a ban on sexing.

Victoria jumped the gun in 1942 and introduced a Liquor Control Order, raising the drinking age for women to 21, and making it illegal to serve women alcohol in a public bar. It goes without saying – but what the heck, I’ll just say it – female drunkenness is a pox upon society.

Prevention of VD was one of the prime reasons usually given to justify control of prostitution.

One last fun fact – in 1915 when a VD Bill was under debate in NSW, a clause was proposed requiring doctors to tell a woman if her husband had VD. This proposal was rejected on the grounds it would undermine a wife’s trust in her husband, and threaten the stability of the family.