and aint i a woman: Repeal, don't reform, abortion laws
The August 21 decision by the ACT Legislative Assembly to remove abortion from the Crimes Act has re-drawn attention to the difficulties that Australian women face in accessing abortion.
Although laws allowing abortion access have also been recently liberalised in Western Australia, in everywhere but the ACT anti-abortion laws remain part of criminal codes. More significantly, anecdotal evidence suggests that access to abortion may be reducing, with a number of abortion clinics facing closure, or recently closed.
Abortion rights in Queensland have been fiercely fought for over decades. Some of this history, which points to the need to get abortion off the crime books altogether, was re-visited by the corporate media with the July announcement that the inquest into the 1998 death of Dr Peter Bayliss was being reopened.
Bayliss ran the Fertility Control Clinic, a private abortion clinic in Brisbane, from 1979 until his death. The publicity surrounding the opening of this clinic led to the 1980 anti-abortion Unborn Child Protection Bill, which was narrowly defeated after a campaign by feminists.
On two occasions, however, serious concerns were raised about standards of medical care at Bayliss' clinic.
In 1985, the Fertility Control Clinic and the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Townsville were raided by police and the medical records of thousands of women were seized. Later that year, Bayliss and one of his associates, Dr Dawn Cullen, were charged under the state's anti-abortion legislation, first introduced in 1899. Bayliss and Cullen were acquitted in 1986, in a court case that established the "McGuire ruling" and gave a liberal interpretation of the Queensland law.
The corporate media coverage of the Bayliss inquest, however, focussed on the soap-opera-type drama surrounding his death, and not on the importance of a woman's right to choose. This was a pity, as debate over whether abortion should be legal, and whether it is possible to win repeal of all abortion laws, has been spurred among many people since the ALP state conference decision in June to support the complete removal of abortion-related offences from the criminal code, and for abortion to be recognised as a health issue, not a criminal one.
Although there were no speakers against the motion, state Attorney-General Rod Welford moved to disallow the topic from being discussed in a debate around legal policy. It was eventually discussed under health policy.
Queensland Labor Premier Peter Beattie, however, has disregarded the conference decision. Before the conference had even met, he had said that he was committed to not changing the abortion laws. After the conference, he said that there were 15,000 abortions in Queensland every year, and that the law would not be changed, except to make abortions harder to get.
Beattie is following former premier Wayne Goss' lead in this. In the early 1990s, ALP state conferences and state women's conferences repeatedly called for repeal, but the Goss Labor government refused to act.
In 1999, the state government set up a taskforce to report on the impact of the Queensland criminal code and the judicial system on women. Its report, released in March 2000, made about 100 recommendations for change, including the complete repeal of Queensland abortion laws. The report explicitly rejected reforming abortion laws. It argued that, whatever the framework of reform legislation, it was likely to further disadvantage women.
In 2001, the Brisbane International Women's Day Collective ran a campaign for repeal, culminating in a march to Parliament House and a meeting with a number of MPs on August 8.
Large distances and travel costs prevent many Queensland women from accessing abortion, and abortion is virtually unobtainable in Queensland public hospitals, forcing women to pay fees at privately run clinics. A campaign to repeal the laws could also highlight the importance of public hospitals performing the procedure. Repeal is the only option if women are to go on the offensive and demand more services.
The campaign to repeal the laws has been complicated by a parallel campaign by the Queensland Alliance for Legal Abortion which has been pushing for changes to the present laws, to legalise abortion until the 14th week of pregnancy. After that, women would still face legal penalties for having an abortion. QALA does not campaign for repeal.
The closer the next state election looms, the less likely it is that the Labor government will take any action on the abortion laws. Feminists need to point to the experience of the ACT to argue that repeal is neither utopian nor asking too much. Women should have the right to decide what to do with their bodies.
BY JULIA HALDANE
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, September 4, 2002.
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