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Forced birth gains ground

Tae Richards visited the US and found there to be a strong anti-choice sentiment that is expressed through marches, picket lines and propaganda. The US Pro-Choice movement has reason to be worried about their power, but back in Australia our laws are just as prohibitive to choice.

March 2007

Since I can remember, I have viewed abortion as something that should be a basic right — with the exception of a few ignorant friends, I had never had any real exposure to the anti-choice movement, until last month.

Far from spending my summer days cultivating skin cancer and losing sleep over reservoir levels, January found me deep in the American Midwest amidst the ever vocal, generally Christian ‘Pro-Life’ movement there. The movement itself was out in full force that month across the country, marking the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.

The US has a mixed reputation when it comes to reproductive rights. It has a history of both progressive and conservative legislation passing in regards to abortion. And for the last few decades the US has been the arena of a debate that has polarised and politically divided the country, and caused ripples worldwide.

Abortion was first legalised in the States in 1973, following the landmark legal case Roe vs. Wade in which a woman, later identified as Norma McCorvey, sued the state of Texas under the pseudonym Jane Roe. McCorvey claimed to have been raped and wished to terminate the pregnancy that had resulted from that rape, but the laws of the time prevented her from doing so. Under Texan law in 1970, the year in which McCorvey filed suit, it was a considered felony for a doctor to provide a woman with an abortion under any circumstances.

The case was highly controversial and extremely important, eventually reaching the Supreme Court. A verdict was not reached until January 22, 1973 — long after McCorvey had given birth. Though it was too late for McCorvey — who had effectively been forced to bear a child — the ruling handed down was in her favour. The judges decided that it was unconstitutional to deny a woman access to abortion before a foetus was considered ‘viable’ (able to live outside the womb), and therefore entitled to the rights of personhood, as it violated her constitutional right of privacy.

The outcome was an amazing victory for the Pro-Choice movement. It provided them with a legal benchmark on a scale they had never before possessed. The case legalised abortion throughout the US, and set limits on the restrictions individual states could place on the process, much to the despair of American right to lifers.

Unfortunately since that time, the ruling of Roe and the laws that resulted from it have been under relentless attack from the ‘Pro-Life’ camp. Dangerously powerful and influential activist groups have been set up, specialising in everything from grassroots activism, to aggressively challenging Roe in the courts and repeatedly attempting to pass legislation to further restrict abortion — often successfully.

One of the most recent and dangerous challenges to Roe is the South Dakota Abortion ban. In 2003, the legislature in South Dakota proposed a bill which successfully banned abortion statewide, with the only exception being abortions performed to save the life of the mother. The bill was passed in 2006 and was in effect until being repealed by voters on the 7th of November, 2006. But the legislature, obviously undeterred, proposed a new ban on the 31st of January this year — this time with the added exceptions of rape and incest. The bill was not passed into law the second time round however.

The Pro-Lifers have been tireless in pushing their agenda and the movement, from what I saw in January, does not appear to be losing steam.

In Kirksville, Missouri, where I was staying, the local right to lifers had peppered the town with anti-abortion propaganda. Churches, lawns, and even the nature strips of major roads were bordered with dozens of tiny blue and pink flags representing abortion ‘victims’, each set accompanied by a sign — often bearing an image of a foetus — and stating slogans such as: ‘In the USA 4000 children are killed each day!’ The town also had its 10th annual protest march to mark Roe’s anniversary.

Stories of small Midwestern towns rallying against choice are all well and good, but the truth is, most Australians feel a level of apathy towards the abortion battle currently raging in the states — and fair enough. If not for family connections to the country, I doubt that even I would feel very differently. What many may not realise, however, is that the political climate surrounding abortion here in Australia is also far from idyllic.

True, we do not have as impressive a reputation for anti-abortion hysteria as the US, but we do have our fair share of Pro-Life groups, and plenty of anti-choice politicians to back them up. Take for example Federal Health minister Tony Abbott, who described the current rate of abortion in Australia (as of 2005, around one in four women will undergo abortion) as a ‘national tragedy’ and has voiced his support for the establishment of federal funding for the deliberately misleading ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centres’*.

These centres are designed with misleadingly neutral facades in the hopes of luring in confused, would-be mothers and attempting to dissuade them from seeking abortion. They are also funded by the Australian Government and run by an arm of the Catholic Church, which is vocally opposed to the use of contraception.

Furthermore, it may come as a surprise to many that the laws regulating abortion (which are decided by individual states, much like the US system) are often quite conservative. Only the ACT provides abortions on request, and Victoria and Western Australia will provide abortions only in cases where a woman’s life, physical health or mental health are judged to be endangered by carrying a pregnancy full-term.

The fact is, as much as we may not want to believe it, our abortion laws are comparable to those of the US, and many of us are either too unconcerned or too uninformed to change them. In February of 2005, The Age reported a survey indicating that 16 per cent of the Australian population wanted to change the laws in order to make abortion ‘more accessible,’ 17 per cent wanted to make it ‘less accessible’ and an amazing 56 per cent were apathetic, believing the current laws to be ‘about right.’

Progress cannot be made by a public who is not willing to push for it, so here’s what I suggest: attend marches if you can, organise petitions and join support groups if you want, but at the very least THINK about the issue. Engage in discussions with friends, family and co-workers. Preaching to the choir is not a bad thing, nor is arguing with a brick wall, if you can get people to reconsider their own views — regardless of the outcome — it’s a step in the right direction.

*For more info on these centres and how to avoid them, check out this guide put out by the Greens.