Wo Magazine

Apologies to all readers about the lack of updateliness over the festive season. I’ve had a bit of a break but it seems the patriarchy hasn’t.

As I’m sure most of you are aware, Minister for Health, Tony Abbott is up to his old tricks [link above]; restricting Australian women’s access to abortion in granting the Government funded Pregnancy Helpline contract to a company called McKesson Asia Pacific. What’s interesting about this is that McKesson is a company with no obvious bias towards faith-based healthcare provision and yet they have sub-contracted the training of counsellors out to the Catholic organisations, Centacare and the Caroline Chisholm Society. Organisations and individuals with ties to abortion providers were exempt from applying for the contract and yet here we have two organisations involved in the helpline with a most open bias in the opposite direction.

The Catholic stance on abortion is well-known. It has also recently been reported that Catholic hospitals refuse to provide Emergency Contraception/ The Morning After Pill to rape victims. It’s really not that surprising but considering Emergency Contraception prevents conception before sperm meets egg, if the doctors at those hospitals don’t know this, I really think their abilities to provide healthcare should be called into question. But as we all know it has never been about saving the bay-bees but punishing Eve, that wench.

One anti-choice organisation, the Australian Federation of Pregnancy Support Services (formerly known as the Australian Federation of Pro-life Pregnancy Support Services), which trades under the name Pregnancy Help Australia, has already received hundreds of thousands of dollars of Government funding. The AFPSS received $240,000 in 2003-04, $245,000 in 2004-05 and almost $300,000 in the last financial year. Considering their government funding seems to be rising and genuinely pro-woman counselling services are losing funding it seems the anti-choicers have achieved a monopoly over pregnancy counselling services in Australia.

Abbott says, “I hope that the availability of this kind of support service might, in the end, have some downward impact on the number of abortions.” Abbott’s continues to cite the bogus figure of 100,000 abortions each year. This figure is actually derived from a Medicare figure of 73,000 (exaggerating much?) for D&C which is a medical procedure performed for reasons including miscarriage which makes up two-thirds of that 73,000. So the actual number of abortions is closer to 25,000.

The demand for abortions has actually been falling steadily in the under-25 group (12 per cent in the past decade) and probably would continue to fall if faith-based organisations released their tenterhooks from women’s bodies. I wonder how many rape victims who didn’t get EC in time due to going to a Catholic hospital then had to seek an abortion?

Research by the Guttmacher Institute shows that abortion figures are much much lower in countries where it is safe and readily available and where attitudes to gender, sex and sexuality are much more progressive:

Most recent rates per 1,000 reproductive-age women

Legal

Belgium 7

Germany 8

Netherlands 9

Switzerland 9

United States 21

Illegal
Dominican Republic 47

Peru 56

Philippines 27

Uganda 54
Sources:Guttmacher Institute and WHO Regional Office for Europe.

As you can see in the countries where it’s legal the US leads the way in the number of abortions carried out, it also happens to be where the anti-choice movement is strongest. Coincidence? Or are pro-lifers killing the bay-bees?!

The theme for the next issue of Wo! is ‘Choice’ so if you have something to add to the discourse send to editor@wo-magazine.com . Features and articles don’t have to be focused on reproductive rights, the theme can be interpreted as broadly or creatively as you like.