Decriminalising abortion

Margarita Windisch

The issue of decriminalising abortion is part of the ALP’s platform for the November 25 Victorian state election, but Premier Steve Bracks is keen to downplay this.

Pregnancy termination services (abortion) remain on Victoria’s criminal code so women have access to abortion only under common law, through Justice Menhennitt’s 1969 ruling that permits abortion when it is necessary to protect the life or health of a woman.

Including abortion on the criminal code stigmatises what is essentially a medical procedure and should, therefore, be dealt with as a health issue. For so long as abortion is defined as a crime, publicly funded abortion services will be limited, adversely affecting women from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and rural areas in particular.

The ALP state conference in May voted to amend Victoria’s Crimes Act to ensure that “no abortion be criminal when performed by a legally qualified medical practitioner at the request of the woman concerned”. However, Bracks has now said he will not look at the issue until after the November election. He seems to want to ensure that the ALP does not confront this controversial issue during its campaign.

There is no guarantee that the ALP, if it wins the election, will decriminalise abortion; Bracks is quoted in the September 6 Age newspaper as saying that he would prefer that the status quo remain. While state opposition leader Ted Baillieu is reported to be personally in favour of decriminalisation, he is quoted in the August 31 Age as stating that the Coalition will not remove abortion from the criminal code if it wins in November.

Contrary to the claims of the Christian Catch the Fire Ministries and Right to Life, decriminalisation of abortion is not “murder on demand”. This is alarmist scaremongering. Decriminalising abortion is about allowing women the right to control their own bodies and to make reproductive choices.

A study published in the August edition of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health by Nickson, Smith and Shelley found that young women’s access to abortion services is particularly limited. Of 1244 respondents, 9.3% had travelled more than 100 kilometres to have an abortion. Women aged 15-19 years old were 2.5 times more likely than other women to have travelled more than 100 kilometres.

The study found that women who had travelled to Melbourne from regional Victoria and other Australian states except South Australia did so because abortion services were unavailable or difficult to access where they lived. The need to travel is an additional burden on young women, who may not have felt able to tell their families about their pregnancy.

Access to abortion does not replace the need for comprehensive public education about sexual health and contraception, but when a woman falls pregnant unexpectedly, she should be able to choose to have an abortion — safely and close to home. For so long as politicians prioritise their chances at the ballot box over women’s fundamental human right to control their own bodies, the struggle for abortion rights is not over.

 Email to a friend

add a comment to this page