abortion
25 Nov 2008
Celebrate Sisters, The Battle Is Won
With the legalisation of abortion in Victoria comes women's full citizenship, writes longtime pro-choice activist Dr Jo Wainer
History was made in the Victorian Parliament on 10 October, 2008 when, late in the evening, the Legislative Council passed the Abortion Law Reform Bill.In removing abortion from the Crimes Act, the Parliament did what no other Victorian Parliament has done: it told its female citizens that it trusts them with the decision to mother. The timing was perfect, occurring as it did during the centenary of white women's suffrage in Victoria.
For more than 150 years, the burden of risk of criminal sanctions had been allowed to lie with pregnant women, and the doctors and nurses who delivered their medical care. Thirty six years ago my late husband and I shouldered that risk and set up Australia's first openly operating abortion service. To get there we had to wade through the dark morass of backyard police corruption, political and religious intimidation and social ostracism.
We were shot at, had our house fire-bombed and the steering on our car cut, and were attacked by two men outside our home. My husband had the lease on his clinic withdrawn following pressure from a Catholic bishop on his landlady, and he was bankrupted by the Tax Department for $1500 tax owing. He lost his practice and became a locum. The Medical Board threatened to deregister him and he was ejected from the Australian Medical Association.
Back then, women endured backyard abortions without anaesthetic, where they were humiliated, maimed and sometimes killed. A whole ward of the Royal Women's Hospital was dedicated to women with sepsis or haemorrhage from illegal abortion and one woman died every week.
We persevered and the clinic we established continues to provide safe reproductive health services to women today. Its staff and the women it serves remain under siege from intimidating and aggressive people looking for an outlet for their private pathologies. The state will now be able to do its duty to protect that clinic — and all other reproductive health services — as it should.
This new law is the result of years of hard work by hundreds of women across the state of Victoria.
For 40 years women's health and reproductive experts and advocates did the detailed work to understand and make explicit the role of abortion in women's lives. Once the data was in we turned to the political process. Members of the major political parties developed policies to support legal abortion and had them adopted by their parties. In the ALP a parallel process was begun by former Victorian premier Joan Kirner and other prominent women to increase the representation of women in parliament by creating EMILY's List, whose members support the principles of equity, diversity, pro-choice, and the provision of equal pay and childcare.
In 2005 the statewide women's health service Women's Health Victoria, led by Marilyn Beaumont, put decriminalisation of abortion into its work-plan. Longstanding advocates of decriminalisation came together to establish the Association for the Legal Right to Abortion (ALRA) and began the search for a member of parliament who would introduce a Private Member's Bill, as had been done in Western Australia.
ALP Member for the Northern Victoria region, Candy Broad, took on the job and in August 2007 introduced her Bill into the Upper House. The Government responded by asking the Victorian Law Reform Commission to provide it with models to reform and modernise legislation relating to abortion, and a commitment to introduce legislation in 2008. All political parties gave their members a conscience vote.
The Bill — which was developed by the Ministers for Health, Daniel Andrews, and Women's Affairs, Maxine Morand — was simple, well founded and effective. It took abortion out of the Crimes Act and did not put it anywhere else. It resisted all attempts to confound it with special conditions that do not apply to other medical procedures.
In a classic case study of democracy at work, a committed team of community members developed resources to contribute to the debate, met with MPs to encourage them to support the Bill, provided information, parliamentary briefings, press commentary, and helped MPs to hold their nerve in the face of increasingly hostile and threatening opposition to the Bill. MPs' blackberries were flooded with correspondence and many of them worked diligently to understand the issues and make an informed decision about how to vote.
Mary Woodridge, Shadow Minister for Women's Affairs, was eloquent in her description of the significance of the Bill for Victorian women. Member for the Eastern Metropolitan region Shaun Leane, who is a former electrician and trade union representative, was determined to speak in support of a Bill that would improve access to reproductive healthcare for his two teenage daughters, and sought advice from ALRA, visited clinics, confronted intimate questions of women's biology and sexuality, and made an excellent speech in support of the Bill.
Others, such as Greens member Colleen Hartland, spoke of their own experience of abortion, and how that informed their decision to support the Bill.
A number of important issues were flushed out by the debate. These centered on the responsibility and authority of healthcare providers when their conscience clashes with the needs of their patient. The Catholic Church threatened to withdraw from providing reproductive health services and this has started a discussion on the role of faith-based services and universities in providing and training health professionals with the support of state funds.
In a continuation of the old Crusades against the infidel, the Church decided several centuries ago that contraception and abortion were sins. They needed as many Catholics as possible. Most Catholics in Australia no longer pay attention to these teachings and are as likely as non-Catholics to use contraception and abortion. Yet the Catholic Church whipped up a storm of protest against the Bill.
That threat to withdraw medical services might be the impetus to discourage governments from giving service contracts to Catholic hospitals to deliver women's health services, or to Catholic universities to train health professionals. If they are only prepared to treat people who share their values — and even members of their own faith do not — then they should excuse themselves from state supported health enterprises.
Doctors working in Catholic hospitals opened up discussion of how to balance their conscience with the prescriptions for clinical behaviours by their employers. This question of the interplay of conscience, faith and professionalism is an emerging issue in a multicultural society and extends far beyond the issue of abortion.
Abortion is a common experience for women, and part of the journey of reproductive health which includes menstruation, birth, miscarriage, assisted reproduction, menopause, hysterectomy and gynaecological cancer. All these events require considered decisions and the support of well trained doctors. Abortion is no different.
In my book Lost: illegal abortion stories I document the terrible price our mothers and grandmothers paid for the state's casual indifference to their need for safe abortion. The state and its representatives are yet to say "sorry" to women for inflicting this pain and suffering.
But perhaps the members of the 56th Parliament of Victoria have redeemed this injury with their clear-headed determination to shift the balance of power in favour of women in this most intimate of areas. In doing so they have recognised that the state cannot command a woman to mother, and that it is a political trick to try to divide women into good and bad, with abortion as the dividing line.
The Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 was a unique opportunity for the state to repair 150 years of neglect and torment of women, and finally put the decision to terminate a pregnancy where it belongs: with women, their families and their doctors. The Brumby Government and the leaders of the Liberal Party and the Greens who supported the Bill will be remembered through history for this act of equality.
The Act is a profound shift in the relationship between the state and its female citizens. It changes both nothing and everything. Nothing, because the number, rate and incidence of abortion will not change. And everything, because for the first time women will be recognised as the authors of our own lives. With that comes our full citizenship.
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It’s always a lovely feeling to experience a real, solid, tangible victory against the forces of god-bothering lunacy, innit?
Amen!!
Much more than a lovely feeling, guys - it’s a victory for justice and equality. Thank you Dr Jo Wainer, for all that you and your partner did to achieve it. I remember that era well, and my uni student acquaintances who died. Going by much of the debate that preceded this victory, many have forgotten. This day should be remembered.
If this bill was "a classic case of democracy at work", it sure didn’t show it in the outcomes. What’s with the removal of a doctor’s right to not participate in abortions? The irony of politicians taking a conscience vote on a bill that included a clause to remove a doctor’s freedom of conscience is not to be laughed at.
Truly Jo, you must admit, abortion rights or wrongs aside, this Bill has destroyed some fundamental democratic freedoms.
So what of people who oppose abortion on demand and who are not religious?
Here’s a cartoon:
Obviously pregnant woman: "No man has the right to tell me what to do with my body"
Abortionist: Hop onto the couch
Woman: Yes doctor.
you can still oppose abortion-on-demand for yourself, leo. the problem begins when you start opposing it on behalf of someone else
Leo, that’s not a cartoon! That’s just words!
I can’t really trust your opinion after such dishonesty, Leo.
Triple cheers Jo Wainer!!! A wonderful achievement. I know I’m being petty but I have a warm fuzzy glow at the thought of those power-mad priests and cardinals who are so full of sanctimonious sh-t about the ‘poor innocent little human beings being ripped out of their mothers’ wombs’, yet have no compunction about their brutish followers cutting car brakes and terrifying women who go to an abortion clinic. How come they don’t admit to Catholicism being a stone-age religion? They are the first people to accuse Muslims as being adherents of a religion which is past its use-by- date. Yet whoopee-do the Catholic Church presents itself as being a religion for the here and now. And my name is Quasimodo.
Leo: WTF was that little comment about? I’m not sure if I get the point. And I’m sure as hell I don’t want to know. What is the name of the rock wherein you dwell? No prizes for guessing which religion you belong to.
Catherine James, I’m not sure why, if the rights of doctors are so threatened by such a bill, the doctors didn’t have the conscience to opt out of medicine in their first semester. The minute they realized their precious consciences might clash with a modern society. But that is not the way of the Catholics is it? Far better to be a mole lying in wait for the moment they can do the most damage to society. How can you equate democracy with protecting these sorry excuses of human beings and their so-called rights? As usual the Catholic Church assumes the cloak of morality whilst being an empty vessel: a vacuum of cant and hypocrisy whilst dictating so called principles to everyone else. Shame, shame to the Catholic Church.
I’m sorry to underscore the point. But if they had of had any principles they would have chosen a career other than medicine.
Please understand I’m not accusing you of anything.
Vensie, Jo was dishonest in her portrayal of this issue and you’re not doing anyone any favours either with your diatribe. Abortion is not a "Catholic Church versus the rest of intelligent society" issue. Who uses religion as an argument more than any other interest group in this debate? It’s the pro-abortion lobby. They pull the religion line whenever they get into a tight spot. Rosaries, ovaries - nice rhyme, no substance.
The idea that those who oppose abortion are spouting religion is absolutely unfair and unfounded. As for the Catholic Church having its say: it may be a religious institution but it only bases its argument on science. It says, "look at the biological facts of life". It doesn’t argue the issue saying, "read it in the Bible". It’s fine for you to disagree with the Church’s stated reasoning, but understand that you are disagreeing with the science, not the Bible.
This Bill was not a victory by any measure. Jo summed it up herself: it changes nothing. "Nothing because the number, rate and incidence of abortion will not change". As for what it will change? "For the first time women will be recognised as the authors of our own lives". Oh please Jo, do you really think the 80,000-plus Australian women who will abort their pregnancies in the next 12 months are doing it because they feel in control of their lives?
Every woman I know who has had an abortion has done it for some terribly pressing reason that they’ve ended up regretting ever paying heed to. I don’t call that control. I call it coercion. And we - including you, Venise, not just the Church - are guilty of not doing enough to stop the coercion, to help those who would willingly keep their child if only it weren’t for the meager finances, the bullying spouse, the unsupportive parents, the pressuring doctor, the indifferent boyfriend, the laughing peers, the lost job, the unclear future…
A cornered animal will chew of its own leg, but I would never deem to say it happily or freely did so.
Venise, think for just two minutes. Why did politicians vote with their conscience if this issue is as black and white as you and others think? Then wonder, why did politicians take away from doctors the very freedom they would have demanded of their party to pass this Bill? The glaring hypocrisy sickened me. The silence of the media, the arch-monitors of power, disturbed me.
Jo says pro-abortion lobbyists "resisted all attempts to confound [abortion] with special conditions that do not apply to other medical procedures". Yeah, so they just made it really clear that abortion was an ordinary medical procedure… Ah, name one other medical procedure where the doctor has no professional discretion over the decision of the patient and can lose his license or be jailed for not taking the patient’s orders?
This bizarre role reversal is no mistake. It’s because doctors, not just Catholic doctors, aren’t too keen on abortion. Fancy that!!? So they have to be forced. The Australian Medical Association was rightly incensed by this abhorrent undermining of professional freedom. And guess what, Venise, the AMA is not a pseudonym for the Catholic Church…but I’m sure you’ll find a way to link the two and blame the Catholic Church for that as well.
Once again I say, what about those who oppose abortion on demand who (like me) are NOT religious?
Fact: A third of abortions are to women who have already had abortions.
Fact: Around 100,000 abortions are performed in Australia every year.
Fact: The number of abortions performed in public hospitals over the last ten years has remained level, but the number of abortion performed in private hospitals has skyrocketed.
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/Pubs/RB/2004-05/05rb09.htm
Fact: 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).
Fact: The figures prove that abortion is not the last resort of the poor or the exploited, it’s the first resort of the middle classes.
Fact: When a woman miscarries, she "loses her baby", when she aborts, she "terminates her pregnancy", even if the events happen at the same stage of gestation.
Fact: At 14 weeks, the foetus is about 8-9 cm from head to rump
and weighs about 45 grams. It’s heart is beating, it’s able to swallow and the kidneys are able to make urine. A quarter of abortions are performed at this stage. 23% are performed later.
Personally I can understand and sympathise with any girl who finds that she’s pregnant, or thinks she might be and seeks an early and immediate termination. Repeat offenders (and there are a growing number of women to whom this term rightly applies) deserve no consideration.
A tiny proportion of abortions are performed after 20 weeks, and this should come as some comfort to we sad faced observers of the trend, but one wonders if this is entirely due to the strictures put in place by the medical profession or, without those restrictions, whether women would (if they could) terminate all the way up to the moment the baby’s head pops out?
Considering the recent case of a woman flushing her newborn down the toilet, our cynicism surely is well founded?
Catherine James, you are so right. Its not just wrong to deny Doctors self determination in this matter - its cruel beyond measure.
And to sneer at a Doctor’s potential problem thus:-
……."their precious consciences" ……. -
is nothing short of revolting.
IMHO I don’t think the declining number of med students going into obstetrics and gynecology over the last 25 years will be helped by this decision.
Leo, for an abortion to be performed after 20 weeks is - well there just aren’t words for that. To say that Catholics are the only ones who who have a problem with abortion, is a deliberate and common lie.
IMHO women do have the right to choose, but only after everything else has failed. If she’s in big trouble she shouldl should make up her mind pretty damned quick……in my book, anything over 8 weeks stays.
Fact: In 98% of cases, pregnancy is caused by a woman having sex with a MAN!
Women don’t "find themselves" pregnant, Leo. If there are women who are having multiple abortions there are just as many men doing same
Jack, there really is no answer to your ludicrous statement. Even to parody it is impossible. I merely invite readers to look over it again and savour the complete idiocy.
Dear Catherine
The Bill does not take away doctor’s conscientious objection - this is a clear and deliberate misreading of the Act. The Bill actually protects conscientious objection by stating that doctors have a right to conscientiuos objection but must refer to woman on to another practitioner who does not. That obligation is fulfilled by the doctor telling the woman to attend the Royal Women’s Hospital. The reason for it is to stop such doctors from manipulating women by diguising their religious views. The right to conscientious objection is only taken away where a woman’s life is in immediate danger. If a woman’s life is at risk a doctor cannot stand there and allow her to die because of his (and it ususally is a he) religious beliefs. Anyone who would argue otherwise should not be practising medicine.
In addition, many doctors working in catholic hospitals supported that provision on conscientious objection as they wanted to be protected from their catholic employer in the event that they did refer a woman to someone else. If you read the papers a number of doctors in catholic hospitals spoke out on this issue against the church’s view. Check your facts.
Leo, in a democracy there is a right to free speech, everyone is entitled to an opinion. However everyone is not entitled to their own facts or to have their view form the basis of public policy or law. For example, women and men are both entitled to air their views about abortion. However due to the fact that men don’t get pregnant and never have to confront the issue of having to continue or terminate a pregnancy, then their views will always be ancillary to womens on this issue and should not be the basis for policy or law. Imagine if men got pregnant and women wanted to make decisions for them - men would be outraged and would not allow it to happen.
Good on the Vic parliament about time it happened, lets hope the rest of the country follows.
If members of the medical fraternity are so lacking in conscience as to have been deliberately hypocritical in ‘filing to realize, early in their studies, that ultimately the civil administration of their country would clash with their beliefs. They should have been honourable enough to have changed their careers. This is principle. This is conscience. This is responsibility. These protesting medicos whingers have whimped out of their responsibilities and moral obligations.
Lititia: Thank you for your excellent input, brilliantly delineated.
Cheers
V.
PS: If the person who commented that he wasn’t religious. Strange thing that. Because you do their work for them.
*This comment has been edited*
PPS: One Leo, was the culprit.
PPPS:’filing’ should read failing.
I’m really really happy is legal.
Abortion should be there as an option for all women. Backyard abortions should be an abomination.
Now that’s over with, can we please focus on the issue of reducing abortions?
I am pro-choice, but against abortion. A contradiction for many people I know, but it makes perfect sense to me.
Jo Wainer, abortion should be seen as a sometimes necessary evil, and not a natural part of any reproductive journey. That’s a shocking attitude.
Men and women who don’t want kids should try there absolute best to not get pregnant. I simply to do believe this is the case for a large % of Australian abortions. This is problem we should tackle in a united front. Now that the silly argument over legality over.
"The Bill actually protects conscientious objection by stating that doctors have a right to conscientiuos objection but, must refer to woman on to another practitioner who does not."
That’s not really a solution is it? Perhaps we could put this in a political context for illustration.
Imagine the people of a country having a problem with torturing captured enemy combatants for information - is it "right" for them to then pass those prisoners off to a third party who will do the work for them in a zone with its own special legal jurisdictions? No I think we would all agree that that is abhorrent and international courts should be empowered to prevent such ‘switches’.
Doctors should be free to make their own choice, under any circumstances, and they shouldn’t be forced to submit a substitute, especially if they have a cultural problem with abortion.
Venise: "If members of the medical fraternity are so lacking in conscience as to have been deliberately hypocritical in ‘filing to realize, early in their studies, that ultimately the civil administration of their country would clash with their beliefs"
We are talking about Doctors here, not political aspirants.
"They should have been honourable enough to have changed their careers. This is principle. This is conscience. This is responsibility."
Don’t you have ANY diea what it takes to even qualify as a Doctor? Its a veritable marathon; a grueling path and the personal and financial investment in pursuing such a career means that you are ‘locked’ into the medical system for decades before you can break even, much less come out ahead. So your ‘change their career’ option - isn’t realistically an option for most Doctors.
You also assume that Doctors are prescient enough to anticipate social changes - I mean who do you think most Doctors are - Gods or something? They are just regular people who weren’t voted into office, they weren’t expected to make grand gestures on the world’s stage. And importantly they weren’t required to sign away their religion so that they could practice their profession.
And before you suggest that they should - think about those who started up alot of the early hospitals in this country? Who were the nurses who attended the sick and dieing? Who came up with the money to train Doctors in the early days. You may say that the modern medical world has moved on, but how dependent are we as a society on these facilities?
I’m sure you would never think of using a Doctor who operated out of such a place. That would be principle. That would be conscience. That would be responsibility.
eek, the bold - sorry.
If you are going to make everything secular then close down the old hospitals, stop churches donating to medical charities, stop religion funded endowments.
See what happens to the medical system then.
"However due to the fact that men don’t get pregnant and never have to confront the issue of having to continue or terminate a pregnancy, then their views will always be ancillary to womens on this issue"
I’m sorry but I don’t agree at all with that point. Unless the girl has been taken by force, the father’s view should never be ancillary to womens - both should be equally valid.
I am just confused that the Victorian government is both totalitarian and democratic.
The salient point of the article is that our system of parliament worked , even though it is still far from being democratic.
Yet we still have land being resumed without compensation, WWI memorials bulldozed etc for the North South Pipeline all without consultation or communication with affected parties.
A Jekyll & Hyde government ?
Democracy when it is politically expedient ?
Just savour the ironies , like when Bracks removed the right for one of our community groups to vote for their board of management, they are numerous.
Lititia writes:
"Leo, in a democracy there is a right to free speech, everyone is entitled to an opinion. However everyone is not entitled to their own facts or to have their view form the basis of public policy or law"
Another ridiculous statement, one of many in your post, Lititia. Not only that, it’s hypocritical, because you go on to say:
"due to the fact that men don’t get pregnant and never have to confront the issue of having to continue or terminate a pregnancy, then their views will always be ancillary to womens on this issue and should not be the basis for policy or law"
Basically YOU’ve decided men’s views are "ancillary" and should not be considered. In other words you want to have YOUR own view form the basis of law? What stinking hypocrisy. The so-called Pro-Choicers shoot themselves in the foot at every turn with their badly considered and self-centred arguments.
If you got your heads out of your backsides you’d be able to reason better and offer salient points.
Female parents kill their children at a rate of 3 to 1 compared to male parents (that figure includes stepfathers) and that doesn’t count the homicides which mothers undertake with others, so don’t worry, the world is swiftly coming around to the realisation that women aren’t nurturing caregivers by nature.
Sorry, Leo until men can get pregnant and carry a fetus for 9 months, their views are second to womens and no amount of outrage can change that fact. They can certainly have an opinion - no-one is saying that they should not. However, giving an opinion and insisting that their views should be the basis of law are two different things. All things are not equal when it comes to pregnancy. As I said men cannot get pregnant and should defer to women on this issue.
There is a lot of literature in medical journals on doctor’s and conscientious objection and many doctor’s see it not as a matter of principle but as giving zealot’s a right to impose their beliefs on their patients and causing harm. The American Journal of Bioethics, December, Volume 7, Number 12, 2007, did a whole journal on this topic. I suggest both Leo and Catherine inform themselves more thoroughly on this issue.
Banville 84: I’m sorry, I didn’t know there was a difference.
Ethics, conscience, morals should be applicable to anyone embarking on life. Have you not realized that it was the doctors who were ranting on about their conscience, and people being human they sought to deny their own lack of morals by spouting the direct opposite? The thief is the first person to cry innocence. The fraudster is the first person to shelter under the roof of patriotism, and the innately immoral are the first who seek to whitewash themselves by invoking the ‘C’ word. Conscience.
Actually Banville 84, I know exactly what it takes to be a doctor. My stepfather (he had a doctorate in science and in medicine) and half his family were surgeons. This is why I said that the medicos crying conscience should quit the moment they think their careers might be jeopardized by society. Hopefully in their first semester, thus allowing them a full and fruitful career in one of the other professions.
Catherine James: I haven’t got the time to go into detail about your comments.
Therefore I will only say that I passionately disbelieve what you say. And I will defend to the death my opinions and my right to express them. Especially if they run counter to the Roman Catholic faith.
Sincerely.
V.
"A tiny proportion of abortions are performed after 20 weeks, and this should come as some comfort to we sad faced observers of the trend, but one wonders if this is entirely due to the strictures put in place by the medical profession or, without those restrictions, whether women would (if they could) terminate all the way up to the moment the baby’s head pops out?"
Its a good point Leo. I do wonder about the freeforall thinking that says abortion is a ‘right’, which often seems to ignore all elements but what the … owner of the womb wants. With rights come responsibilities, and we should always exercise compassion (for both mother *and* foetus, if possible). There sometimes seems something disturbingly arbitrary about the nature of acceptable abortion, and it is also often wrongly attributed to being a viewpoint of only the religious and/or the paternalistic. There is, of course, that third group - those who are concerned for the welfare of all individual lives (human or otherwise) whose lives hang by a tender thread on the whims of others.
I have no answer for this one, but I do often find the remarks of many ‘pro-choicers’ as uncomfortably callous with regard to foetus. They may not have voices, or memories, or rights, but they certainly have pain receptors (at the various international limits of acceptable abortion) and functioning brains.
cheers,
Derek
"They may not have voices, or memories, or rights, but they certainly have pain receptors (at the various international limits of acceptable abortion) and functioning brains."
Foetuses or pro-lifers?
Venise its rather old fashioned to speak of the Medical profession as a ‘fraternity’.
To say that a Doctor who is forced to refer a woman to an abortionist when he has such a problem with the procedure he can’t perform it himself, - to say that this is just the same as a building consultant recommending an architect, or a dentist recommending an oral surgeon - well, there aren’t just words.
Abortion isn’t a mundane medical procedure, like getting your teeth or eyes fixed. It is the ending of a human life. Its unbelievably sad.
It cuts across all cultures - most people in the world have a ‘problem’ with this issue because it touches the very heart of our humanity. Its heart breaking to hear stories about the forced abortion of Chinese babies, its heart breaking to think that young people are so up against it that they see no other options.
Intellectually we understand there is a problem, but emotionally we ache in sympathy. Well most people do.
Just picked this up on another site, thought it was interesting:-
" CONFESSION OF AN EX-ABORTIONIST
By Dr. Bernard Nathanson
I am personally responsible for 75,000 abortions. This legitimises my credentials to speak to you with some authority on the issue. I was one of the founders of the National Association for the Repeal of the Abortion Laws (NARAL) in the U.S. in 1968.
A truthful poll of opinion then would have found that most Americans were against permissive abortion. Yet within five years we had convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to issue the decision which legalised abortion throughout America in 1973 and produced
virtual abortion on demand up to birth. How did we do this? It is important to understand the tactics involved because these tactics have been used throughout the western world with one permutation or another, in order to change abortion law.
THE FIRST KEY TACTIC WAS TO CAPTURE THE MEDIA
We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was a liberal enlightened, sophisticated one. Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60% of Americans were in favour of permissive abortion. This is
the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority. We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law. Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalising abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of
birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1500% since legalisation.
THE SECOND KEY TACTIC WAS TO PLAY THE CATHOLIC CARD
We systematically vilified the Catholic Church and its "socially backward ideas" and picked on the Catholic hierarchy as the villain in opposing abortion. This theme was played endlessly. We fed the media such lies as "we all know that opposition to abortion comes from the hierarchy and not from most Catholics" and "Polls prove time and again that most Catholics want abortion law reform". And the media drum-fired all this into the American people, persuading them that anyone opposing permissive abortion must be under the influence of the Catholic hierarchy and that Catholics in favour of abortion are
enlightened and forward-looking. An inference of this tactic was that there were no non- Catholic groups opposing abortion. The fact that other Christian as well as non-Christian religions were {and still are) monolithically opposed to abortion was constantly suppressed, along with pro-life atheists’ opinions.
THE THIRD KEY TACTIC WAS THE DENIGRATION AND SUPPRESSION OF ALL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION
I am often asked what made me change my mind. How did I change from prominent abortionist to pro-life advocate? In 1973, I became director of obstetrics of a large hospital in New York City and had to set up a prenatal research unit, just at the start of a great new
technology which we now use every day to study the foetus in the womb. A favourite pro- abortion tactic is to insist that the definition of when life begins is impossible; that the question is a theological or moral or philosophical one, anything but a scientific one. Foetology makes it undeniably evident that life begins at conception and requires
all the protection and safeguards that any of us enjoy. Why, you may well ask, do some American doctors who are privy to the findings of foetology, discredit themselves by carrying out abortions? Simple arithmetic at $300 a time, 1.55 million abortions means an
industry generating $500,000,000 annually, of which most goes into the pocket of the physician doing the abortion. It is clear that permissive abortion is purposeful destruction of what is undeniably human life. It is an impermissible act of deadly violence. One must concede that unplanned pregnancy is a wrenchingly difficult dilemma,
but to look for its solution in a deliberate act of destruction is to trash the vast resourcefulness of human ingenuity, and to surrender the public weal to the classic utilitarian answer to social problems.
AS A SCIENTIST I KNOW, NOT BELIEVE, KNOW THAT HUMAN LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION
Although I am not a formal religionist, I believe with all my heart that there is a divinity of existence which commands us to declare a final and irreversible halt to this infinitely sad and shameful crime against humanity.
[Dr. Nathanson has since converted to Catholicism, being baptised in 1996.]
"its heart breaking to think that young people are so up against it that they see no other options."
Also very pertinent - it does say a lot about the state of our society that young women (and men) believe (perhaps rightly so) that life ends with a baby. Accepting that poor state of our social integrity and self worth rather than trying to seriously change it at its root may not do anything except increase cases of mental illness. Mental health issues following abortion do seem relevant here; I know a few women who have take the decision to abort. Following the procedure has been regret, depression (fairly serious), and a desire (in one case) to get pregnant again.
It seems clear that the ‘right’ should be supported (there are many circumstances where its relevance is obvious), but not as a ho-hum procedure (to be celebrated), ie, contraception or abortion amounting to the same thing. Its potentially as life-changing (for the potential mother) as it is for the foetus/baby, and should be pre-considered with the same level of counselling/psychiatric assessment as goes prior to transgender operations (for example).
Maybe legislative changes might clear the way for less polar approaches to the subject (at this stage you’re compelled to sit on one side of the fence or the other), allowing for both recognition of the life inside and the one outside when giving professional help to a woman who is seeking a potential abortion.
cheers,
Derek
Hi all,
This article is now closed for commenting. Thanks to everyone who offered constructive comments. No thanks to those who used this forum to attack others personally. Some comments have been removed from the thread.
Cheers
Marni