Abortion gets leave pass from ethical and medical standards

Radical abortion advocacy groups such as Campaign for Women’s Reproductive Rights, continue to try to convince the public that women can only fully participate in the social and professional worlds as long as they have access to free abortion on demand at any gestation.   These groups further perpetuate the lies that late term abortions only occur in the most serious of medical and life and death situations, ignoring the fact that the majority of late term abortions are undertaken for psychosocial reasons, not medical reasons.   In 2009, of 410 post 20wk abortions, 214 were undertaken for psychosocial reasons. 

With the current push to remove abortion from the criminal code in Tasmania, it is timely that the public were more informed about what abortion advocates will accept as good practise in abortion.   The Tasmanian Bill itself has been informed by false and misleading information, including out of date research and manipulative scare tactics about fears of prosecution.

One statement in support of the Tasmanian Bill, put forward by several women’s groups says,

‘Women are prevented from choosing termination of pregnancy themselves and must depend on the opinions of medical practitioners to make that choice for them a situation that does not exist for any other medical procedures’

This is another example of abortion advocates bending the truth in order to promote an ideology.  People don’t have a ‘right’ to demand any medical or surgical procedure of doctors and doctors are not compelled to act on every request of a patient.  In no other area of medicine are doctors forced to act against their own moral conscience, as is demanded of doctors in Victoria, and proposed of doctors in Tasmania.

If abortion moves from a legal framework to a health framework, abortion advocates will have to accept that this involves processes of consultation, information provision, including the disclosure of all risks, and the discussion of alternatives, yet the proposed Bill offers none of these inclusions.  In fact, the same abortion advocates quoted above propose that ‘no mandatory information (should be) required to achieve informed consent’, completely in opposition to good medical care and practise in any other area. 

Radical ideology has no place in public policy, education or informed consent, and while those things continue to be driven by ‘abortion at any cost’ ideology, the cost to women and our communities continues to grow.  

If the public is truly concerned about choice for women, we need to be concerned about the options being presented to women.  If the choice is between losing a job or continuing a pregnancy, being told to leave school or continue a pregnancy, having family or partner support withdrawn or continuing a pregnancy, or being rushed or ill-informed we have to question whether that is genuine choice, or whether that is coercion.  If women are having abortions they don’t truly want or choose, are we doing our best?

If in fact women will not be able to access late term abortions without Schulberg, hopefully we will now be forced to do what we should have been doing all along, creating positive support and solutions for women facing emotional, social, and economic crises during such a vulnerable time.  

Women deserve better than a surgical solution to their psychosocial problems.