Risking women's health, breaching Australia's laws

With pregnancy termination, the federal government pursues policies detrimental to women’s health, women’s health care and the health of Australians generally, ignoring the majority of Australians - who believe in women’s abortion rights.

The 2004 Australian Election Study (AES) found more than 50 per cent of respondents “believe a woman should be able to readily access ‘abortion on demand’”. Almost 90 per cent of respondents supported abortion when that included allowing termination “under special circumstances”. Only 4 per cent said “abortion should not be allowed under any circumstances”.

In its 2003 study, the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes found 81.2 per cent of respondents agreed  a woman “should have the right to choose whether or not she has an abortion”. Of those surveyed, only 9.4 per cent denied a woman’s right to abortion. Only 4.4 per cent disagreed “strongly” with this right.

Support for women’s right to control our own bodies has increased steadily over the past 30 years, from the 1980s - where 38 per cent of respondents to AES in 1987 said women “should be able to obtain an abortion readily, when they want one”, to the responses of this century.

Yet the federal government continues to target women who undergo abortion.

Why should a Medicare number cover a specific type of health counselling, namely for pregnancy? Shouldn’t there be one universal “health care counselling” number covering anything from prostate cancer counselling, to counselling for radical surgery, to counselling for asthmatic conditions, to counselling for pregnancy services?

A Medicare number, targeting women receiving pregnancy counselling targets women as women, breaching women’s right to equal treatment by reason of pregnancy and sex-gender. Isolating pregnancy counselling means pregnancy is treated differently from any other health condition, just as it means that women are being treated differently from men. Men will not require pregnancy counselling so will never be labelled by this special Medicare number. The question then is whether this different or unequal treatment causes detriment to the women seeking it, who will now wear the label. Clearly, it is - and does.

Although pregnancy termination is legal under certain circumstances, it continues to carry negative connotations among some in the community. Unfortunately, those “some” in the community are known to engage in conduct invasive of women’s privacy, and to abuse women, potentially causing women psychological injury and even sometimes seeking to do women physical harm.

Picketing of abortion clinics, where picketers engage in roughhouse tactics by shouting slogans at women entering the clinic, showing placards with gruesome and explicit diagrams or photographs, shaking their fists, stalking and otherwise threatening the health and wellbeing of clinic clients and personnel, is detrimental to women seeking pregnancy termination.

The shooting of a security guard at a Melbourne clinic is further evidence of detriment. Not only may this conduct deter women from seeking health advice and treatment, it confirms the risk women run when they carry with them health records showing they have sought pregnancy counselling.

At minimum, this is a “flag” alerting the mischievous or retributive anti-abortion fundamentalist to women who may have sought or had abortions. It provides an indicator enabling those seeking to interfere with women’s health provision and health choices to invade women’s privacy and to inflict damage upon them. Confidentiality and privacy laws are little guard against the determined anti-abortionist.

Women are well aware of the negative consequences which may be visited upon them by the small minority seeking to control women’s lives, health care and health choices. No man will ever carry with him a health record labelling him as a target for abuse and attack. Hence, federal government Medicare policy breaches the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) and runs counter to state government policies embodied in state sex discrimination and equal opportunity legislation.