DEAR News Of The Area,
WOMEN’S rights are being attacked by One Nation.
The official policy platform explicitly states that the party will “seek every opportunity to roll back brutal and extreme abortion law”.
The hard-fought battleground of the Women’s Electoral Lobby ahead of the 1972 election was fertility control and access to legal abortion. The idea that women should have the right to choose whether, and when, to have children.
With the election of Gough Whitlam he moved quickly to remove sales tax from contraceptive pills and to subsidise them under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
The Government went on to provide funding for newly established women’s health centres and family planning services to combat the dangers of illegal, unsafe ‘backyard’ abortions. The clinics provided a safe environment for women to get reproductive counseling, contraception and healthcare.
But abortion was dealt with by the States’ and Territories’ laws, under which it was a crime, except in South Australia, where legislation enabled abortions to be carried out legally in prescribed circumstances.
Judicial decisions in New South Wales and Victoria enabled a doctor to perform an abortion where they considered there was a risk to the women’s physical or mental health, though the threat of prosecution was not entirely removed.
In some States women risked injury or death in order to end an unwanted pregnancy,
In 1974 a Royal Commission was set up to inquire into and report on the family, social, educational, legal and sexual aspects of male and female relationships. This was chaired by Elizabeth Evatt AC, with Bishop Felix Arnott, the-then Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, and Ann Deveson, a writer and journalist.
Some 1200 written submissions, several hundred witnesses in formal hearings and many more in informal sessions, helped the commission to identify major areas of concern to the community within the scope of its terms of reference.
It was after the Dismissal that Frazer allowed it to continue, with restricted resources.
The final report was submitted at the end of 1977.
It has taken many years for some proposals to be implemented.
On the issue that led to the establishment of the Royal Commission – that abortion should be decriminalised when carried out in the first 22 weeks of pregnancy, and beyond that date in certain defined circumstances – it was not until 2019 that all States had decriminalised abortion.
It has been a long battle. Forty-seven years.
Pauline Hanson, we women do not want things reversed.
Regards,
Beverley Sharpe,
Port Macquarie.
You can help your local paper.
Make a small once-off, or (if you can) a regular donation.
We are an independent family owned business and our newspapers are free to collect and our news stories are free online.
Help support us into the future.
