by Mary
Society: OK, you can have a job, I guess.
Also society: But, the price will be that children must never be unattended again.
Also also society: How we do mourn for the resilient, free, and fierce children of yesteryear, you dreadful smothering helicopter parent you.
My quest to be a paid book reviewer remains stalled for two reasons: first, I’ve never once asked anyone for money to do a book review, and second, this book review comes to you express, hot out of the oven, fresh from the year two thousand and fourteen.
Annabel Crabb’s The Wife Drought: Why women need wives, and men need lives is titled and marketed on the old “women need wives” joke, ie, an adult in their home to make meals and soothe fevers and type manuscripts for free.
Crabb is also a well-known Australian political journalist — the ABC’s chief online political writer — who is best-known for hosting a cooking with politicians TV show, and probably next best known for her comic writing style, eg:
Right then. The parliamentary consideration of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act has concluded. The nation has experienced the special thrill of watching its elected representatives fight like ferrets in a bag over a legislative clause even John Howard couldn’t get excited about, and can now dully register the fact that all this fuss has produced exactly zero changes to the clause in question.
Annabel Crabb, There is nothing free about Mark Latham’s speech, April 1 2017.
One or the other of the title’s reliance on the hackneyed complaint about women needing wives, or Crabb’s journalist persona, caused a lot of people I know to write off this book unread. The marketing runs with this too:
Written in Annabel Crabb’s inimitable style, it’s full of candid and funny stories from the author’s work in and around politics and the media, historical nuggets about the role of ‘The Wife’ in Australia, and intriguing research about the attitudes that pulse beneath the surface of egalitarian Australia.
Penguin Books Australia
I suggest you don’t write it off, at least not for those reasons. It’s quite a serious book, and Penguin has buried the lede: intriguing research about the attitudes that pulse beneath the surface of egalitarian Australia.
The research is central to the book: Crabb did a lot of one-on-one work with demographers to extract answers to questions that no one had answers to about gender, work, money, and career progressions in Australia. Some of the findings the book contains are in fact new findings prompted by Crabb’s questioning of demographic collaborators (who are acknowledged by name, although not as co-authors).
I found two discussions especially interesting: the way in which Australia makes part-time work fairly readily available to women with young children and the many limits of that as a solution to pay and career progression disparities between men and women; and the evidence suggesting that, contrary to the widespread perception that men are hailed as heroes by men and women alike for participating in the care of their young children, they are actually discriminated against by their workplaces when they do so.
After that Crabb’s writing style is just an added bonus to keep you going through the book. If you’re going to read a demographic exploration of gender and labour in Australia in the 2010s, it’s certainly a nice bonus that it happens to be written by Annabel Crabb of all people. Instead, the major caution I would give is that it’s very middle-class in both point of view and content, without much discussion of that limitation; and is largely focussed on women partnered with men. Assuming that the work lives of middle-class women partnered with men in Australia is of interest to you, recommended.
This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.
In 2013 and 2014 there was a push to introduce legislation which incorporated fetal personhood into law in NSW: Crimes Amendment (Zoe’s Law) Bill (No. 2) 2013. See for example Julie Hamblin’s commentary at the time on how such legislation could be used to further restrict access to abortion in NSW, even when the stated purpose is to allow for abusive violence to fetuses to be punished. The bill passed the Lower House of NSW Parliament but was never put to the Upper House, and thus lapsed in November 2014 when the 55th Parliament ended. It never became law.
Leslie Cannold, speaking to a Greens forum in September 2013 (video here, not subtitled) called on NSW to not only fight a rear-guard action in defending pregnant people seeking abortions from further rights being granted to fetuses, but to follow Victoria (and later Tasmania) in decriminalising abortion entirely. And now Greens MLC Dr Mehreen Faruqi, is campaigning for the decriminalisation of abortion in NSW. Here are some of the facts about abortion access in NSW her flyer gives:
The laws surrounding access to abortion in NSW are very confusing. Abortion is currently in the Crimes Act (Sections 82-84), although court decisions have established that abortion will not be unlawful if a doctor reasonably believes it is necessary to save the woman from serious danger to her life, or mental or physical health[…]
In NSW, an abortion is unlawful unless a doctor deems that a woman’s physical, psychological and/or mental health is in serious danger. The criterion of ‘mental health’ can include economic and/or social factors[…]
Any amendments to the Crimes Act, such as those proposed by supporters of foetal personhood laws risks changing that interpretation. By removing abortion from the Crimes Act, it will no longer be a criminal offence and women and their doctors will no longer have to rely on the interpretation of the law by a court in each case in order to avoid criminal liability.
Learn more about the campaign at the Decriminalise Abortion page on Faruqi’s website. You can help by signing the online petition in support of decriminalisation or collecting signatures offline.
Featured image credit:
Pro_Choice_March-Texas_State_Capitol-2013_07_01-9378.jpg by ann harkness on Flickr.
This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.
I was inspired by my baby suddenly being given a daycare place, and my ambivalence about placing her in daycare as a young baby, to remember all my frustrations with the Australian pre-school daycare system, and to suggest what, from my perspective, would be considerable improvements.
This is a very parent-focussed and rather pragmatic list; you’ll note I haven’t suggested nationalising daycare! I likewise have only very slightly spoken to cost issues, parents who have struggled to afford daycare, what’s your wishlist? For other perspectives, I’m looking forward to the Productivity Commission’s findings (although I doubt I’ll agree with much policy which the government builds on it, we’ll see), and I’d love to hear from people who can talk about the workers’ perspective, especially following the axing of the Early Years Quality Fund.
That said, here’s my “imperfect world” daycare wishlist:
Improve the ability of parents and guardians to plan
Ideally, daycare places are guaranteed to children well in advance, coinciding with the end of their parents’ parental leave.
Presently, many daycare centres do not have immediate vacancies, especially for children under 24 months of age, who require a 1:4 carer to child ratio. They therefore maintain waiting lists. Parents do not know when their child is likely to reach the top of the waiting list, nor whether the waiting list even functions as it is assumed to. Parents list their child at every conceivable centre, sometimes without even an acknowledgment of receipt of their application (to this day, I do not know if my then-university’s daycare received my son’s application four years ago) and almost invariably without any ongoing contact beyond the approximately yearly “please confirm if your child still requires care” email. Parents may, at some future point, get a phone call saying that there’s a place available, by the way, enrol TODAY or it’s gone. Or they may not.
Centres in turn have no idea how long their list really is, or how many parents they will need to call to find a child still waiting for a place. They usually maintain their own private waiting lists. Most do not disclose either on their websites nor when acknowledging a waiting list application (if they do) how long recently enrolled children waited for a place, nor their policy for awarding places. Aside from the mandated priority for children in danger, followed by children of working parents, many, for understandable reasons, give priority to siblings of already enrolled children, for example, but they seldom disclose it.
Waiting lists are expensive with many centres charging $20 to $100+ to waitlist a child, and parents encouraged (by each other, by early childhood nurses, by employers) to waitlist at every conceivable centre if they want a place. Some centres are ethical in their handling of this — one discouraged me from waitlisting, disclosing that their lease was under review and they might be closing in 2015 — but many accept waitlist applications indefinitely even while informing parents who specifically ask that there are unlikely to ever be a place for their child.
There’s presumably some chicken-and-egg here: parents waitlist at as many centres as they can afford because they can’t tell whether any given centre will admit their child before they reach school age, but centres prefer that parents not waitlist at scores of centres because it makes it difficult to judge the real length of their waiting list and to fill vacancies, so they charge a fee to discourage the practice. But charging waitlist fees is not as good a solution to this problem as centralised, transparent waitlists would be, which would allow both centres and parents to plan.
It is an epic waste of everyone’s time. If we can’t have the ideal situation, it would be good to know (to within, say, two months) when a child will reach the top of waiting lists. Instead, what we have is essentially a black box.
I’ve often wondered about the employment issues arising from this, in that working families with children in daycare may not be able to move in search of better pay, conditions or advancement, due to inability to secure a daycare spot anywhere else within a reasonable timeframe.
I’d much prefer, if waitlist I must, to waitlist at a single central location for centres of my preference, have estimates of each of their waiting times and policies provided at the time I initially sign up, and regular updates sent. Imagine this for example:
Please select which centres you are wait listing for:
- Centre A (2km from your workplace, 10km from your home, 15 children waitlisted, estimated date of vacancy January 2015)
- Centre B (12km from your workplace, 1km from your home, 14 children waitlisted, estimated date of vacancy February 2015)
- Centre C (5km from your workplace, 7km from your home, 5 children waitlisted, estimated date of vacancy September 2014)
The ability to plan might also prevent the enrolment of some young babies, like mine, because the parents would not be motivated to take an early offer of a place in case it’s the only one they’ll get in the foreseeable future. (My baby would likely have been enrolled in June or July, if I had an assured place, giving me less months of Michael Leunig feeling sorry for my baby. As it is, an April place is far better than a February one, Leunig, Mem Fox and Mia Freedman be damned.)
Make waiting lists transparent, impartial and fair
In addition, it’s unclear whether the waiting list is actually as effective way of getting a place as one would hope. In 2013, Andie Fox wrote in Daily Life:
I can’t do this, I complained to my mother, how can I go to work knowing my child is [at a poor quality centre]? She thought it would simply be a matter of choosing a better daycare centre and booking my child in. But it doesn’t work like that, I tried to tell her. You’re on waiting lists from the time you are pregnant and the lists are long and you wait hopefully for your turn. By now I knew of a care centre with a better reputation through my mother-friend network, but I wasn’t on their waiting list, I hadn’t realised there was such variation in quality when I had been pregnant.
My mother thought none of this should stop her and in the end it didn’t – she cajoled her way in and secured a place for my toddler in the better centre.
Andie and I discussed this in person a few weeks later: this is hidden knowledge. Most people put their name on the waiting list and try to be patient believing that their turn will come, that places will be awarded to the top name on the list, that if they have to wait 24 months at least everyone else does too. They don’t realise that there is a group of people who are charming their way into centres or otherwise jumping the queue.
And even if they do, they may not be able to join that group. I’ve been advised to do similar things. Book my child in for casual days, so that the staff can see we’re a “nice family”. (This is code: we’re privileged on most axes.) Ring the centre director first thing every Monday morning to “just check” how my waitlist place is up to. (I have to wonder about the likelihood that annoying them like this will work, but nevertheless I was advised to do this. I dislike phones enough to not have tried.) It’s not only hidden knowledge; it advantages people who have the money to pay for unneeded casual days, the privilege to look like a desirable family to centres when doing a child’s casual pickup or dropoff, or their cajoling visits; and the time needed to do all of this hidden work of both waitlisting themselves and ingratiating themselves with several centres.
In fairness to the centres, I should note that in the end both my children received daycare places without me doing this hidden work. My older child was offered an immediate nursery place in a centre that had vacancies, my younger child was offered a place from the waiting list (although I don’t know if we were given a boost up the list for any reason, I only know that I didn’t ask or work for one). But I had no way of knowing when or whether this was likely to happen, or of how many children were admitted earlier because their parents knew what to say to the director.
Support breastfeeding relationships
Because I work from home, and my baby’s daycare is very near my house, I am thrilled that I will be able to visit her for nursing sessions and plan to take advantage of this as much as possible. But only people whose children are in daycares at or very near their workplace can do this.
Daycare centres are not concentrated in business districts but in residential districts. This does have some benefits (not having to take the child on your commute, being able to use the centre even when you are too ill to work or otherwise at home for the day) but means that visiting to nurse a baby, or comfort a distressed child, or simply enjoy lunch together occasionally, is not possible.
In general, the geography of childcare centres seems very arbitrary and not designed to particularly suit any need.
Have stable fees
If you are eligible, childcare fees are reimbursed by the government in the form of the childcare benefit (means-tested) and the childcare rebate (not means-tested). The first fluctuates when you update your income estimate with Centrelink (this happens automatically at the beginning of each financial year, with Centrelink assuming you get a small raise unless you manually edit it), the second is capped at $7500 per year, having the effect that if you spend your $7500 before the end of the financial year, it cuts off suddenly and causes daycare fees to suddenly effectively double. The ability of affected people to project the extra expenditure towards the end of the year and plan and save for it varies, to put it mildly. (It’s possible to be paid this in arrears at the end of the quarter or the year, and the latter means the fees are stable, but the number of people who can afford to defer a payment of $7500 into the following financial year is even smaller.)
The entire benefit system for childcare is complex and arbitrary. Obviously I am hoping the Productivity Commission’s findings and any resulting changes to childcare payments don’t massively increase my personal or anyone else’s out-of-pocket, but a change where I pay roughly the same amount each week would be welcomed.
This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.
NSW Parliament is sitting in March, and after Crimes Amendment (Zoe’s Law) Bill (No. 2) 2013 passed the lower house after a conscience vote late last year, it is before the upper house. The campaign opposing it is Our Bodies Our Choices (see also @OurBodiesChoices on Twitter).
I attended a forum on 26th September 2013 hosted by Greens MLC Dr Mehreen Faruqi with speakers opposing the law and hope to transcribe and share them with you this week. The first speaker, shown in the video below, was health lawyer Julie Hamblin, opposing the bill on the grounds that even limited recognition of fetal personhood, combined with the legal grey area of abortion access in NSW, would allow someone to challenge access to abortion in NSW.
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{“video_url”: “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN3jRfxgE-U”}
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Note: as with Philippa Ramsey, the following speaker, I think most members of the Hoyden community will be concerned by Hamblin’s positioning of abortion on the grounds of fetal anomaly as a special case concerning. In 2009 Lauredhel wrote the following:
As a feminist, I believe that we can have the abortion-rights conversation without marginalising, othering, and disparaging people with disabilities. I believe we can talk about abortion within that broader framework of reproductive justice, and that we can confront the ableism that creeps into some abortion-rights conversations head-on. This takes effort; we must think clearly, write carefully, read closely.
As I recall, Ramsey in particular was challenged on this in question time, Leslie Cannold, who spoke third, agreed with the question and wanted the pro-choice movement to stop relying on this argument.
Transcript
Mehreen Faruqi: Good evening and welcome everyone. I’m Mehreen Faruqi and I’m a Greens MP in State Parliament. I have the carriage of the Portfolio for the Status of Women for the Greens and I also have the privilege tonight of being your MC. I’ll start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land we’re meeting on the Gadigal people and pay my respect to the elders past and present. This land always has been and always will be Aboriginal land.
I’d also like to acknowledge a couple of my colleagues from NSW Parliament: Greg Piper, who’s an Independent in the lower house and Dr John Kay, who’s a Greens in the upper house. Thank you both for coming. And thank you all of you for making time tonight to come and participate in this community forum which really is about helping us unpack some of the implications of this fetal personhood law which is also known as “Zoe’s Law” that we have in front of Parliament at the moment.
This law is being debated in NSW Parliament at the moment so I think it’s really timely that we talk about it discuss it and get enough information about it to see why it is actually inappropriate and dangerous for women’s rights. The media has given quite a bit of coverage the last couple of months also NSW Bar Association and the Australian Medical Association Family Planning NSW and the Greens have come out and clearly stated their position in opposition to this Bill. There’s also a coalition, a group formed by a coalition, of women’s groups called Our Bodies Our Choice who are running the campaign also to provide information to the community to lobby the MPs, to provide information to them about the implications of the bill.
And tonight we’re really fortunate to have three excellent speakers with us who will take us through the legal, health and medical implications as well as the consequences for women’s rights of this particular bill. Each of our guests is going to speak for about 10 to 15 minutes and then we’ll open up for about 30 minutes to 40 minutes to have a discussion and also to ask questions of our speakers.
We will be recording tonight’s session and we’ll make a Youtube and put it up on our website so if you have any issues being recorded it will mainly be the speakers but we might record you when you’re asking your question if you have any issues with that just let us know and we’ll edit you out.
OK, so our first speaker for tonight is Julie Hamblin. Julie is a lawyer with more than 20 years experience advising the public and private health sectors on health law, medical negligence, clinical risk, bioethics and public health. She has held a number of government appointments in the health sector including the Australian Research Integrity Committee, the Australian National Council on HIV/AIDS and Related Diseases, and the board of the former Central Sydney Area Health Service. In December 2012, Julie was appointed to the NSW Clinical Ethics Advisory Panel. Julie has a long standing interest in sexual and reproductive health, and has undertaken consultancy work with HIV and related sexual health issues in more than 20 countries, in Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Eastern Europe. So please warmly welcome Julie Hamblin.
[applause]
Julie Hamblin: Thank you Mehreen, thank you everyone for coming along tonight to talk about this really important issue it’s something that’s very close to my heart and I, um, think it’s so important that we all understand exactly what is at stake with the bill that is before NSW Parliament at the moment.
What I wanted to do in my comments is to talk first of all very briefly about how the law currently regards fetuses and why a legal person — a fetal personhood law would be such a significant change to the existing law. And then I want to spend a little bit more time talking particularly about the legal status of abortion in NSW because this is one of the things that I am particularly concerned about in relation to Zoe’s Law because we have a really uniquely precarious position with abortion law in NSW. And i think we all need to understand the fragility of lawful abortion in this state in order to realise just how risky it would be if this bill goes through.
So just to give a little bit of a background about how the law has traditionally regarded fetuses. In short, the law in NSW has always adopted what is known as the ‘born alive’ rule. And what that says is that until a child is born and takes a breath the child is not to be regarded as a legal person. And so there are some situations around the edges where the law has had to look at should there be changes made to the born alive rule?
Let’s say for example, there have been cases where a pregnant woman has been involved in a car accident and has had, has sustained injuries which has included an injury to her fetus. And the courts have held that if that fetus goes on to be born alive, hence the born alive rule, goes on to be born alive, the fetus as a person, as a legal person after birth, will have the right to claim damages, to be compensated for the injuries sustained while in his or her mother’s womb. But that legal right only crystallises, and this is a really important point, that legal right only crystallises once the child is born alive.
And so although there is a recognition of injuries sustained while a fetus, the principle of the born alive rule is maintained. And there are numerous examples of that. There was one I was reading about just a couple of weeks ago in relation to the coroner’s jurisdiction. Because under the coronial legislation certainly in NSW and I think in most states in Australia the coroner has jurisdiction only to investigate deaths. So if it’s a stillbirth, under the Coroner’s Act, the coroner doesn’t have jurisdiction, because you haven’t had a person who has been born alive. And there has been some debate about whether it would be appropriate for the coroner’s jurisdiction to be expanded so that the coroner could investigate circumstances surrounding stillbirths as well as circumstances surrounding the deaths of children who have been born alive.
But that hasn’t happened, and even in the literature about a possible extension of the coronial jurisdiction to stillbirths which would be much less concerning than a full recognition of fetuses as a person there has been opposition to that on the basis that that would encroach upon the born alive rule which is considered to be a very important dividing line as to why—, when and in what circumstances the law should recognise someone as an individual person.
So that’s a starting point. We have in NSW the born alive rule, it is a very strong and very well established legal principle. And I am certainly not aware of any other case, and an example of a court decision or of legislation, which has departed from the born alive rule.
So that’s the background that we have when we look at Zoe’s Law. Because Zoe’s Law would be a radical departure from the born alive rule. And all those who support it say but it’s only limited to the particular circumstances of grievous bodily harm offenses that it would relate to but none the less, in legal terms, it would be a very significant development because it would be the first time that NSW law
has recognised a fetus as a legal person. And that is a very significant change to the law.
Why does it matter? As I’ve said all those people who are supporting Zoe’s Law say but it’s limited to the circumstances of these particular grievous bodily harm offences, it won’t affect other areas of the law such as abortion. I believe that is simply an incorrect legal analysis.
I just wanted to spend the second part of my time um, going over a little bit of the background what is the legal position of abortion in NSW. And why given that background having a provision that recognises a fetus as a person even if it’s only in the context of these particular sections of the criminal code why that would a threat to lawful abortion in this state.
So, what is the current abortion law in NSW? Um, I can guarantee you, because I’ve done this a million times, if you take a straw poll against your friends and colleagues, and you say “Is abortion legal in NSW?” The overwhelming majority of people will say “of course it’s lawful in NSW.” People simply don’t realise that abortion is still a crime in NSW.
One of the major problems that we have doing abortion advocacy is to convey to people that there is a problem. Because the majority of people think that it’s all been sorted that we have abortion on demand in NSW.
Sadly, the truth is a long way from that. Abortion is still a criminal offence in NSW. It always has been for as long as the Crimes Act has been in place, which is now well over 100 years and the offence has not changed over that time. Ah, it’s imported from the original British criminal code provisions. And it’s an offence, I put up the wording of the offence on the slide there, it’s an offence both for a woman who does something to herself to procure her own miscarriage which is the wording that they use and it’s also a criminal offence for another person to administer something, to perform a procedure that brings about a woman’s miscarriage.
But the critical word, which you can see there in both those offences is “unlawfully”. Because it says “whosoever unlawfully administers to herself” or if you’re a doctor or someone else “whosoever unlawfully administers to a woman”. And so the interpretation of a lawful abortion in NSW hinges on this one small word, “unlawfully”. And it’s quite an unusual provision in the context of the Crimes Act
because the Crimes Act doesn’t define what “unlawfully” is. In most of the other offences in the Crimes Act it says “well, these are the elements of the offences, and these are the things that might be a defence to a particular criminal offence.” It doesn’t say that in relation to the abortion offences. So that’s a really significant problem to start with in terms of getting clarity as to what the legal position is.
So what the law says is “if you do something unlawfully it’s a criminal offence.” Particularly unhelpful.
And so in terms of deciding and determining what really is lawful and what is not lawful we have to look to how the courts have interpreted that one word “unlawfully”. Um, there have not been many court decisions but the ones that there have been—
[Hamblin was interrupted here by troubles with the projector]
So the definition of unlawfully and the way unlawfully has been interpreted by our courts goes back to two very old decisions one in 1969 in Victoria and one in 1971 in NSW. And what they’ve said in short, I’ve put up the precise wording there, what they have said in short is that it will be lawful if the abortion is considered to be — is reasonably considered to be — necessary to preserve the woman from a serious danger to her life or her physical or mental health and in the circumstances is not out of proportion to the danger.
So in short what you need to show in order to establish that an abortion is lawful is that it’s necessary to prevent a serious risk to the life or health of the woman. It’s known as the Menhennitt rules, the test. And in NSW we had a case in 1971, R v Wald, where that test was adopted.
Actually a very interesting background to that case. It was, it was, quite a shocking set of circumstances that gave rise to it. Dr Wald was a doctor who ran a termination clinic in Clovelly I think, somewhere in the eastern suburbs, and there was a police raid on that clinic, without notice one day, with women on the operating table in the middle of having terminations. And Dr Wald was charged with unlawfully performing an abortion. And the main statement that we have of the law in NSW comes from that case, and it’s not even from an actual decision by the judge. It’s from directions that the judge, in the criminal trial of Dr Wald, gave to the jury. But what the judge did was to adopt the test of serious risk to the life or health of the woman.
Since then we’ve only had a very very small number of cases. And that I guess is a good thing, it shows there isn’t a lot of appetite to bring criminal prosecutions to court. And the cases that we have had by and large have upheld the test in Wald, which says that an abortion is lawful if it is necessary to prevent a serious health to — er, serious risk to the life or health of the woman. And it’s been expanded to acknowledge that there might be economic and social grounds on which the continuation of the pregnancy might pose a serious risk to the woman’s health or life.
And so everything seemed to have a sort of uneasy equilibrium until 2010 where in Queensland as you may have read there was a prosecution brought against a young woman who had a medical abortion at home
using RU486, that she administered to herself. And she was criminally charged under the Queensland criminal code which was very similiar at that time to our code. It’s since been amended to make it a little bit better, not much but a little bit. And so she was charged with unlawfully procuring her own termination.
She was acquitted by the jury we don’t have reasons so we don’t know exactly what the thinking was of the jury. We have some hints from the directions that the judge gave to the jury. And I can talk more about that later I don’t really have time to go into that now.
So she was acquitted and that’s a good thing. But it certainly was a very stark reminder of just how precarious a position we have in NSW and Queensland where we still have these outdated offences in our criminal code that can be brought into life at any time if the circumstances come together such that uh, either a woman or a medical practitioner, could be criminally charged.
So just briefly, and to sum up, why is the existing abortion law so unsatisfactory?
Well, you know, where do you begin? There are so many reasons.First of all, it remains a criminal offence, and as I’ve said that’s obviously a problem. Because this, the lawfulness depends upon how the courts interpret this word “unlawfully” on the facts of a particular case. It’s a very unstable foundation for lawful abortion in this state. It’s subject to particular facts of the case, it’s subject to the personal inclinations and beliefs of particular judges, and we have had a case that was overturned in appeal in NSW — the Superclinics case — where the particular personal beliefs of a judge clearly intervened in his decision in declaring a particular abortion had been unlawful.
And as I’ve said, we know from the case in Queensland that while prosecutions are rare, they’re certainly a very real possibility. In practice what it means of course is that abortion is in a grey zone. It is not fully legal like other mainstream medical procedures. In NSW terminations are performed overwhelming in the private sector, not in the public sector, and there are really concerning issues about cost and access as a result of that.
Fetal anomaly is not a relevant consideration to the test of unlawful abortion except to the extent that a child, if born disabled, might have an impact upon the psychological health of the mother. And that’s just ridiculous. You know, we know that the overwhelming majority of public opinion supports access to abortion at least in that — in those circumstances. Indeed the majority supports it in an even broader set of circumstances. But certainly to have a law that doesn’t recognise serious fetal anomaly as grounds in itself for a lawful abortion is quite concerning.
And so we’re left with a disconnect between what the law says, what most people think it says, and what is actually happening in practice. Because we have clinics who— that are operating where terminations are performed but where it’s done with a concern constantly to be able satisfy this very limited test of serious risk to the life or health of the woman that doesn’t really accord with the motives and with the reality of what’s happening with a lot of terminations.
And so finally just to bring it back to the concern about Zoe’s Law: because we have this fundamental instability and a lack of a secure foundation a secure legal foundation for abortion in NSW, any law that recognises a fetus as a living person — which is what Zoe’s Law will do — however limited it is to the particular section of the Crimes Act that the amendment relates to — however limited it is — it provides ammunition for someone who wishes to challenge the lawfulness of an abortion the next time a case comes to court. And that’s an issue that I think should be of serious concern to all of us.
Thanks very much.
Muesli bars and gummy snakes are what I ate at about 7am before my recent 9am childbirth… thus thematically appropriate for this small collection of links, some of which I’ve had sitting around for a while.
Using WOC in the Natural Childbirth Debate: A How-To Guide.
If you are a progressive in the Natural Childbirth Movement (or any other, for that matter), use Africa City women to promote the idea that “natural is better.” Talk about women who toil in the fields, squat down to give birth and return to picking rice. Or peanuts. Or anything else that can be picked. After all, the women of Africa City are resilient! Strong. So strong that they do not even require support from the other women of Africa City. Or medication. Or comfort. This example–of giving birth in the field–illustrates how over-reliant “we” have become on useless technology. Of course, you don’t expect “us” to be quite that strong. We are not beasts of burden, after all…
If you oppose the Natural Childbirth Movement (or any other, for that matter), use Africa City women to remind “us” of how bad “we” used to have it, before all of our live-saving medical advances. If women die in childbirth in Africa City, it is only because they lack the Modern Technology we should be grateful that every last one of “us” has unfettered access to. Use infant mortality statistics from the most war-torn countries to argue why a healthy woman from Portland shouldn’t give birth in her bathtub with a midwife who carries oxygen and a cell phone. Redact all mentions of Africa City women who are not hopelessly impoverished. Ignore those who are systematically abused with Modern Technology, sacrificed as Guinea pigs on its altar. All bad outcomes in Africa City are due to the lack of Medical Technology, never unrelated to it, and certainly never caused by it.
Early Labour and Mixed Messages
The emphasis on hospital as a place of safety whilst also encouraging women to stay away results in some very contradictory messages and ideas (please note these statements do not represent my own views)[…] We are the experts in your labour progress, our clinical assessments can predict your future labour progress… we will send you home if you are found to be in early labour… if you then birth your baby in the car park it is not our fault as birth is unpredictable[…] This is a safe place to labour…. but you can only access this safety when you reach a particular point in your labour… preferably close to the end of your labour i.e. you should do most of it on your own away from safety.
Warning for discussion of pregnancy loss. The Peculiar Case of Miscarriage in Pop Culture
Miscarriage is a tricky cultural thing, pop culture or not. It’s a deeply forbidden subject, much like many other things deemed ‘mysteries of womanhood,’ like menstruation, like pregnancy itself. People don’t talk about miscarriages and that discouragement means that many people aren’t aware of how common they are, let alone how devastating they can be. When people lose a child, they can reach out to their community for help and they are given space and time for healing. When they lose a fetus, they’re expected to keep it to themselves.
Sadly, sometimes pro-choice people can be the most vehement about this, concerned about blurring the lines between fetus and child, and saying that claiming a fetus is morally or ethically equivalent to a fully-developed, extrauterine human being could be dangerous. This makes the mistake of applying broad strokes to the issue, though. Legally, of course, a fetus should not be equivalent to a child. Personally, however, losing a wanted pregnancy is an intensely emotional experience and it can feel on some level to the parents like losing a child, with the added burden of not being allowed to acknowledge it, talk about it, or ask for help.
This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.
There’s a lot going on right now in terms of trying to implement fetal personhood provisions and wind back legal abortion around Australia. Here’s the news from four states, anything we’ve missed? What actions are you taking in response?
New South Wales: Crimes Amendment (Zoe’s Law) Bill (No. 2) 2013 has passed the Lower House
Discussion of this has previously appeared on HAT. Since that post, this bill has passed the Legislative Assembly (lower house) following a conscience vote and by a large margin (63 to 26). It will be read in the Legislative Assembly (upper house) in 2014, and if passed there, will become law. Coalition and ALP MPs have been granted a conscience vote by their parties. The Greens oppose the bill. This bill is opposed by the NSW branch of the Australian Medical Association, and by the NSW Bar Association. The campaign against this bill is at Our Bodies, Our Choices.
I’d love to publish transcripts of the Greens community forum on this bill (held prior to it passing in the Assembly), but am unlikely to have time to transcribe an hours worth of video for at least another week. If you’d like to help out, here’s the Amara links for subtitling: Julie Hamblin’s speech (about half subtitled to date), Philippa Ramsay’s speech (not subtitled) and Leslie Cannold’s speech (not subtitled).
South Australia: Criminal Law Consolidation (Offences against Unborn Child) Amendment Bill 2013 not passed
A bill with fetal personhood provisions in the case of grievous bodily harm to the pregnant person was recently before South Australian parliament, but was rejected. Information is being made available by Tammy Franks, Greens MLC, see Stop the Misguided Foetal Personhood Laws and the transcript of the reading in Parliament. Unlike in NSW, it appears that the ALP did not allow a conscience vote. The debate opens with Kyam Maher, government whip:
The Hon. K.J. MAHER (00:11): I will be extraordinarily brief. The government does not support this bill.
Victoria: early proposals to remove Section 8
At present, the Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 requires (in part):
SECT 8
(1) If a woman requests a registered health practitioner to advise on a proposed abortion, or to perform, direct, authorise or supervise an abortion for that woman, and the practitioner has a conscientious objection to abortion, the practitioner must—
(a) inform the woman that the practitioner has a conscientious objection to abortion; and
(b) refer the woman to another registered health practitioner in the same regulated health profession who the practitioner knows does not have a conscientious objection to abortion.
A Victorian doctor, Mark Hobart, is facing deregistration over defying these provisions, and a group of Victorian doctors and nurses called Doctors Conscience opposes Section 8 and advocates for its repeal. The Age reports that Labor MP Christine Campbell intends to table the Doctors Conscience petition in Victorian parliament. (A second Victoria doctor, Dr K. — not Mark Hobart — is discussed in the article, who not only defies Section 8 but has been quoted as expressing the opinion that women who seek abortions deserve death. This is detailed in Daniel Mathews’ blog post which provides quotations allegedly from Dr. K. Doctors Conscience has issued a press release stating that they do not advocate for or support harm to pregnant women for any reason.) The Age also reports that the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association supports the repeal of Section 8.
Today The Australian reported that premier Denis Napthine had advised independent MP Geoff Shaw on what would be involved in overturning (or perhaps substantially revising) the Abortion Law Reform Act in Victoria. The ABC reports that Napthine describes himself as having issued pro forma advice on legislative process.
Bills to repeal Section 8 or make wider changes to the Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 are yet to be proposed.
Tasmania removes abortion from the criminal code
On November 22, Tasmania removed references to abortion from the criminal code. In addition, like in Victoria, legislation now requires that doctors (and counselors) who conscientiously oppose abortion refer pregnant people to others who they believe do not have such an objection. A PDF of the Reproductive Health (Access to Abortion) Bill 2013 is available.
Bonus USA
NPR recently reported on the findings of Paltrow & Flavin, Arrests of and forced interventions on pregnant women in the United States (1973-2005) who report:
- Arrests and incarceration of women because they ended a pregnancy or expressed an intention to end a pregnancy;
- Arrests and incarceration of women who carried their pregnancies to term and gave birth to healthy babies;
- Arrests and detentions of women who suffered unintentional pregnancy losses, both early and late in their pregnancies;
- Arrests and detentions of women who could not guarantee a healthy birth outcome;
- Forced medical interventions such as blood transfusions, vaginal exams, and cesarean surgery on pregnant women;
… Analysis of the legal claims used to justify the arrests of pregnant women found that such actions relied on the same arguments underlying so called “personhood” measures – that state actors should be empowered to treat fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses as completely and legally separate from the pregnant woman. Specifically, police, prosecutors, and judges in the U.S. have relied directly and indirectly on… [f]eticide statutes that create separate rights for the unborn and which were passed under the guise of protecting pregnant women and the eggs, embryos, and fetuses they carry and sustain from third-party violence… [my emphasis]
I think this point bears repeating: provisions that were introduced allegedly for the protection of pregnant people and fetuses from third parties have been subsequently used to police the behaviour of pregnant people, including but not limited to those seeking abortion, and including forcing medical procedures on them, and confining them. Fetal personhood provisions are designed to control the bodies of pregnant people.
This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.
The NSW Legislative Assembly (lower house) will shortly be voting on Crimes Amendment (Zoe’s Law) Bill (No. 2) 2013, a private members bill introduced by Liberal MP Chris Spence in the lower house and (if passed) to be introduced by Christian Democratic Party leader and MP Fred Nile in the upper house. This Bill proposes to insert Section 8A into the Crimes Act 1900 No 40, where Section 8A would read in part:
8A Offences in relation to the destruction of or harm to the foetus of a pregnant woman
(1) In this section… unborn child means the foetus of a pregnant woman that:
(a) is of at least 20 weeks’ gestation, or
(b) if it cannot be reliably established whether the period of gestation is more or less than 20 weeks, has a body mass of at least 400 grams.(2) For the purposes of an applicable offence:
(a) an unborn child is taken to be a living person despite any rule of law to the contrary, and
(b) grievous bodily harm to an unborn child is taken to include the destruction of the unborn child.(3) For the purposes of an applicable offence, the destruction of the foetus of a pregnant woman (not being an unborn child) is taken to be grievous bodily harm to the woman, whether or not the woman suffers any other harm.
(4) This section does not apply to or in relation to:
(a) anything done in the course of a medical procedure, or
(b) anything done by, or with the consent of, the pregnant woman concerned.
The stated intent of the bill is to allow separate prosecution of injury to a fetus, following the death of Zoe Donegan (stillborn at 32 weeks gestation) in 2009 after Zoe’s mother Brodie was hit by a van driven by Justine Hampson. Hampson was convicted of grevious bodily harm with regards to Brodie, but not with injuring Zoe or causing Zoe’s death.
However, the bill has been introduced by an anti-abortion politician, and there are grave concerns about its potential interpretation, particularly “an unborn child is taken to be a living person”. Concerns about fetal personhood in general include:
The fourth clause appears to try and answer these objections, but given the source of the bill and the outcome of fetal personhood laws elsewhere, we should be very worried. In addition, the media reports concerns and objections from many groups including the Australian Medical Association NSW; the NSW Bar Association; the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (previous three mentioned in SMH: Another minister to battle foetus bill); Family Planning NSW; Women’s Health NSW; Domestic Violence NSW; Rape & Domestic Violence Services Australia; the National Foundation for Australian Women; Reproductive Choice Australia; and Children by Choice (previous seven mentioned in Guardian: Abortion rights under threat from ‘Zoe’s law’, say Australian women’s groups). Coalition MPs opposed include Health Minister Jillian Skinner; Environment Minister Robyn Parker; and Nationals whip John Williams (SMH).
Commentary includes:
Legislative arguments that incorporate words like ‘personhood’, ‘viability’ and ‘fetal rights’ are code for anti-choice sentiments that are always used as an attempt to limit the fundamental right for those born biologically female to control their reproductive choices, if not reverse them entirely.
Clementine Ford: The bill that could criminalise abortion in Australia
Spence has repeatedly argued that the exceptions provided in the Bill, concerning anything done in the course of a medical procedure or with the consent of the woman, guarantee that his amendment would not infringe upon a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. However, the exceptions do not meaningfully buffer against the overarching conceptual change represented by the Bill.
Moreover, it is outrageous that a woman’s legal right to terminate her pregnancy could be threatened by the law telling her that she is at risk of criminal liability until she can prove that she falls into a narrow exception. Zoe’s Law further pushes lawful termination of pregnancies to the fringes of legal debate, where it shamefully already lies as an exception to sections 82-84 of the NSW Crimes Act[…]
The Bar Association also argues that there are “legitimate concerns” about the broader implications of the bill. Once we adopt a definition of a foetus as a living person for the purpose of this bill, “it would be difficult to resist its adoption in respect of other New South Wales criminal laws”
Coalition and ALP MPs have been granted a conscience vote on Zoe’s Law, so if you are a NSW voter, today is a great day to contact your MP expressing your concerns and encouraging them to vote against the bill. One way to do this is through the Our Bodies Our Choices email form.
Note: when I was discussing this post with other Hoyden authors, they wanted to discuss fetal personhood in Western Australia, and extended recognition of stillbirths in South Australia. Since the vote on the bill is pending, I wanted to get this post up, but feel free to discuss fetal personhood and potential threats to pregnant people’s bodily autonomy in any Australian state in comments.
This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.
In February last year, the ABC screened Life at 5, the third edition in Life, an Australian documentary series following children born in 2004/2005 through their childhood. It’s associated with Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.
Almost all of the children we first met at age 1, and then at ages 3 and 5, are returning from tonight in Life at 7, with only Loulou not appearing. This time, the two documentaries are Tackling Temperament (now on iView) and Finding Your Tribe (now on iView), screening a week apart.
People with Australian IP addresses can also catch up on the earlier documentaries for a limited time:
Are you watching Life at 7? Please play along in comments, I enjoyed (and was frustrated by) the previous documentaries, and I’m looking forward to seeing the new series.
[One] should always be wary of raw numbers in the news. In fact, when you look at the trend as published by the Census Bureau, you see that the proportion of married couple families in which the father meets the stay-at-home criteria has doubled: from 0.4% in 2000 to 0.8% today. The larger estimate which includes fathers working part-time comes out to 2.8% of married couple families with children under 15. The father who used the phrase “the new normal” in [the NYT story] was presumably not speaking statistically.
Troy Hunt disputes the utility (rather than the mathematics) of xkcd’s Password Strength comic.
So just to remind you: A young woman changing her look in a way that doesn’t scream, “Please, world, love me because I am a Victoria’s Secret model,” right now, in the year of our Lord 2012, freaks people out. It actually makes them wonder if she’s lost her mind.
THe “one skeptic’s reaction” is actually along the lines of “this is very interesting research, that appears to have not much application to blocking existing addiction, but might to making opiates more effective for pain while being less addictive.”
Why does the idea of “food miles” bug (some) freemarketeers while (some) environmentalists resist evidence that it’s not environmental friendly? This appears to be against both their stated ideological positions.
Dating to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) says the women’s exclusion isn’t discrimination. President Jacques Rogge has insisted that the decision “was made strictly on a technical basis, and absolutely not on gender grounds.” But female would-be Olympic competitors say they don’t understand what that “technical basis” is. Their abilities? They point to American Lindsey Van, who holds the world record for the single longest jump by anyone, male or female.
Since the average age of those studying for a PhD is 37 most of you will have some kind of family commitment, and yes – pets count. I find it mystifying that so many of the ‘how to get a PhD’ books offer precious little advice on how to cope.
I watched this case unfold with particular interest. Why? Because I am married to an Aboriginal man and I have an Aboriginal daughter (they are of the Ngarigo people and the Gunditjmara people). And my daughter has fair skin, dark blond/light brown hair and very blue eyes. She is one of these “white Aboriginals” that Andrew Bolt decries.
And there’s another one of a little boy running on those same model legs with the caption, “Your excuse is invalid”. Yes, you can take a moment here to ponder the use of the word “invalid” in a disability context. Ahem.
Then there’s the one with the little girl with no hands drawing a picture holding the pencil in her mouth with the caption, “Before you quit. Try.”
I’d go on, but I might expunge the contents of my stomach.
Let me be clear about the intent of this inspiration porn; it’s there so that non-disabled people can put their worries into perspective. So they can go, “Oh well if that kid who doesn’t have any legs can smile while he’s having an awesome time, I should never, EVER feel bad about my life”. It’s there so that non-disabled people can look at us and think “well, it could be worse… I could be that person”.
