Women's Rights Aborted

By Milly Caffrey

It took less than an hour for a Cairns jury to find Tegan Simone Leach, 21, and her partner Sergie Brennan, 23, not guilty of procuring an abortion and supplying drugs to procure an abortion following a three-day trial last week.

The couple were charged under the 110-year-old Crimes Act that lists abortion as illegal in both Queensland and NSW unless carried out to prevent serious danger to the woman’s physical and mental health.

Despite some media reports, the medication was not “smuggled” into the country, and in fact passed through customs. RU486 is also legal in Australia, but its availability is extremely limited as there is no pharmaceutical company that imports it. This means that individual practitioners have to apply to the Therapeutic Goods Administration to dispense the medication, which can also cost over $300.

The couple also claims that a doctor informed them that there was no alternative to an invasive surgical procedure, which in Queensland can incur an $810 upfront fee for a termination in the first trimester.

Despite the couple’s defence that they felt they were not ready to have a baby, the Prosecutor Michael Byrne accused Ms Leach of making a “lifestyle choice”. However, even pro-life advocates have disagreed with this position.

“I don’t think calling it a lifestyle choice is a very compassionate approach to take,” said Mary Joseph, Projects Officer for the Life Marriage and Family Centre at the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney. “We do think at the same time she needed to have the necessary support.”

Spokesperson for Pro-Choice NSW, Jane Caro, believes “a lifestyle choice might be whether you want to live in a flat or a house… (termination) is a life time choice. It’s a solid determination of women not to parent because they want to do it properly and thoroughly…. a sensible, entirely mature and grown up position.”

Although the case against Ms Leach and her partner has been dismissed, the verdict has still not clarified the whether practitioners will be protected when performing a medical termination in pregnancy. As Jane Caro points out, the case has made the medical profession in Queensland and NSW “nervous”, therefore making women’s access to abortion in both of these states more difficult.

“When you make access to abortion difficult, you increase the possibility of an early term abortion becoming a late term abortion.” This procedure can be extremely traumatic, involving the removal of a dead foetus that is developed enough to require dilation of the cervix for its extraction.

When asked whether the Premier would consider removing abortion from the Crimes Act before the 2011 election, a spokesperson for the Attorney General John Hatzistergos stated, “The law on abortion in NSW provides a balance between competing interests in this area of the criminal law. The long-standing law allows abortions for women who meet criteria in certain circumstances. All other abortions are ‘unlawful’.”

The law seems to ignore the results of a survey conducted by the Australian National University in 2003 which found that over 80 per cent of respondents supported a woman’s right to choose whether or not she has an abortion.

The solution is then the decriminalisation of abortion in both Queensland and NSW, to ensure the rights of doctors, and most importantly women, who deserve the security in knowing they ultimately hold control over their own bodies.