Still someone else's choice
A Sydney woman who, earlier this month, spent five days in Fairfield hospital being harassed and discriminated against by medical staff over her decision to terminate her pregnancy has decided to make her story public, and it is raising a storm.
The woman underwent amniocentesis, at 15 weeks, and discovered that the foetus had the chromosomal abnormality known as Down's syndrome. After several days of thought and discussion, the woman and her husband decided to terminate the pregnancy. Her gynaecologist booked her into Fairfield Hospital for a procedure which would require hospitalisation for two days.
As the pregnancy was well into the second trimester, it was necessary to induce labour and deliver the foetus as in a normal birth. The drugs to induce labour were to have been administered in five doses over 15 hours. On the day of the woman's admission, a Friday, three of the five doses were administered by a resident, but when that resident was replaced by another doctor with anti-choice views, what was already an extremely difficult experience became a horrific ordeal.
On the Friday night a nurse asked the woman whether the pregnancy had been planned and told her that she “didn't believe in abortion”.
“It was a shock”, the woman told the Sydney Sun Herald. “I didn't say anything, but when she came back I said it was upsetting me and that it was a difficult decision and that she shouldn't judge me.”
The doctor on duty then refused to administer the final two doses of the drug to induce labour. From her bed, the woman heard him in the corridor telling a nurse that he would not administer the drug because he “didn't believe in abortion”.
The delay caused by this doctor resulted in the woman spending a total of five days in the hospital, with the procedure half completed for much of that time. When the termination was finally completed, on the Monday night, the woman waited four hours, ringing for assistance, for medical staff to wash her.
“A sister came in and I broke down and cried and said `I can't take this any more'.”, she told the Sun Herald.
The issue of reproductive choice remains obscured in the mainstream Australian political landscape, smoothed over
by an “understanding” that while abortion may be illegal in all states in most circumstances, it may be available if you live in a capital city, look carefully enough, travel far enough, fight hard enough, pay enough money or have a good enough “moral” excuse for being pregnant or for terminating.
The Fairfield case shows that, in the context of this shadowy, undemocratic and illusory “understanding”, the AMA guidelines which enable doctors to refuse to perform a medical procedure if it is against their ethical or religious beliefs are a significant extra-legal bar to the exercise of reproductive choice in Australia.
Under pressure from the Labor opposition, the NSW minister for health has announced an inquiry into the incident. Considering the records of both Labor and Liberal governments on this issue, it is unlikely that the broader issues will be considered relevant to the investigation. No doubt it will be seen as an unfortunate, isolated incident. Only a strong pro-choice movement could force a public airing of the real issues involved, issues which explain why so many thousands of women have suffered, and will suffer, similar ordeals to that suffered by the woman in this case.
By Karen Fredericks
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