“We have stated clearly and on many occasions ... that we do not recognise abortion as a method of family planning, nor do we support abortion in our reproductive health assistance”, Ellen Sauerbrey told a UN-sponsored global women’s conference on March 4. Sauerbrey was US President George Bush’s top delegate to the 6000-strong conference at the UN headquarters in New York City. Sauerbrey’s remarks were met with loud boos and catcalls.
The loudest catcalls — unusual at such gatherings — came when Sauerbrey articulated US government policy on AIDS prevention for adolescents: “We emphasise the value of the ABC — abstinence, be faithful, and correct and consistent condom use where appropriate — approach in comprehensive strategies to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS and the promotion of abstinence as the healthiest and most responsible choice for adolescents.”
Earlier that day, the US delegation announced it was dropping its demand that the conference declaration reaffirming a 150-page platform agreed on 10 years ago at a UN women’s conference in Beijing be amended to say that abortion is a matter of national sovereignty and not a human right.
According to a March 5 Reuters report, “Despite US lobbying, public support for Washington’s abortion stance was initially limited to the Vatican delegate; delegates from the European Union, Asia and elsewhere forcefully opposed it”. New Zealand’s UN ambassador Don Mackay, speaking for his country, Canada and Australia, emphasised that the Beijing document included a woman’s right to control her own sexuality as a recognised human right.
This is fundamentally what the Bush administration, the Vatican and the religious right around the world objects to. While cloaked in rhetoric about defending the “rights” of the “unborn child” (an oxymoron), their opposition to abortion is consciously or unconsciously about denying women’s right to control their own bodies and thus asserting male supremacy — keeping women under the control of their male relatives and male-dominated state and religious authorities.
In Australia, the religious right has begun a campaign, spearheaded by leading government MPs such as federal health minister Tony Abbott, to have abortion removed from Medicare funding. If they succeed in this campaign — which has the backing of most of the country’s religious leaders — large numbers of poorer working-class women will be forced to resort to “backyard” abortions, with their significantly greater risks of death, or be forced into unwanted motherhood, with an increase in poverty, mental illness, suffering and suicides among women.
Socialist Alliance activists around the country are collecting signatures on a petition entitled “Abortion: women’s bodies, women’s lives, women’s choice”. Addressed to members of federal parliament, the petition notes that a growing majority of Australians “believe that the decision about whether or not to terminate a pregnancy should be up to the woman concerned and her doctor”.
The petition demands the repeal of all criminal and other laws that codify or limit access to abortion and calls for abortion services to be made freely available through the public health system, with full Medicare coverage. To obtain copies of the petition, visit <http://www.socialist-alliance.org> and see the Activist Calendar on page 23 for details of pro-choice meetings and protests in your area.
From Green Left Weekly, March 9, 2005.
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