... and ain't i a woman?: Free-standing clinics

September 25, 1991
Issue 

Free-standing clinics

By Tracy Sorensen

In her contribution to the forum on abortion held in Sydney's Harold Park Hotel on September 18, researcher Lyndall Ryan commented that the 1969 South Australian legislation which made abortion legal under certain conditions was contradictory in its original intent.

On the one hand, by setting out that the procedure should take place within the public hospital system, there was an attempt to set it in the context of a normal gynaecological service. On the other hand, by specifying that it could only take place in particular public hospitals, with various other restrictions applying, the SA legislators made it clear that the procedure was actually considered to be far from normal.

Despite more enlightened changes that have taken place in the mainstream health system over the past two or three decades — allowing partners to be present during the childbirth, for example — it is still infused with backward and anti-woman attitudes. Being patronised and inadequately consulted by doctors and specialists — mostly male — are still commonplace experiences for women.

In this context, the private free-standing abortion clinics such as those that exist in New South Wales have for almost two decades now been providing the optimum service for women wishing to terminate pregnancies. There, women are generally assured of positive, non-judgmental treatment and counselling.

In public hospitals, by contrast, women are sometimes confronted by medical personnel who are hostile or ambivalent about the procedure. As the March 1989 Health Issues pointed out, "for public hospitals there is little kudos associated with the delivery and defence of good abortion services".

The journal noted that "some hospital abortion services are known for their reluctance to treat women seeking a second abortion (the undeserving) but respond with comparative sensitivity to women who have conceived as a result of failed tubal ligation (the deserving)".

Fred Nile's attempt to outlaw the NSW private abortion clinics, bringing the situation more into line with that which exists in South Australia, went straight to the heart of 20 years' worth of struggle to provide relatively autonomous, feminist service for women.

His attack on the private abortion clinics rekindles a question of strategy for the women's movement.

Nile will always have a "leg to stand on" as long as abortion remains in the statute books as a criminal offence. The clinics now operate on the fragile basis of a liberal interpretation of this section of the law. Anti-abortion forces can always argue for a more strict interpretation — an interpretation more in the spirit of the original legislation.

Meanwhile, the SA experience shows legalisation is n's rights and needs.

While there is an argument for "not rocking the boat" on this issue, leaving well enough alone if women can get abortions under the existing legal arrangements, the continued attacks from Nile and his ilk give weight to another view: that existing services will really be secure only once abortion laws have been repealed altogether. The boat is rocking now. There's probably no better time to reinvigorate the campaign for this than the present.

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