Margaret Kirby

Long time grassroots activist Margaret Kirkby is the National spoke person for the Abortion Rights Network of Australia. A former member of the board of directors of Family Planning Australia and a former abortion counsellor Margaret speaks from a perspective critical of the medical/pharmaceutical industry.

Happy International Women’s Day to everybody! I’m actually speaking today more as an activist from Women’s Abortion Action Campaign a group which has been going since august 1972 and we are highly delighted that today’s International Women’s Day march has Native Title and Reconciliation as its central theme. We also sure that you are aware that there has been another justice issue for women in the West of Australia that is in regard to abortion rights in Western Australia were two doctors have been arrested for performing an abortion. The actual termination of pregnancy happened in November 1996 and for some reason or another the Western Australian Director of Public Prosecutions took all of last year and until February this year to decide who he was going to charge. Up until August last year it was going to be the woman who actually had the abortion who was going to be charged. By Christmas they were going to charge the councillor and then by February they changed their mind and decided to charge the doctors. Now in our opinion it is not a matter of the legality or otherwise of this abortion, what was happening was a fishing expedition by the Western Australian Director of Public Prosecutions and is a deliberate attempt to harass that woman who did have the termination of pregnancy, the clinic and the doctors. I think people here in Sydney and NSW need to be aware that because of the nature of the law on abortion in NSW exactly the same thing can happen here in Sydney. We have abortion being covered by the crimes Act And there is a common law ruling that liberalises the interpretation of the crimes Act. Doctors at the moment in Sydney who perform abortion can be charged under the crimes Act and the view of our group has always been that we want the repeal of the abortion laws out of the Crimes Act and that abortion be treated like any other medical procedure. We are deeply concerned about what’s going on in Western Australia cause I am not sure whether everybody is aware that on the 20^th of February there was an announcement by the peak bodies representing doctors and nurses in Western Australia who perform abortions and those doctors and nurses said they would only perform abortions for another six to eight weeks in Perth and if the government doesn’t change the law satisfactorily there they are going to cease performing abortions in Perth. Now the problem with that kind of ultimatum is that women react with fear and worry and think that is means they are not going to get access to abortion after eight weeks. The is not a clear picture coming through from the Western Australian activists as to whether the law will be satisfactorily be changed and we know that many Western Australian women already will be wondering about how there are going to secure an abortion after the end of April because that is the approximate time when the deadline is up, when the doctors in Perth are saying they will not perform any more abortions. In Sydney we are organising a rally for April 4^th in solidarity with Western Australian women and we ask for all of you to come. There are pamphlets available form our stall and to please get involved in our group.

Another point we wanted to make is a response to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday of this week called "It’s time to rethink on abortion" In this article it was argued that every women who makes the decision to have a termination of pregnancy finds it a grieves decision and a decision which is very difficult to make. Whilst we would very happily acknowledge that some women find the decision to terminate of pregnancy difficult and some do have a sense of mourning afterwards by no means the reaction of every woman who has an abortion. It would be just as ridiculous if I got up here and said no woman is going to have any worries after she has an abortion. Nobody can speak on behalf of everybody in regard to how you are going to feel after having an abortion and it is very misleading and playing into anti-abortion propaganda to promote the view that every women finds it a difficult decision. We are also quite upset with the Sydney Morning Herald for the commentary they make about abortion rights activists, they basically imply that we misrepresent the medical procedure called abortion and make it a more difficult decision to make. That is a real misleading of the situation, abortion rights activists have never said that abortion is only a simple medical procedure, that is one of the things we say but it is not the only thing and I guess the main point we would make in response to the Sydney Morning Herald is that through their simplistic analysis that article has played into the hands of the anti-abortionists and those in our society who don’t want justice overall for women because of you take an historical perceptive with what’s been happening with abortion its completely unacceptable what has happened with abortion remaining on the statutes crime Act or criminal law in each state and territory. Remember 1985 when there were two clinics raided in Queensland on National television were photographed and filmed running out of those clinics with coats on their heads trying to protect their identity. Now we have in Western Australia one poor woman who happened to have an abortion and simply wanted to keep the foetal products being targeted by police. It is the time for the repeal of all abortion laws and abortion to be treated like any other medical procedure.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of International Women’s Day

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