What Australians Can Learn from America's Pro-Choice Activists

This week a nineteen-year-old woman was arrested in the state of Queensland, Australia, for self-inducing an abortion using unapproved pills that she had obtained from Ukraine. She now faces fourteen years in prison. Under Queensland law, the woman’s ends are perfectly legal; the means, though, are not. In response to the news of her arrest and likely sentence, about 30* pro-choice activists rallied outside Parliament House in Brisbane, the state capital, protesting the arrest and calling for the decriminalisation** of abortion in the state.

Thirty of them. Seriously. A legal adult is facing fourteen years behind bars for obtaining an abortion by illegal means and only 30 people showed up to protest? Add this one to the long list of things that would never happen in America. If this had happened in the US, there would have been hundreds of protesters, even in a sleepy city like Brisbane in a sleepy state like Queensland. If this had happened in the US, Planned Parenthood and NARAL would have jumped on it like a teenage girl on a sparkly vampire, and their hundreds of thousands of members would have followed suit.

But Australian pro-choice groups don’t have hundreds of thousands of advocates and activists on call, ready to head down to Parliament House (that’s what we Aussies call our State House) at a moment’s notice. Because abortion isn’t really an issue in Australia.

Admittedly, this woman did break the law: "therapeutic miscarriage" is legal in Queensland until 20 weeks, but only if performed by a recognised provider and for the preservation of the mother's physical or mental health. For those seeking medical abortion, RU486 is also limitedly available, and it must of course be prescribed by a doctor. Despite these restrictions, which are in place for women’s protection, the legality or moral permissibility of terminating a pregnancy is not in question in Queensland. Australian pro-choice groups don’t recommend taking the course of action allegedly taken by the woman in question, but few people in Queensland or in Australia would question her right to obtain an abortion from an approved medical professional. In short, abortion, the lightning rod of American social politics, is a non-issue in Australia.

That’s why only 30 people showed up to protest this arrest. Australian reproductive rights are secure, and despite this one case, they are not under any real threat. An Australian pro-choice group cannot assemble a network of hundreds or thousands of pro-choice activists to call on in a case like this, because, simply put, it doesn’t need that network. Australian women know that their right to obtain an abortion is protected by law, and they’re pretty sure it’s not going anywhere.

American women, on the other hand, enjoy no such security. The right to privacy, according to Roe, extends to a woman’s body, and therefore, abortion is technically legal. But access to abortion is under threat in almost every state, be it in the form of mandatory ultrasound laws or the Orwellianly-named Woman’s Right to Know Act, parental consent and notification laws, or President Bush’s midnight “right of conscience” regulations. In addition to legislative restrictions, American women also face violent cultural opposition to abortion – protests outside clinics, Crisis Pregnancy Centers masquerading as women’s health clinics, and the still powerful cultural myth that women who choose abortion are selfish, or slutty, or irresponsible, or d) all of the above.

Because American pro-choicers see these threats and understand their gravity, they don’t tend to get complacent about abortion rights. So they join Planned Parenthood and NARAL and other pro-choice organizations, and they form an easily-mobilized base of activists and protesters which, if a case similar to the Queensland case had occurred in, say, New Jersey, would have been down at the Newark State House with placards, chanting and protesting and defending a woman’s right to choose. (Equally, because abortion is so divisive in America and because its legal and moral status is constantly debated, if the Queensland case had occurred here, there would have been hundreds of anti-abortion activists protesting in Newark too. The Australian papers covering the story mentioned no such protesters.)

Australian pro-choicers didn’t gather in droves outside Brisbane Parliament because they didn’t have to. They’re sure of their rights and are confident that they will be upheld by the law. This kind of certainty is a luxury that American pro-choicers don’t enjoy. While it’s understandable that so few Queenslanders felt the need to take action on this issue, it’s also important to remember that rights, once won, need to be vigorously defended. If not, they will disappear. Australian pro-choicers need to practice – and I’m going to quote Mad Eye Moody one this one – constant vigilance, if they want to preserve their hard-won rights. And while many American pro-choicers might long to live in a country where abortion is effectively a non-issue (the weather’s pretty nice, too), Australian pro-choicers should take a leaf out of the American book. We’ve won our rights, but we should never, ever stop fighting to protect them.

*Some newspapers are saying 35, some are saying 20. Let's call it 30.

** Abortion is still technically a crime under QLD criminal code, but the code contains one section, 282, states that "a person is not criminally
responsible for performing in good faith and with reasonable care and
skill a surgical operation upon any person for the patient’s benefit, or
upon an unborn child for the preservation of the mother’s life, if the
performance of the operation is reasonable, having regard to the
patient’s state at the time and to all circumstances of the case."