Gosnell Case and Abortion Access

Gosnell Case a Reminder of Why Restrictive Abortion Laws Must Be Overturned

The case against Kermit Gosnell in the state of Pennsylvania, USA is an important reminder that restrictive abortion laws open the door for people to prey on desperate women and lead to medical negligence. On Monday, Gosnell was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of manslaughter in relation to his illegal abortion clinic. What has come to light, both in the grand jury report in 2011 and media reports of the trial, is how Gosnell took advantage of Pennsylvania’s lax monitoring of abortion clinics to operate outside the confines of the law and safe medical practice to perform abortions on some of the most oppressed and desperate women.

The majority of his clients were women of colour and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds unable to afford an abortion at a safe, registered clinic. This highlights the racial and class element to the politics of abortion, which all to often means that the most marginalized in society are those most at risk of unsafe abortions when access and availability is restricted.

Echoing the sentiments of Ilsye G. Hogue, president NARAL Pro-Choice America, ALRANZ believes justice was served by the jury’s verdict against Gosnell. However, this should not be all that comes out of the Gosnell case. In a powerful statement, Hogue said:

“From the lack of funding available for low-income women to access abortion services, to the sharp decline of reputable providers in Pennsylvania, to the gross negligence of authorities to enforce the law after complaints were filed against Gosnell, each aspect of this case must be a teachable moment for lawmakers: until we reject the politicization of women’s medical care and leave these decisions where they belong—between a woman and her family and her doctor—women will never be safe. The horrifying story of Kermit Gosnell is a peek into the world before Roe v. Wade made legal a woman’s right to make her own choices”.

Countering the stories told by the anti-choice contingent, further restrictions on abortion will not lead to fewer Gosnell cases, but more. Looking to our own abortion laws in New Zealand and the continued criminalization of women, it is a stark reminder that safe and legal abortion cannot be assured until it is a choice made freely by the pregnant person with free and easy access to all reproductive health services.

For more information and  analysis on the Gosnell case, see:

Ilyse Hogue of NARAL Pro-choice America’s full statement.

RH Reality Check:

“A Gosnell Amendment: Jennifer Rubin Plays Doctor and Legislator, and Fails” by Jodi Jacobson.

“Gosnell Found Guilty on Three First-Degree Murder Charges” by Jennifer Mason Pieklo.

“Separating Truth From Lies Around the Kermit Gosnell Case” by Amanda Marcotte 

Salon: “Megan McCardle Doesn’t Understand the Kermit Gosnell Case” by Tara Murtha

Our Stall of Neat Stuff

ALRANZ and the Prochoice Highway had a stall of books, cards, buttons, newsletters, leaflets and historic posters at the 2013 Women’s Studies Association conference in Wellington (26-28 April 2013). Here are a few photos, courtesy of WSANZ and photographer, Éva Kaprinay. (Here are more photos from the conference.)

Any of the stuff you see on the table – which includes historic WONAAC and ALRANZ posters – can be had, some free, some for a donation. Visit the Highway site for order details. Thanks WSANZ and to the conference participants who stopped by to chat or support the reproductive rights cause.

Morgan Healey and Alison McCulloch of ALRANZ at WSANZ. (Credit/copyright: WSANZ/Éva Kaprinay)

Stall items, WSANZ (Credit/copyright: WSANZ/Éva Kaprinay)

A couple of the historic posters available. (Credit/copyright: WSANZ/Éva Kaprinay)

Video: Launch of ‘Fighting to Choose’

On 1 May at VicBooks in Wellington, Dame Margaret Sparrow and Di Cleary of WONAAC helped launch Alison McCulloch’s book “Fighting to Choose: The Abortion Rights Struggle in New Zealand.” Scoop.co.nz kindly shot the launch and posted the video to their YouTube channel. Here are the links to video of the four (relatively short) speeches:

Juliette from VicBooks and Fergus Barrowman of Victoria University Press (length: 2.57)

Di Cleary, activist in the Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign (length: 8:33)

Dame Margaret Sparrow, longtime reproductive rights advocate, physician, author and former president of ALRANZ. (length: 8:14)

Alison McCulloch, author of “Fighting to Choose”: (length: 9:17)

Letter to Irish politicians

Dear Irish politicians,

I have been keeping up to date on progress toward abortion legislation and I feel I must warn you that creating overly complex and systemic medical ‘safe guards’ to ensure that pregnant people do not ‘abuse’ suicidal ideation¹ to access abortion will likely be unworkable, onerous (not only for the medical staff charged with this duty, but the poor woman forced to defend herself before a panel of 6, 12, who knows?) and is inhumane. I suggest you consider the New Zealand experience and the barriers we have erected to women being able to access a necessary reproductive health service (mainly because I assume you care more for the lives of women like Savita and the 4000 or so pregnant people who have to travel every year, than appeasing a virulent and well-funded anti-choice movement).

ALRANZ calls for more vigilance of anti-abortion tactics

Press release issued following news of an attack on a nurse’s car at an Auckland abortion clinic.

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The pro-choice organisation ALRANZ today called for increased vigilance by the authorities in the wake of an attack on an Auckland abortion clinic worker’s car.

Television New Zealand last night revealed that a nurse had called the police after she got into her car on March 13 and found it would not run. An examination of the car concluded that the fuel line had been cut.

“Abortion care providers are valued and supported in their communities,” ALRANZ spokeswoman Annabel Henderson Morrell said today. “It is outrageous and disappointing that some in the anti-choice community in New Zealand resort to intimidation and threats.”

The most recent attack follows a threat late last year directed toward ALRANZ and the new abortion service in Invercargill. The police investigated, but those behind the threat were never identified.

Ms. Henderson Morrell said abortion care providers and patients have the right to both be safe and to feel safe.

“It’s stressful enough for abortion patients, who have to jump through hoops to access abortion care because of our antiquated laws, without their having to fear physical harm from abortion opponents,” she said.

ALRANZ appreciates most anti-choice groups make clear they oppose this kind of behaviour. “We hope they will do their utmost within their own community to ensure New Zealand does not return to the bad old days of threats, attacks and physical intimidation,” she said.

Abortion and antenatal screening

The on-going issue of antenatal screening and abortion came up again recently after the advocacy group Saving Downs launched an attack on a paper published in the New Zealand Medical Journal by Robert Cole and Gareth Jones titled (PDF) “Testing times: do new prenatal tests signal the end of Down syndrome?” As a result, last Sunday the Susan Wood did a segment on the issue, interviewing Mike Sullivan of Saving Downs and one of the paper’s authors Robert Cole.

There’s been a lot said about this issue, if your fingers want to do some googling, but there is a very interesting series of posts (titled “Some thoughts on pre-natal screening and disability”) from Otago prof Colin Gavaghan, the director of the New Zealand Law Foundation Centre for Law and Policy in Emerging Technologies. Among other things, in his third post of three, (here are one and two) Gavaghan makes the link between this issue and our current law in a way that a lot of people don’t. (On the Q and A show, for instance, while all three panelists who discussed the issue seemed to support something like a “right to choose” position on abortion, no-one pointed out that’s not what our law allows.)

We’ve had a few posts about this issue before on the site, including (from 10 December 2011) Choice and ante-natal screening and a guest post that touches on the issue titled (13 December 2011) Abortion as Society’s Mirror by Alison McCulloch.

Over-the-Counter Contraception

DID YOU know that most of the world’s women can get oral contraceptives over the counter without a prescription?

The issue of over-the-counter (OTC) contraceptive pills came up early in February after an article in the Sunday Star Times. As reporter Marika Hill wrote: “Thousands of women face the costly chore of visiting their GP for a pill generally considered safe by health professionals. Pharmacists already provide the morning-after-pill without prescription, leading some women to ask why this could not be extended to the oral contraceptive pill.” The article went on to quote Family Planning, whose national medical adviser, Dr. Christine Roke, preferred “some degree of consultation” such as a pharmacist or nurse.

The article also quoted ALRANZ president, Morgan Healey, who said she wholeheartedly agreed with having the pill available over the counter. “Most women don’t necessarily need to go to their doctor on a six-monthly or yearly basis,” she said. “It’s expensive and it creates barriers to access.” Surprisingly, the article also said this: “Even conservative lobby group Family First does not object to the idea, though it said a line should be drawn, barring teenagers from being granted easier access to birth control.” We wonder if some of FF’s more conservative Catholic supporters agree?

Last November, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued a statement recommending the oral contraceptives be made available OTC to improve access to contraception.

One concern is that women will forgo preventive services if they have OTC access, but the authors of a new survey of pill availability in 147 countries pointed out that screening for things like cervical cancer or sexually transmitted infections was not a requirement for oral contraceptives anyway, and shouldn’t be a barrier for access.

In its new policy statement supporting OTC availability, ACOG said women could use a checklist to self-screen for any contraindications.

The group that undertook the survey, Ibis Reproductive Health, based in Oakland, Calif., reported that a prescription for birth control pills is needed in only 45 out of the 147 countries it surveyed. Those 45 include New Zealand, the United States, Australia and Japan. “In mapping the results, notable regional patterns in OC [oral contraceptives] prescription requirements emerged,” the authors wrote. “The United States, Canada and most of Western Europe require a prescription, while OCs are available OTC informally in much of Central and South America and legally in much of Southern Asia. Prescription and screening requirements in Africa are more varied.”

Quoted in a report in the New York Daily News, one of the authors of the study, Dr. Daniel Grossman, said, “Perhaps in places like China and India that have pills available over-the-counter formally without a prescription might be consistent with strong national family planning programs”. The same article quoted another researcher who suggested the lack of a prescription requirement might also reflect “a general approach to making health care more accessible in countries where it is less available”.

The debate over OTC contraception follows last year’s discussion around a National Council of Women remit calling for free contraception for all women. (ALRANZ would extend that to everyone!) That issue was covered in the lead article in our (PDF) November 2012 Newsletter.

Reprinted from ALRANZ’s February 2013 Newsletter. Want to get the Newsletter hot off the press? How about joining us. Click here. We’ll be posting the full newsletter online soon. 

Crosspost: ‘Careless Driving Causing Death’

The following, by AlisonM, is cross-posted from The Hand Mirror

There’s a case before the courts in Wellington that has more than enough heartache to go around: A collision between two vehicles in Newtown last June. Injuries on both sides. A much-wanted pregnancy lost. A grieving couple. Then, a husband charged with careless driving causing death. As I said, more then enough heartache to go around. For what sets this case apart – and is at the heart of some intense local and overseas media interest  – is that the death was of the couple’s 31-week fetus.

       According to a police Summary of Facts, this is what happened: Last June 24^th, Bililinge Gebretsadik was driving through Newtown with his pregnant wife, Seble Cherie, in the passenger seat, when his car, a Nissan Tiida, collided with a Mitsubishi Challenger four-wheel drive, (for those who know the city, this took place at that awful intersection of John Street, Adelaide Road and Riddiford Street).

       The police allege the collision happened because Gebretsadik failed to stop at a red light, something Gebretsadik is challenging. According to the police, an 80-year-old passenger of the Mitsubishi was injured, suffering whiplash, high blood pressure and “general all over body soreness as a result of the collision”. Meanwhile, in the Nissan, both front air bags deployed. Seble Cherie fractured her left ring finger and “sustained bruising across her abdomen with pain and tenderness to this area”.

         Seble Cherie was taken to Wellington hospital where the vital signs of the fetus were monitored. After some deterioration, and within 4 hours of accident, an emergency caesarean section was performed, the baby was resuscitated and taken to the neonatal unit, but it was ascertained to have no brain function. Within three hours of the birth, the baby died. As a result, Bililinge Gebretsadik was charged with three counts of careless driving under the Land Transport Act, including one of careless driving causing death. The maximum penalty for the latter is 3 months imprisonment, a $4,500 fine and disqualification from driving for 6 months. The maximum penalty is below the bar for a jury trial; Gebretsadik has pleaded not guilty on all three charges.

       Besides the personal tragedy suffered by those involved, this case also raises important questions about personhood under the law, with its attendant implications for reproductive rights. Gebretsadik’s lawyer, John Miller, says he thinks one of the reasons the police are pursuing the case (against the wishes of Seble Cherie, more on that below) is that it’s seen as a test for defining what it means to be a “person” under the Land Transport Act.

Obituary: Isabel Stanton

Isabel Stanton

Isabel Stanton died on Monday 18 February in Auckland. Isabel was an early member of ALRANZ, and its inaugural president for four years from 1971 till 1975.

Isabel Stanton, from a 30 August 1973 profile in Thursday magazine.

Isabel Macky was born in Dannevirke and went to Teachers Training College when she was 17. She worked as a teacher from 1944 to 1946. In 1948 she married Allenby Stanton, a lawyer. Allenby’s father became a Supreme Court judge and one of his sisters was Alice Bush, a physician, advocate for family planning and early member of the Family Planning Association. Isabel and Allenby had five children. Allenby died in 2003.

In an interview for Margaret Sparrow’s book Abortion Then and Now: New Zealand Abortion Stories From 1940 to 1980, Isabel said her interest in the issue of contraception and abortion came from her background as a social worker and marriage guidance counsellor. “I was concerned for the need for children to be born to mothers who wanted them,” she said.

According to a profile in 1973 published in Thursday magazine, Isabel’s initial involvement in ALRANZ was accidental. She was a member of the Family Planning Association, and was asked to speak about contraception to the steering committee setting up ALRANZ. “I was impressed with the tremendous sincerity and honesty of the group,” she told Thursday.

Isabel and others involved in pressing for abortion law reform in New Zealand in the 1970s were speaking out at a time when few did so. Back then, ALRANZ charted a more moderate route, while feminist activist groups like WONAAC (the Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign) pressed for more radical goals. To that end, Isabel was seen as a perfect fit for ALRANZ, lauded for being, as Thursday put it, “faultlessly respectable”. She was a married woman, a mother and an elder in the Presbyterian church. As she herself told Thursday, “They wanted a president who was a woman, who had children and who could speak…and who would look decent on television. Little did they know how little coverage they would get.”

In her first year as president, Isabel spoke about once a week on behalf of ALRANZ. “I was speaking about abortion at public meetings, to politicians, to journalists, to professional groups, and on television,” she said in Abortion Then and Now. “When I spoke to men’s service organisations such as Rotary clubs, I don’t know how many times I was told, ‘That was a very good speech for a woman.’”

In 1973, when the Thursday article was published, Isabel reported that she was getting around one call a day from women seeking abortions. At that time, legal abortion was extremely difficult to obtain in New Zealand, and Isabel told Thursday she would simply tell the woman about the law, and pass along information about Australian providers. It was all she – and ALRANZ – could legally do.

Dr. Rex Hunton, the medical director of the AMAC clinic, and Isabel Stanton, outside the clinic in December 1977 after it was forced to close because of the new abortion law.

Isabel was also involved in the pioneering AMAC abortion clinic in Auckland, which was set up in 1974 and helped spark a national debate that led to the Royal Commission on Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion, then to the current abortion laws. Her involvement with AMAC was as a counsellor, trainer and supervisor, as well as helping the Board of Trustees. When the 1977 law forced the AMAC clinic to close (see photo) in December 1977, Isabel joined with those who helped women travel to Australia for abortions. Later, she became the counselling adviser for the Abortion Supervisory Committee.

The Thursday article included this telling anecdote: “[Stanton] remembers one occasion when she addressed a church organisation and the minister stood out against her. There were many older women present – who had lived through the Depression days when women died having illegal abortions because they could not afford to feed another mouth. ‘Afterwards all the women came up to me and shook my hand in sympathy and wished me luck,’ she said.”

ALRANZ would like to express its greatest sympathies to Isabel’s family and friends. We are honoured to continue her work, and the work and so many like her who fought so hard for so long, often in the face of considerable hostility, for the right of all women and men to chart their own reproductive destinies.

From Our Files: Images

Well, not really from our files, but from the Rosemary Seymour Collection at the University of Waikato, which is a treasure trove of primary resource material about second-wave feminism/Women’s Liberation Movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand. There’s also an amazing collection of posters, stickers, badges. A teeny tiny selection is below, but meanwhile, we’re looking at ‘making’ some fresh activisty paraphernalia for campaign being planned for later in the year (more on that in future posts) – e.g. badges, stickers, posters, Tees maybe (what else?) and would welcome suggestions or votes for your favourites. Leave a comment or write to use at safeandlegal[at]gmail.com. Maybe these will spark some ideas…oh, and does anyone know what “gynaecomnemonicothanasia” is all about? (If you click on the image, it should load in full screen view):

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There are a whole bunch of posts under the From Our Files category.