Any anniversary offers a good opportunity to stop and assess: where have we been and where do we want to go? On 6 February 2012 Ireland stopped to remember that same day 20 years earlier. That was the day the Republic of Ireland (and the world) was rocked by the X Case: an Attorney General charged with maintaining the law, seized a 14-year-old rape victim’s passport and interned her within the State, forcing her to continue with an unwanted pregnancy. For those who were not around in 1992 or do not remember, the X Case brought to the fore yet again the ‘contentious’ issue of abortion in Ireland.

The short history of abortion in the Republic is that it is still covered in the 1861 Crimes Act (part of Ireland’s colonial past). Abortion has never been widely available or legal in Ireland. However, this was not sufficient for the vociferous anti-choice movement. So in 1983, a constitutional amendment was passed by the people and enshrined within State law that equated the right to life of the mother with that of her fetus. Article 40.3.3 of Bunreacht na hEireann reads:

The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.

1983 to 1992 would be one of the most oppressive periods of the anti-abortion regime in Ireland. [See Senator Ivana Bacik’s piece on the X Case and her role in the pro-choice movement while a student at Trinity]

However, it was not until 1992 that the people of Ireland experienced the full meaning of Article 40.3.3. On learning that their 14-year-old daughter had been raped by a family friend and was pregnant, X’s parents contact the police to ensure that DNA from the terminated fetus could be used in evidence against the perpetrator. X and her family were told that any attempt to abort the fetus was against Irish law and that X would have to continue with the pregnancy (in accordance with Irish law the only life that was at risk was that of the ‘unborn’).

The case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court, where the judges found in favour of X, ruling that because X was suicidal her life was at risk and she should be allowed to go to England for a termination. (At no time was it assumed that the termination would be available in Ireland). X is reported to have miscarried before the termination was done.

The then Government’s response was to put forward three referenda: two of which were passed by a majority: one on the freedom to abortion information and services outside of Ireland and the other on the right to travel outside of the country for an abortion. The third, which tried to roll back the ruling in the X Case, outlawing suicide as a reasonable defense, was defeated.

This has been the state of Ireland’s abortion laws for the last 20 years (with several more cases like X before the Court and one more attempt by the Ahern Government in 2002 to roll back the X case again). It was only in December 2010 that any shift in the status quo has become a possibility. That was a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which found that Ireland had contravened the right of C, a cancer patient who was denied an abortion. Happily this has instilled a new sense of fire and urgency in the Irish pro-choice movement. Using the X Case as a catalyst for change, pro-choicers have been holding various events across the country and calling on people to put pressure on the Government.

What will happen remains to be seen. The Kenny Government has abdicated responsibility and chosen to appoint a 14 member expert panel to assess how best to proceed with meeting the requirements of the ECHR ruling. Ultimately, what the majority of pro-choicers are calling for (and what they have been calling for the last 20 years) is legislating for the X Case ruling, of which the majority of Irish people support. Earth shattering, I don’t think so. If it happens, will the flood gates open and Irish women will be falling over themselves to have a termination, international trends refute the likelihood. But what we all should remember is that the lived reality of repressive and criminal abortion laws on those that suffer the most – women.

X is 34 this year. Her identity is still unknown. I wonder what she thinks about Ireland’s continued desire to criminalise women for their reproductive decisions?

In response to the column, Dame Margaret Sparrow wrote a letter to the editor, which was not published. Dame Margaret kindly agreed to my reproducing her letter here:

Karl du Fresne (Dominion Post Tuesday 17 January) calls Dr Gill Greer a high priestess of sex education and abortion. This is inaccurate and insulting. She is a highly respected New Zealander who has achieved international recognition for her role at the helm of the London based International Planned Parenthood Federation. The statistics presented by du Fresne are also inaccurate. Take for example the figures on abortion. In the 2011 annual report of the Abortion Supervisory Committee it is stated that the total number of abortions performed in very young teenagers are small in comparison to other age groups and the figures are trending downwards.  Furthermore there is a noticeable downward trend in the under 20 year old range which is not replicated in the older age groups. It may well be that young persons are responding to educational efforts.

Dr Greer also responded to the column, highlighting the important work the International Planned Parenthood Federation do internationally.

From 21 October 1979 originally published in The Guardian's Le Monde section. The headline was John Paul II Addresses the World.

But wait, how come, if abortion is the main cause of this decline, and almost no one had access to legal abortion in the 1950s, there was still a decline? Hmm, the cause of the 1950s decline must have been something different. But wait, there was no TV or internet, which GG lists as secondary causes of the current degeneration, and the primacy of men in society (the decline of which is another factor, says GG) was still, well, in its prime. True, in the 1950s, there was “greed generating poverty and a growing deprived underclass”, (I appreciate GG’s focus on poverty and greed!) though not so much multiculturalism.

It starts to look suspiciously like analyses by Sexist White Men about the imminent collapse of society reflect whatever it is at the time that they find particularly threatening. Then: radio, high wages for adolescents, mothers having jobs, etc. Etc. Now, abortion, abortion, abortion, TV, Internet, multiculturalism, poverty and mothers having jobs. Wouldn’t it be cool if just one time they did some actual research and ran a few tests on their “abortion is the primary cause of everything that I think is wrong with society” analysis.

Anyway, here are some excerpts from the government “Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents” from 1954. Some of it may sound eerily familiar:

During the past few decades there have been changes in certain aspects of family life throughout the English-speaking world leading to a decline in morality. (45).

During recent years the pattern of sexual misbheaviour has changed: it has spread to younger groups; girls have become more precocious; immorality has been organized; the mental attitude of some boys and girls toward misconduct has altered; and there is evidence that homosexuality may be increasing. The new pattern of juvenile immorality is uncertain in origin, insidious in growth, and has developed over a wide field. (63)

Objectionable publications ought to be banned by establishing a system for the registration of distributors of certain printed matter. …  The possibility that children may hear radio programmes unsuitable for them calls for firmness and discretion on the part of parents and more care by the Broadcasting Service in arranging and timing programmes.  …  Although television may not be introduced into New Zealand for some time, plans to cope with its effects on children should be made well in advance of its introduction. …. The School is not the proper place for fully instructing children about sex, although it may be a convenient place in which mothers and daughters together, fathers and sons together, or parents together, may listen to addresses or see appropriate films. … (64)

Nearly one -third of the delinquent children whose cases were considered came from homes where the mothers, possibly out of necessity, went out to work. … The high wages paid to adolescents on leaving school are an important contributing factor especially when those youths have not been trained in the virtues of thrift and self-reliance. … In many of the cases investigated by the police the children have either been ignorant of the functions of sex or have too advanced a knowledge of its physical aspects. … There has been a decline in certain aspects of family life because of a failure to appreciate the worth of reglious and moral sanctions. … (65)

The definition of “obscene” and “indecent” in the statute law should be enlarged so as to cover all productions which are harmful in that they place undue emphasis on sex, crime, or horror. …

A new offence should be created whereunder boys and girls who are guilty of indecent conduct with one another should both be liable to be charged as delinquents in the Children’s Court.  … (66)

This entry is part of an occasional “From Our Files” series in which we dig through ALRANZ newsletters and related files to give readers a bit of insight into the recent history (usually post-1960s) of the struggle for reproductive rights in New Zealand. All the entries are listed here.

–Post by ALRANZ National President Dr. Morgan Healy–

On the 39^th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the seminal US Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal up until the point of ‘viability’, I want to take a moment to think how New Zealanders can play a role in ensuring abortion rights are protected in the 21^st century. Remember Roe v Wade is not simply a celebration (or a call to arms) for American pro-choicers, but should be extended beyond the national context of America and considered within a wider campaign for reproductive health and rights. To this end, I want those of us here in New Zealand to consider what will it take for us to reform our own abortion laws?

From my own perspective, cultural and social discourses are key drivers in reproductive rights and abortion. While different in each socio-political location, it is important to understand how abortion is constituted by these discourses and how that impacts on the strategies for change. To this end, I want to use the differences in North American abortion politics to promote reflections on the ways in which abortion is constituted in a New Zealand context and the barriers or enablers this creates for change. Importantly, I am not here to posit the answers to these questions, but want to use this as a means of engaging in a dialogue with the reader on how you understand abortion in a New Zealand context and how this can or should be used to affect change.

The pro-choice movement in the US has never really had a chance to be complacent about the right afforded to women in Roe v Wade. From the outset, campaigners have struggled to maintain the right to abortion against myriad and powerful forces that would relish the enforcement of all pregnancies. Examples include both the Helms and Hyde Amendments of the 1980s, which limited the use of federal funding for abortion both national and international. This combined with the recent onslaught of legislation at both the federal and state level to make abortion inaccessible and onerous have forced much of the pro-choice movement onto the defensive yet again. These calculated attacks on choice have largely come from arch conservative religious groups which seem hell-bent on constituting womanhood as motherhood and controlling women’s sexuality through these discriminatory and sexist discourses. I believe the success of this minority in the last year stems largely from the fear and instability of the US economy at the moment. The yearning to control something is being waged over women’s bodies, while taking the attention away from the issue people are most concerned about – jobs.

These most recent battles are reminiscent of the nascent state of the United States, where nation builders worried that the growing divide between federalist and anti-federalists, those who believed in the necessity of a strong central government and those who advocated for the primacy of state rights, would destabilize a growing nation This tension has come to define the socio-political landscape of the US, with swings in various directions depending on the political atmosphere of the day. This has proven important with regard to abortion and reproductive rights because the goal posts continually shift between federal and state levels, stretching pro-choicers across these various fields. It is has also resulted in another important Supreme Court ruling on abortion, Planned Parenthood v Casey, which allowed for states to work away at the margins of access for women. It is the historical contestation between notions of state and federal rights and the resurgence of these arguments as a result of the Great Recession that perhaps has had the greatest impact on abortion rights in the US in the last two years.

Juxtaposing the American situation with its northern neighbor, Canada, there is a stark contrast between how the issue of abortion has been constituted and the legal context for the right to an abortion. While the Harper government has in recent years attempted to limit aid to international organisations which provide abortion services in developing regions, there has never been the vociferous and dangerous anti-choice movement that plagues the US (or perhaps more accurately, nothing to the same extent, with clinics being burned and abortion doctors being assassinated).

I think this largely stems for the diverse histories that separate the US from Canada and the socio-political discourses that have helped to construct notions of nationhood and patriotism. I base this not on any in-depth knowledge or research on Canada or Canadian history, but on my own experiences as an American in discussion with Canadian friends (and to some extent the recent activities of the American state governments to restrict abortion access which has to date not been mirrored in provincial governments in Canada).  What I mean to say is that the political atmosphere and cultural signifiers associated with each country have developed alongside one another but not in a similar or convergent manner. This to my knowledge has had an impact on how abortion has been constituted, legitimized and legalized in the two countries. I can remember a Canadian friend describing how abortion is considered a right under their legal framework and that very few Canadians question the veracity of such a claim. This is not to deny that access and availability of abortion services is variable in such an expansive nation, but that on a national and national psyche level, the social mores associated with abortion allow for no set restrictions.

On the 39^th anniversary, it is important to remember not only to celebrate, but also to contemplate our own situation here in New Zealand. American pro-choicers have not had the opportunity for complacency.  What this leaves me thinking about is how is abortion constructed in different historical locations and what impact do these social discourses have on the legal framework and ideas regarding abortion as a right? I ask you to think about the following questions:

What do we, here in New Zealand, risk in not vocalizing our disgust or anger over women’s continued criminal state?

Do we need to have our access or availability threatened in some way for action?? What do the ideal reproductive services look like to you and how can New Zealanders go about ensuring that the needs of women to necessary medical services like abortion are being met?

I’m working my way through the posts, and thought I’d share a couple of my favourites so far. I’ll add more to this list later today.

Blog for Choice Day! Yes, that choice. Valerie at Capitol Records asks why Roe is still important, and nicely summarises some of the recent challenges to Roe that chip away at the right to choice in the United States.

Make 2012 the Year of the Pro-Choice Voter. Colleen at Get off My Soapbox writes about how important it is for pro-choicers to talk about abortion, and suggests we could learn something from the LGBT movement in terms of personalising the issue and telling our own stories.

First, we’d actually have to find a pro-choice politician. Anna at The Feminist Librarian reframes this years question, and wonders “how do you go about taking action to ‘help elect pro-choice candidates’ when, essentially, you don’t feel there are any pro-choice candidates?”

Blog for Choice: The 2 Battles of Choice. Madeline at Fem 2.0 urges us to “stop hiding sex, contraception and abortion and put it out on the table to discussion and education.”

Blog for Choice Day, a letter of thanks/apology to Roe vs. Wade. Megan at STFY Fauxminist apologises for taking Roe v. Ward for granted.

Back in the 70s, before Misoprostol and Mifepristone and the Internet, women tried all kinds of ways to end unwanted pregnancies.  Dr. Rex Hunton, the medical director and one of the founders of the AMAT clinic, which opened in 1974 and helped prompt the panic that led to our current backward law (yes, we have good abortion care, but that’s despite an archaic restrictive law), gave evidence to the 1975-77 Royal Commission on Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion on the self-care methods his patients told him they had tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to end unwanted pregnancies. (This was at a time when very few legal abortions were performed in NZ):

“Partaking unusual exercise; riding motor cycle on rocky road; horse riding; jumping from a height (a table); falling over (one patient while tied up); falling down stairs; hitting abdomen; inviting boyfriend to hit abdomen; constricting abdomen with belts or ropes; taking quinine tablets; excessive alcohol consumption; overdose of contraceptives (2 packets at once); overdoses of thyroid tablets, sleeping tablets, tranquilizers and anti-depressants; large dosage of purgatives, Epsom salts or castor oil; boiling up fern roots and drinking beverage; hot baths with added medicants (Epsom salts); hot baths with excessive alcohol (gin); douching with very hot water; douching with salt solution; inserting tampon soaked in eucalyptus (or other medicants) into the vagina; using mirror to try and insert foreign body into uterus; inserting foreign body blindly into vagina and uterus; puncturing abdomen with needle.” (From AMAT submission to the Royal Commission.)

Ireland: A Case in Point

A good place to look if we want to imagine an abortion ban in New Zealand is present-day Ireland, where abortion is banned under the Irish Constitution. Just as New Zealand women were once forced to travel for abortion care (particularly in the 1970s and early 1980s), Irish women (both in the Republic and Northern Ireland) travel in their thousands to Britain and elsewhere.

What else do they do? According to the pro-choice group, Choice Ireland, around three Irish women a day are ordering abortion pills over the Internet.  And that’s just the drugs being seized at the border by the Irish Medical Board. As Choice Ireland points out, these numbers are surely the tip of the iceberg.

The Lancet study, which is available via Guttmacher’s site  (there’s a link to the pdf in the release) also shows that a global decline in the abortion rate appears to have ended, and at the same time as there’s been a decline in the uptake of contraception. Here are some other stats from the Lancet study:

* Worldwide, 49% of abortions were unsafe in 2008, up from 44% in 1995. Yes, half of all abortions in the world are unsafe.

* Maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion remained at 13% in 2008 (47,000 maternal deaths are estimated to have been due to unsafe abortion in 2008, which is 129 women dying each day).

* The estimated worldwide proportion of pregnancies that end in abortion was 21% in 2008, 20% in 2003, and 22% in 1995.

* The abortion rate is lower in subregions where more women live under liberal abortion laws. … Restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower abortion rates.

So, next time someone rails against abortion and says we need to tighten the law, it’s worth giving some thought to just what it would mean, in reality, to further restrict abortion in a country that hasn’t had a maternal abortion death in more than 30 years, and where the abortion rate is trending downward. One thing it wouldn’t mean is no abortions.

If you have a question about abortion that you would like answered in a Fact Sheet, let us know in a comment or send us an email.

A few quick links from the end of 2011 and the start of 2012.

Gill Greer, former executive director of NZ Family Planning was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the British New Year’s Honours List, for her work in the area of sexual health for women and girls around the world.

Abortion pioneer Merle Hoffman talks to Salon about her recently published memoir Intimate Wars.

Sunsara Taylor answers the question ‘Should a woman feel sad about her abortion?’ with a resolute ‘No’.

Amanda Marcotte at RH Reality Check discusses the war on contraception that escalated in the US in 2011.

IPAS have been busy raising awareness about sexual and reproductive rights as fundamental human rights across Latin America.

Still in Latin America, abortion up to 12 weeks is set to be decriminalised in Uruguay!

And, coming up soon:

January 22 is the seventh annual Blog for Choice Day in the US. On this day (the anniversary of Roe v. Wade), pro-choice bloggers and activists from around the US will write blog posts responding to this year’s question: “What will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?” There will definitely be some good reading in there, and we will link to the list of bloggers participating on the day.

Have any other pro-choice news or articles you want to share? Post a comment, or email us if you have something you think would be good for our next ‘Pro-choice morsels’.

Jennifer Jason Leigh as Stacy Hamilton

Last Sunday, Channel Four screened the 1982 movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, one of the first and arguably best of the “teen” movie genre, which features a whole heap of actors who went to become big stars, like Sean Penn (as the stoner surfer Jeff Spicoli), Jennifer Jason Leigh (the main female character, high schooler Stacy Hamilton) and Judge Reinhold (Stacy’s elder brother Brad). In the movie, Stacy gets pregnant to the slick-talking, premature ejaculating Mike Damone. With no fuss, and admirable determination, she asks him to split the $150 cost of an abortion at the local free clinic. “Doesn’t sound free to me,” Mike tells her. But he agrees to pay his share, and give her a ride to the clinic.

About now, in pretty much every contemporary movie  or TV show that dares to touch the abortion issue (and that’s not many), Stacy will suffer a lot of angst and will eventually decide not to go through with the abortion. She will then either have a convenient miscarriage or a baby. (The 2010 Ben Stiller move, “Greenberg” is a notable exception, as is the lol episode of The Sarah Silverman Program “Bored of the Rings” in which Sarah finds out the community group she recently joined is a radical anti-abortion group planning to bomb on the clinic where her sister, Laura, volunteers. Here’s a clip of Sarah fondly remembering her past abortions there.)

But “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” doesn’t follow the modern script. When Mike Damone reneges on his side of the deal, Stacy gets Brad to drive her to the clinic, pretending she’s going to the bowling alley across the street. She goes through with the abortion with little fuss or drama. Meanwhile Brad, who has learned the truth, arrives to pick her up after the procedure. He asks her who the father was, but Stacy won’t tell. “All right, it’s your secret,” her brother says. And that’s that. He’s supportive and non-judgmental, as family and friends in the real world so often are, and she’s just fine, just like real-world women. Well, just fine other than being ticked off at that scumbag Mike Damone, who is immediately snubbed and scorned by all the other girls at school.

Oh how times have changed. No longer are women able to make no-fuss abortion decisions and have no-fuss abortions. As Caitlin Merriman noted on this site recently, quoting her almost-namesake Caitlin Moran, women making this one decision are subjected to “more pressure about preserving life than, say, Vladimir Putin, the World Bank, or the Catholic Church.”  Lots of people have noticed this trend over the years, and have written about the fact that TV and movie makers live in a parallel universe on the topic of abortion (for a recent example, see Mary Elizabeth Williams’s “Why is Hollywood Still Terrified of Abortion”) but what struck me watching “Ridgemont” was how much more open we used to be able to be about abortion. (By ‘we’, I am limiting this to primarily the U.S., U.K. and NZ.) Sure, not 100% open, but incomparably more so than today. Even though abortion is a reality for so many women and girls – in the United States, around one in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime, while it’s about one in four in New Zealand – in movie and TV land, it’s about one in 20,000. It’s more than OK to show war, mass killing, torture, horror, murder, sexual assault, etc. etc. but it’s radical beyond measure to depict a woman having a problem-free abortion.

The anti-abortion movement has won a remarkable cultural victory in having virtually outlawed positive or even neutral depiction of abortion in the movies and on TV. Of course, that victory doesn’t seem to have had much impact on reducing the numbers of women actually able to access safe, legal abortion, so maybe it’s a case of “who cares”.  Except that this kind of cultural disapproval does have an impact on real women’s lives in adding to the stigma, shame and secrecy surrounding abortion.

On a lighter note, I’ll close with some dialogue from another clip from that Sarah Silverman episode, in which Sarah decides she can’t go along with her new friends and give up on abortion:

Sarah: Um, I don’t think I can make the sacrifices you guys want me to make. I guess I’m just stubborn and stuck in my ways and I’m going to have to say goodbye.

Carol: Sarah I don’t understand this decision.

Sarah: Do you ever just get a sense about something Carol?

Carol: Of course.

Sarah: Well it’s kind of like that. When I got an abortion the last time, it just didn’t feel like the last time, you know?

Angry White Man: Your wickedness will be punished. The arc of history is long but it bends toward justice. That clinic will be wiped off the face of the map and some day, so will all the clinics.

Sarah: Aarrrgggh. How long are you gonna talk? I might like abortion but at least I’m no a-bore-son.

Sarah leaves. Later, talking to her dog Doug:

Sarah: Man, Doug, I’ve had the craziest day. Like, I met these people and at first they were really nice, ya know. But then they’re all, like, you have to be like this and you can’t do this or that and the arc of history is all like this and the free clinic is gonna be wiped off that…oh my god, Laura! And my abortions!!

Sarah races to save the clinic….

Some links from the past couple of weeks:

The UK Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AMRC) last week published the world’s largest, most comprehensive and systematic review of mental health outcomes and abortion care, the conclusion of which is that abortions do not increase a woman’s chance of developing mental health problems. RH Reality Check has a good summary (and a link to the AMRC website, where you can download a copy of the full review).

DJ Jay Smooth has some thoughts about the ‘Until Abortion Ends’ videos.

The Abortioneers write abortion haiku (I think I might have a go at that too).

And check out this nifty comparison of various birth control methods.

—Feel free to share any good posts/articles/other bits and pieces with us in a comment.—