Conferences
Abortion in Victoria (2007): Where are we now? Where do we want to go?
Download final reports, Executive Summary and The Melbourne Declaration from this compelling conference held on Friday 30 November 2007:
- Abortion Conference Report
- Abortion in Victoria - Executive Summary
- Abortion in Victoria - The Melbourne Declaration
Opinion piece by Dr Louise Keogh
The Victorian Law Reform Commission is currently sifting through submissions on potential changes to the legal status of abortion. Soon, politicians will be debating the merits of the various options the Commission provides to the Victorian Parliament. Meanwhile, each year, thousands of Victorian women have an abortion, provided by a workforce of committed doctors, nurses and counsellors. Many of these practitioners attended Abortion in Victoria, where are we now? Where do we want to go?, a ground-breaking conference held at the University of Melbourne last Friday. Also attending the conference were policy makers, academics, health practitioners and others with an interest in abortion. The conference was organised by four key women’s health organisations, and deliberately looked to the future, both at law reform but also, importantly, what women want from Victorian abortion policy, services and research.
Reformer Dr Margaret Sparrow spoke about the New Zealand experience, and called for the new laws to be simple, as over-regulation and over-medicalisation have the potential to reduce access for women and to increase costs for both women and the Government. This point was echoed by Dr Jo Wainer. Former Senator Lyn Allison called on the audience to fight the religious zealotry that blames women for abortion and leads to them suffering guilt rather than seeking the support they need. She argued that women should not be coerced into motherhoodand we need to be vigilant to ensure our rights are not undermined. Professor of Law, Jenny Morgan argued for women’s equality being central to the debate about law reform, and for the law to be driven by social fact rather than ideology. Researcher Dr Maggie Kirkman presented results from an audit of the Pregnancy Advisory Service at the Royal Women’s Hospital, providing evidence on the range of women using the service, and the reasons they do so
Intensive Care Specialist Dr John Edington (acting CEO at Bendigo Health) exposed the myths that have prevented abortion services being offered at Bendigo Hospital. He gave what he described as an ‘objective’ analysis of the barriers to abortion and the need for abortions in Bendigo. Catholic staff, and a strongly Catholic community have been cited as barriers, yet he found no evidence that this was the case. He anticipated that a service may be available sometime in the future. When asked by a colleague if he believed in abortion, he suggested ‘that would be like believing in appendectomy’. He suggested that doctors should refrain from imposing their beliefs on their patients.
Manager of the Pregnancy Advisory Service at the Women’s, Annarella Hardiman, presented a compelling argument for the importance of accurate information and quality counselling for pregnant women seeking advice, and for the need for transparency in advertising. Those pregnancy counselling services not offering information about abortion to women (‘anti-choice’ providers) need to make this clear in all advertising. Dr Chris Bayly presented evidence that providing women with the option of medical abortion does not increase the number of abortions, and that about half of eligible women would choose medical over surgical abortion if given the option.
The conference endorsed a set of statements to be known as ‘The Melbourne Declaration’ outlining the key things women in Victoria want in abortion policy and services. The statements call for the same rules that apply to best practice in any other medical or surgical procedure being applied to women undergoing abortion and their providers. For example; regional public health services should take responsibility for access by women in their region to abortion services; Victorian best practice guidelines for the provision of abortion services should be developed, implemented and regularly reviewed; buffer zone legislation should be introduced to prevent picketing outside abortion services, and; accessible and affordable contraceptives should be available to all Victorian women.
When a diverse group of people like this come together on a medical issue and suggest the way forward, the Government should take notice. The ‘Melbourne Declaration’ should be the blueprint for planning abortion services for the future in Victoria. While law reform is an important step, it is the steps that follow making abortion legal that will determine whether the challenge of providing all Victorian women with timely access to quality abortion services can be achieved. We urge the Victorian Government to see abortion law reform as a step in the process of achieving better services for women.
Pictured L-R: Annarella Hardiman (PAS Manager, The Women's), Therese McCarthy (Consultant in social justice for women in reproductive and mental health, violence against women, and the law), Dr Louise Keogh (KCWHS, SPH, The University of Melbourne), Dr Jo Wainer (Director, Gender and Medicine Research Unit, Monash University), Dr Maggie Kirkman (KCWHS, SPH, The University of Melbourne), Dr Margaret Sparrow (President, Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand), Dr Chris Bayly (Associate Director, Women's Services, The Women's) & Prof Jenny Morgan Faculty of Law, The University of Melbourne)
Past Conferences
The First National Conference of Gender and Health Inequalities
The First National Conference of Gender and Health Inequalities, hosted by the Key Centre for Women's Health in Society, was held at the Laby Theatre, School of Physics at the University of Melbourne on 22 June 2007. Speakers were: Prof Ichiro Kawachi, Director, Harvard School of Public Health; A/Prof Dorothy Broom, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at ANU; Prof Ruth Fincher, Dean of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne; Prof Sue Richardson, Director of the National Institute of Labour Studies; Prof Gary Dowsett, Deputy Director at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at LaTrobe University; Dr Shelley Mallett, VicHealth Public Health Research Fellow, KCWHS; Prof Janet McCalman, Centre for Health and Society, School of Population Health; and Head of the History and Philosophy of Science Department, Faculty of Arts; and A/Prof Anne Kavanagh, Coordinator of Research, KCWHS.
Papers from this conference will be published in a special issue of the Australian Journal of Social Issues in March 2008.
Gender in/and/of Health Inequalities, A/Prof Dorothy Broom. Download abstract