Vol 35, (9) 657 - 752
The abortion debate in Australia
Christine Margaret Read MBBS, ThA, GradCertPH, FAChSHM, is Medical Director,FPA Health/Family Planning NSW, New South Wales.
I recently watched a fascinating documentary about the crusade of Dr Bertram Wainer in the 1960s to bring the practice of illegal abortion in Victoria to an end. It documented the profound horror of the backyard abortion that so often ended in infection, sterility or death, and served as a potent reminder of a practice to which we must never return. Of course that can’t happen again, abortion is legal now, isn’t it? In Victoria in 1969 a Supreme Court judge ruled that an abortion is not unlawful if a doctor believed that: ‘the abortion is necessary to preserve the woman from serious danger to her life or physical or mental health’ (Menhennit ruling). In Australia today however, abortion law remains conditional, unclear and inconsistent and, except in the ACT, is still part of criminal statutes.1
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