No more excuses. It"s time to change abortion laws in NSW and Queensland | Anna Livsey

Abortion laws in Queensland and New South Wales suck and right now is the time to change them. A survey this week found that Australians overwhelmingly believe that women should have unqualified access to abortion.

The Australian Electoral Study has been taken each election since 1969 by the Australian National University and this year found, among other things, that 65% of Australians believe women should be able to obtain an abortion readily when they want one, 26% believe women should be able to obtain an abortion only in special circumstances and 4% believe that a woman should not be able obtain an abortion under any circumstances.

This is the highest level of support ever.

But despite that, access to the procedure is severely restricted for women in Queensland and New South Wales, particularly poor women and those living in rural areas.

Say you live in Queensland, but outside the south-east corner. Your options for a surgical abortion look like this (the clinics that provide surgical abortions are marked in red).

Map based on Children by Choice’s list of Queensland abortion providers

As you can see, outside of the south-east corner of the state there are only two clinics that provide them. And to make matters worse, these clinics will close in February due to a lack of funding. This leaves women in central, far north or western Queensland having to travel hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres to obtain an abortion, which can end up costing more than $ 1,000.

The situation is so dire in Queensland that one of the state’s leading pro-choice groups, Children by Choice, crowdfunds abortions. Last year the organisation raised more than $ 90,000 via grants, donations, and no-interest loans for clients who needed financial assistance. They also seek funds for individual cases via their Facebook page.

In New South Wales, women face a similar lack of options, with abortion providers concentrated in coastal areas and procedures almost exclusively performed in private clinics.

This situation exists in large part because of both states’ antiquated, regressive and now patently out of touch abortion laws, which criminalise the procedure except under certain circumstances.

These laws do not prevent abortions from happening though. It is widely accepted that between 10,000 and 14,000 take place in Queensland every year. The laws merely make life more difficult for women, particularly for those who already face disadvantage due to where they live, their socio-economic status and what kind of relationship they are in.

However, the wheels are in motion for things to change.

Currently there are bills before both the Queensland and NSW parliaments that seek to decriminalise the procedure, and in the case of New South Wales, enforce exclusion zones around abortion clinics so that anti-choice protesters cannot accost people at their entrances.

There has been a lot of pushback against the two proposals. See the submissions to the inquiry into MP Rob Pyne’s abortion law reform bill in Queensland for a taste. But the proposed changes are not extreme. They would put Queensland and New South Wales abortion law in line with the rest of Australia and with most European countries.

And change is possible. In the past two decades abortion has been decriminalised in Tasmania, Victoria and the ACT and just this year in Poland a popular protest prevented regressive abortion laws from being enacted by the country’s conservative government.

Changing the current laws is a step towards affording women in Queensland and New South Wales the same dignity, respect and access to safe options that many women around Australia, and the world, already enjoy.

And if the wishes, health, safety and bodily autonomy of women seeking abortions are not enough, the changes would now also reflect the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Australians.

No more excuses. It"s time to change abortion laws in NSW and Queensland | Anna Livsey

Girls like sex. Quit generating "health" excuses for why we use birth control | Jessica Valenti

Females like to have intercourse. Some women who like to have sex will not want to get pregnant, so they use birth control. I recognize that these are not notably revelatory statements, but for some exceptionally irritating explanation, the punditocracy is still dwelling on the fairly mundane details that intercourse transpires and contraception is typically a portion of it.

Conservatives won’t admit their deep-seated worry of non-reproductive sex, so Washington media’s machine is propping it up for them. But if this is our mid-summer debate, effectively, let us at least try to uncover a explanation for the stupidity, shall we?

When Sandra Fluke gave her now infamous testimony ahead of the US Residence of Representatives about insurance coverage coverage for contraception, the bulk of her opening statement targeted on a friend who required to take birth control to deal with polycystic ovarian syndrome. In the wake of final week’s supreme court decision on Hobby Lobby, Elle magazine ran a piece on “10 Health care Causes Why a Lady May Be Prescribed Birth Management”. And then the National Journal published a extensively shared article declaring that what “everyone is missing” in the ongoing Pastime Lobby debate is all the ladies who need to consider birth manage for medical factors. “Even if these women never have sex as soon as in their lives, they need to have to be on birth management,” wrote reporter Lucia Graves. She continued:

These girls depend on the pill to regulate their hormones and do every little thing from ease discomfort to minimize the threat of cancer. These medical advantages have absolutely nothing to do with intercourse or the prevention of pregnancy.

I agree with Graves that the website link between contraception and women’s overall health should not be ignored – and it truly is important that the national conversation, post-Pastime Lobby, is seeking beyond the court’s shameful ruling on behalf of sex-fearing “freedom-seekers”.

But it’s awfully depressing that, in the summer of 2014, when 99% of American girls use birth handle, we can not just come out and say that most ladies use birth control for sex. And that we like said sex – a lot.

I can guarantee you this, too: focusing on the non-orgasmic causes females use contraception will not magically modify conservatives’ minds about the problem. No matter how a lot of content articles come out imploring the public to consider about the quite actual overall health problems girls have, conservative organizations have had their minds in the gutter for many years, and they like it there.

The organizations that supported Pastime Lobby with amicus briefs, for instance, tell a pretty clear story about what conservatives care about – and it ain’t health:

• The Independent Women’s Forum filed a brief arguing that girls previously have plentiful entry to contraception via Planned Parenthood (which, ironically sufficient, IWF thinks must be defunded) – and that is just the most current in the group’s lengthy line of arguments that intercourse is by some means ruining ladies.


• The Catholic Healthcare Association wrote a brief arguing (inaccurately) that contraception triggers abortion, but a 2011 memo from the organization sheds far more light, stating that “widespread use of contraceptives contributes to sexual promiscuity”. (As Bill Maher once joked, “It’s like saying if you give a kid a tetanus shot she’ll want to jab rusty nails in her feet.”)


• The Eagle Forum and the Beverly LaHaye Institute also wrote briefs in help of Hobby Lobby they have also derided contraception and women possessing sex.
  
  

And when female reporters covered the Pastime Lobby decision, it was not a coincidence that the majority of us had been currently being called sluts and whores across social media and elsewhere. To conservatives, contraception is not about wellness – it really is about intercourse, their worry of intercourse, and a panic above ladies possessing intercourse that does not lead to infants. The much more we disregard that reality – or concentrate on on the “legitimate” reasons ladies use birth control – the more women give ammunition, and give up the moral ground, to the proper.

Liberals concede the same ground when we make pro-selection arguments making use of the most severe examples – rape, incest and overall health. Yes, women require abortions for those motives – but they also want them when they’re merely not ready to be parents. And which is Ok.

It’s also Okay – superb, even! – that women use birth management to have intercourse and not get pregnant. Even a lot more fantastic: it operates. The advent of contraception is arguably the most essential liberatory discovery for women of all time. We’re allowed to use it. And not just for our intervals – but to have scorching, sweaty, fantastic, exciting, non-procreative sex. That doesn’t make us “sluts” it can make us human.

Girls like sex. Quit generating "health" excuses for why we use birth control | Jessica Valenti