WOMEN’S BODIES: ABORTION TODAY. ANTI-ABORTION MOVEMENT
Abortion today
Worldwide, around 150 000 abortions are performed each day. Three-quarters of the world’s women now live in countries where abortion is lawful and where competent, safe services are available. However, where illegal rackets persist (such as in Latin America), abortion still takes a terrible toll on women’s lives and health, accounting for 25-30 per cent of all maternal deaths. It is estimated that 10-20 million illegal abortions are performed each year, with a death rate of one per hundred (compared with a death rate of less than one in a hundred thousand for legal abortion).
In Australia, since the early 1970s, day clinics have been set up to provide abortion services for outpatients. Many of these clinics have been established as non-profit foundations with humane goals, and pride themselves on the standards of excellence of their counselling, nursing and medical services.
Abortions carried out in special day clinics have an advantage over hospital-performed abortions in that clinic staff are dedicated and sympathetic whereas hospital staff must work where they are rostered, regardless of their beliefs. Studies have also shown that complication rates are generally lower in clinics because of the special training and expertise of the staff.
The anti-abortion movement
Ever since lawful abortion became more widely available, this movement has been internationally active. In Australia it is represented mainly by the Right to Life organisation, which aims to prevent abortion in every circumstance. The anti-abortion lobby attacks on the grounds t law is abused by doctors who interpret it too liberally.
Right-to-Life advocates in federal parliament and most State parliaments have attempted to introduce Bills that will make laws more restrictive and punitive, organisation also conducts public campaigns to persuade others to its giving untrue statistics about the dangers of abortion and using highly emotive speeches and literature. Anti-abort protestors harass staff and patients abortion clinics and clinic doctors in their homes. Security guards are needed to escort patients through a barrage of verbal and sometimes physical abuse, and to prevent demonstrators storming into buildings and operation rooms.
In the USA anti-abortion campaigners have turned to violence in their attempts to stop abortion. Since 1977 hundreds of clinics have been bombed, burned and vandalized. Clinic staff and their families have been threatened, their homes paint-bombed or smeared with abusive slogans and their car tyres slashed.
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