A costly compromise
On May 21, the Western Australian parliament passed a bill to change that state's abortion laws. The bill, which was initially intended to remove all references to abortion from the criminal code, was, through numerous amendments and compromises with anti-choice MPs, gradually transformed into one which liberalises some aspects of the law but retains abortion's criminality and severe limitations on access.
Despite all the media hype about WA now having "the most liberal abortion laws in Australia", those of us in the pro-choice movement have to acknowledge, first, that we lost another opportunity to have abortion laws repealed and, secondly, that this loss will cost women dearly in the future.
The potential price of this defeat was made painfully clear just three weeks earlier in the US.
On April 29, Wisconsin's governor, Tommy Thompson, signed into law a "partial birth abortion" ban, which went into effect on May 14. On that day, almost all abortion clinics in Wisconsin halted operations, and most have remained closed since.
The broad wording of the new Wisconsin law renders doctors liable to life imprisonment for performing even the most common procedures at any stage in pregnancy. It defines "partial birth abortion" as an operation in which a person partially vaginally delivers without eliminating the possibility of a living "child", kills the child and then completes the delivery. "Child" is defined as "a human being from the time of fertilisation until it is completely delivered from a pregnant woman".
On May 20, the US Court of Appeals refused to overturn a court order that allowed the ban to go into effect. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Terence Evans stated that the ban "seems to cover many current first trimester procedures. By refusing to grant a temporary restraining order ... the district judge has insured that many women in Wisconsin will lose the right to obtain a legal first trimester abortion as guaranteed by Roe v. Wade."
Priscilla Smith, a lawyer with the Centre for Reproductive Law and Policy, said: "This should be a wake-up call ... these laws are not limited to 'late term' or any specific abortion procedure. They are part of a carefully designed strategy to outlaw all abortions."
The broad wording of the law means that its enforcement may (and probably will be) arbitrary. One clinic in Milwaukee and another in Dane County continued to provide limited services only after local prosecutors guaranteed that they would not pursue criminal penalties against doctors for performing "early" abortions. Such guarantees are always tenuous, entirely dependent on the strength of the anti-choice forces in politics.
That those forces are on the rise is reflected in some 28 US states passing abortion bans in the last three years. An additional seven states may pass them by the end of this year. With few exceptions, all of these laws are worded as broadly as the Wisconsin ban, and jeopardise abortion at any point in pregnancy.
While every court except in Wisconsin that has heard a challenge to the law — 13 in all — has limited its enforcement or blocked it completely, the growth and influence of the anti-abortion movement leave no room for compromise on abortion laws. Liberalisation is nowhere near enough. For so long as abortion remains in crimes acts, even in the most limited form, the basis exists for the reactionary right to limit access further, and punish women and their doctors more.
Finding "compromises" is the game played by capitalist politicians who, whatever their differences on the issue, are united in their desire to maintain their parliamentary system's veneer of democracy. It is a game in which the odds are stacked against the oppressed, including the majority of women.
That majority does not believe abortion is a crime — they support women's right to choose — yet the politicians ignore them.
Women cannot afford the WA politicians' compromise. A campaign for all abortion laws to be repealed is more necessary and urgent, not less so, following the WA decision.
By Lisa Macdonald