Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 5. March 30 1981
Fighting for the Principle
Fighting for the Principle
The people fighting for safe, legal and freely available abortion are not advocating abortion as a rule, they are fighting for the principle that it is a woman's right to choose whether she wants an abortion or not. Women who seek abortion are not a 'silly' promiscuous minority but are on the whole women who have already had children and women who, through inadequate contraceptive advice or contraceptive failure, conceive.
There is no evidence that restrictive legislation lowers the number of women wishing to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. All it does do is make an abortion hard to obtain and adds to the trauma of an already difficult decision. Women in New Zealand are still choosing to have abortions despite the increased emotional and physical costs. Support groups like SOS (Sisters Overseas Service) are working to help women escape New Zealand's restrictive legislation and obtain abortions in Australia but the cost of approx. $850.00 is prohibitive to most. Other groups, in particular WONAAC (Women's National Abortion Action Campaign) seek the repeal of all abortion laws, fighting for abortion as a real choice and not just theoretically possible under law. This is so that any woman who wants an abortion can get one without fear of being prosecuted as a criminal; without risking her life with a backstreet abortionist and without the legalised inquisition and harrassment by a series of specialists.
Obviously the decision to have an abortion is not made lightly, but it is a decision that the woman involved should have the right to make. Nor is anyone suggesting that there are not alternatives to abortion eg: pregnancy help and adoption, but again the choice must be each individual woman's to make.