Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 5. March 30 1981
No Concern For Women
No Concern For Women
This adulation of basic foetal life is surely just another way of telling us that our lives are worthless, except in so far as we carry out one 'historic' purpose as the breeders of the next generation. To equate our lives in worth and value with that of the unborn foetus is to reduce women to the status of non-thinking, non-speaking, non-communicative entities. The nature of our lives as women is hardly touched upon by anti-abortionists. They never mention battered or unwanted children, or the fears and despair of women faced with unwanted pregnancy. They do not mention the inadequacy of contraceptive methods, and the lack of a really safe, universally acceptable contraceptive. Our real concern that children should be wanted by their parents, that they should have decent living conditions to grow up in, is turned on its head to reveal a mythical picture of women as the destroyers of human life. It is because masses of women throughout the world know the value of life that they take the control of their bodies into their own hands, and demand the right to have abortions.
Women want the right to abortion because it matters very much to them to be able to make decisions about their own lives, their work, their education and their contribution to society.