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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37, No. 7. April, 17 1974

Science and Social Policy

Science and Social Policy

Women have always wanted control over their reproductive lives. What is new is the possibility today for meeting that desire easily and safely. Medical science can now provide women with complete security against unplanned childbirth.

The great advances in contraception made in the past few decades have raised women's expectations. Sexual relationships need no longer be fraught with anxiety about unwanted pregnancy, anxiety which has been a blight on the lives of virtually all women and which no man ever has to experience.

The new methods of early abortion which have been developed can further dispel that anxiety by providing a simple, non-traumatic solution to contraceptive failure.

Undoubtedly, if we had a positive social policy, both pre-and post-conception birth control methods could be even further improved.

Such advances can be of real benefit to women and can greatly enhance their feelings of security and dignity, by giving them control over an important area of their lives.

Yet we are faced with the absurd contradiction that these advances are being denied to women.

Contraceptives are not legally available to all. They are costly, they are not readily accessible, and, they are simply denied to some by doctors who refuse in prescribe them for their own personal reasons. Women cannot effectively choose to prevent pregnancy unless they have all the means of prevention available to them.

We have laws prohibiting abortion, the origin of which dates back to last century. For most women who conceive accidentally, the only alternative offered by this society is compulsory continuation of pregnancy. The fight to choose, which was never guaranteed before conception, is definitely unavailable after it, except to the few who have the cash and the connections And their "choice", involving as it does clandestine activity and possible risk to health, is just as degrading alternative. Equally degrading is the manner in which the law allows abortion only to those whose health is seriously endangered or those who are prepared to have themselves certified to be on the verge of mental collapse.

Sterilisation operations are refused to women on the grounds that they have not produced sufficient children. Many gynacecologists do not consider women fit to make such a decision for themselves, and they arrogantly make it for them. Applicants for sterilisation operations are also required to obtain the consent of their spouse, even if they are separated from them.

Sex education in our high schools is a farce. By the time they receive it, young people today are already aware of how to produce a pregnancy; what they want to know is how to prevent it.