Salient. Victoria University Students' Newspaper. Volume Number 39, Issue 6. April 5 [1976]
General Historical Background: Theory and Practice
General Historical Background: Theory and Practice
Our point of view on abortion and birth control is far from new. In practice abortion and infanticide have been the chief forms of fertility control for thousands of years, sometimes with social sanction but often despite religious teaching and laws. Infanticide has given way to abortion and contraception; it is to be hoped abortion will give way to contraception and sterilisation thanks to tremendous technical advances in these areas. Less reliable methods are readily discarded, and there is increasing demand for sterilisation despite its permanence. From the turn of this century there has been a tremendous upsurge in women's consciousness and expectations. They have demanded and fought for legalisation of abortion on basically the same grounds that we do: that women have a right to freedom of choice in a matter that concerns them so closely. The experience of Catholic countries (where contraception and abortion have been forbidden by law) is particularly instructive. Practice is shockingly different from theory. In France there has been approximately one abortion for one live birth (the law has just been liberalised). In Italy even the Vatican admits to 11,000 maternal deaths per annum from induced abortion. Sanctity of foetal life has never been any more than a metaphysical myth.