Sex-selective abortion debate is a smokescreen for an attack on women's reproductive rights
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Version 0 of 1. It’s almost a privilege to watch naked hypocrisy of the sort displayed by Cory Bernardi in the Senate yesterday. During debate on senator John Madigan’s bill, which seeks to end Medicare funding for sex-selective abortion, Bernardi remarked: That is the question before us today: are we prepared to uphold the rights of girls and women? Are we prepared to address the multiple manifestations of gender discrimination which are attributable to these sex-selection abortions? Will you rise to this man’s challenge, Australia? He’d handle it by himself, except it really eats into his busy schedule of blaming single mothers for crime. Are we prepared to address gender discrimination arising from a practice that he admits probably doesn’t even happen in this country? After all, he said: It is worth noting that there is very little evidence, or maybe no evidence, available to the government that suggests that termination of pregnancy for sex selection purposes is widespread... Are we going to sit on our hands while a nonexistent tragedy doesn’t play out before our very eyes? Where are feminists on this issue? Probably helping women with problems that are actually happening, the radical harpies. It’s obvious that sex-selective abortion isn’t the real issue here. Even if it were happening, how could the government do anything about it? Is there going to be a box on the Medicare claim form asking if termination is being sought because of the sex of the foetus? There’s not much the government can do if a woman ticks “no” dishonestly, except have another box that reads, “Really? REALLY REALLY? Tell us the truth, come on, please?” Senator Madigan wants to make sure abortion restriction remains on the national agenda. As a right-wing Catholic with visions of society that illustrate a total lack of both compassion and imagination, he’s in constant danger of being ignored while the rest of us get on with stuff that actually matters. Like walking our dogs, for instance, or thinking about which type of sandwich we’re going to make for lunch. So he has to think up novel methods of attracting attention, like the kid up the back of the class screaming PENIS because he’s not smart enough to come up with a real answer to the teacher’s question. The most pathetic part of the whole affair is that it illustrates just how little Madigan and Bernardi care about women’s health. Have they never heard of backyard abortions? Do they not care that all available evidence shows the inefficacy of a reactive, law enforcement-based approach to abortion reduction? Are they ready to take responsibility for unnecessary and gruesome deaths? It’s difficult to imagine that the senators are unaware of this, which raises the upsetting possibility that they just don’t care. If Madigan and Bernardi approached this issue with a reasonable measure of humanity, they might come up with ways of reducing abortion that don’t involve endangering women. Since they seem incapable of doing it themselves, here’s a suggestion from me, free of charge: work on ending domestic violence. According to a report published in the Medical Journal of Australia, 16% of women seeking abortion at Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital did so because of violence. Of course this would involve conceptualising pregnant women as human beings rather than recalcitrant incubators, a mental hurdle I doubt either of the senators are capable of clearing. But the existence of options apart from criminalisation does illustrate that it’s possible to be against abortion without being a misogynist. Would I, as someone who believes in unrestricted free abortion, be chiding Madigan and Bernardi for attempting to end domestic violence because it might reduce abortion? Probably not. That these men resort to such infantile political tactics, motivated by the enduring hope that one day they’ll have the leverage to punish women properly for their immoral sexual behaviour, says all that’s needed about their characters. Attempts to disguise their bastardry with fake concern for female foetuses shows that they are also cowards, and these factors together should be reason enough to exclude their opinions from serious consideration. Remember this when they claim moral outrage, and remember it when they demand to be treated as the last remaining vestiges of a dying, virtuous culture. |