Labour MP Christine Campbell wants to push for "amendments to protect women" whatever the result of the vote in Victorian Parliament on decriminalising abortion. More precisely, she wants this:
"mandatory counselling for women deciding to have an abortion; no career disadvantage for medical professionals who object to performing or assisting with abortions; and a requirement that those performing abortions have obstetric or gynaecological training" from The Age, August 21st 2008
Now, do ya think the last one might reduce the availability of abortions by reducing the number of people qualified to perform them? Hmmm, I don't see how restricting services for women with problem pregnancies protects women. And why should a reproductive health clinic that provides abortions hire a theatre nurse with religious objections to abortion? Methinks the moral objections held by said nurse would make said nurse unsuitable for the position, so, denying said nurse employment on those grounds is a perfectly acceptable form of discrimination practised by employers the world over. Giving said nurse inappropriate employment does not protect women, it endangers them. As for mandatory counseling? Just another way to treat us like moral infants. It's insulting.
I think, that if she truly wants to protect women, she will protect them from the humiliation of asking a medical professional for help who will refuse to assist her due to religious beliefs.
Thanks to the blog Abortion Clinic Days for this, a notice that doctors could place in their clinics to provide accurate and impartial information for women regarding their reproductive health care:
NOTICE TO PATIENTS
I follow my own religious beliefs ahead of your medical needs. Therefore, I will not support, offer, or approve any of the following checked off below.
__ I do not subscribe to a woman's right to make her own decisions about her reproductive healthcare.
__I do not believe that a woman has the right to choose her method of contraception and therefore will not sell prescription birth control.
__I do not believe in Emergency Contraception, even if you have been raped, and will therefore not give you Plan B to prevent pregnancy.
__ I do not believe in abortion and therefore will not provide an abortion nor will I offer a referral for an abortion elsewhere.
When this sign is posted in all healthcare institutions from doctor's offices to clinics to emergency rooms to pharmacies, then women will have true freedom of choice. Women will know before they make an appointment, spend money and time whether their healthcare provider offers the services they are seeking. We are informed of the contents of our food, our haircare products, our drinks. Why not which healthcare needs we will be denied before the humiliation!
Thanks also to Lauredhel for the link to Abortion Clinic Days. A truly interesting read.
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1 comment:
The bit about requiring "obstetric and gynaecological training" - to put that in law in those words would likely have the effect of restricting the procedure to only specialist OBGYNs, a ridiculous outcome, and as you say one which is highly likely to limit the procedure's availability. The restriction is likely to hit especially hard for rural and remote women, and poor women.
There is no need to put a specific training requirement in this sort of Act; the requirement to be adequately trained in a procedure is already mandated under the appropriate professional regulatory body.
Additionally, abortion is medically a very simple procedure, one which any doctor trained in basic country practice can do. Many, many procedural GPs (and also people who aren't medical doctors at all, but that's another story) are more than capable of providing abortion services, without going back and doing year upon year of tertiary hospital OBGYN.
Heck, I did my six months of hospital OBGYN training over a decade ago, and I could probably re-skill to providing safe medical and surgical first-trimester abortions over the course of a few weeks.
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