Letter to my representatives

To my representative,

It is my hope that you will choose option C and accept no amendments. Personally, I trust that the Australian Law Reform Commission has carefully considered the matter of amendments and has justifiably rejected them, I sincerely hope that is your position.

I am a qualified and practicing scientist with a qualification in philosophy. I am married with two happy children. I have also had an abortion.

As a woman who has experienced both wanted and unwanted pregnancies I am tired of being treated like a moral infant from the moment two cells meet in my body. Both when I asked for an abortion and when I received medical care for my pregnancies I felt like my body's fate was entirely in the hands of male doctors who will never have to face an unplanned pregnancy, nor could they know what it is to carry and birth a baby. I'm an intelligent and responsible person, yet I am regarded as a careless hussy for the abortion I asked for (I have become pregnant twice while using birth control, I'm not careless, nor am I a "hussy"), and was treated as though I was a potential danger to my babies when I chose to have them. I felt I was regarded as incompetent because of the potential child inside me - the treatment was patronising and insulting, not to mention discriminatory.

Please choose the option that will give me, and women like me, full autonomy over one part of our reproductive lives - Option C.

Yours sincerely,
Emma N Fox