Tuesday 5 October 2010

Hoopla! Abortion protest and court case round-up

As Maia posted on the weekend, today was the day anti-abortion group Right To Life was back in court trying to restrict abortion access by suing the Abortion Supervisory Committee.

Maia and others, notably the Vic Action for Abortion Right's group, were involved in organising a protest outside the Court of Appeal in Wellington to show support for a woman's right to choose and law reform that heads in that direction;  No More Jumping Through Hoops.

Here's a round-up of coverage of the court hearing and the protest, which I'll add to as I get a chance (kindly help me out by posting relevant links in comments, ta!):
Great work by the organisers, and big ups to those who attended/and.or showed their support for the event.

Comment direction:  Kindly take any arguments about the morality of abortion to the whole page we have set up especially for debating that topic.  Comments on this post should focus on the court case and/or the protest.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I came to the protest today. I got handed a tiny flier on campus, but I might not have come if I didn't see it here as well.
Just..thanks. It was good to DO something about an issue I've been reading about.
cjmax02

Alison said...

I was sad to miss it. Fortunately, and coincidentally, I was missing it for a lecture on abortion, and I made sure to put my pro-choice views across clearly in our class activity :-)

Thanks to all those who did attend!

Lee Clark said...

Some people reading this were still at school when they had their first-born. for various reasons, abortion simply wasn't an 'option'. But those very children then grow up to be 'pro-choice'. But, as you might imagine, a little bit torn on the issue. We have to accept that, were things different, many of us might not be reading this . . . so what 'choices' would we have had - or as importantly, do we feel we should we have had?

stargazer said...

lee c, you will have noticed the comment direction at the bottom of the post. if you didn't, i'd request that you go back and read it, and respect the request that comments about the morality of abortion not be made in response to this particular post. there is a separate space on the blog for you to do that. i will leave it up to julie as to whether she wants to remove your comment or not.

Julie said...

Thanks Anjum, I won't delete, but do be warned, Lee C.

@cjmax02, glad that Maia's post helped you get along there :-)

@Alison, how did the lecture go? I'm assuming this was in the context of midwifery?

As to the issue of options and choices, while that is not really the topic of this post I am intrigued by the idea that because someone is at school they can't get an abortion. In theory, as long as they jump through the hoops, they can, same as other women. Practice may be different because of other issues that determine access, e.g. family pressure, lack of finances, geography.

It is puzzling to me how many people can so easily think about the "there but for the grace of" scenario for the embryo/fetus, but not for the woman concerned...

Lee C said...

Gosh - pardon me all over the place! My original thoughts were versed in the first person but I thought this would come across as a tad self-absorbed, so I reframed it in more general terms. But seeing as you have brought 'me' into it anyway . . . My reflection was prompted by the amount of 'choice' my mother was afforded due to her age, religion and social status. And yes I certainly have considered how she must have felt, Julie. I then wanted to link her circumstances to the changing attitudes - ie what is different about my opinions from my mother's and her generation. Of course, a large part of that has been the use of protest and raising of public awareness of the very nature you posted about. The observation wasn't about the 'morality' of abortion. (Besides, in the context, I inferred that I'm 'pro-choice'). But if the issue is to be reduced to the sole issue of 'choice' then it appears that 'choice' appears to be limited, restricted, pre-ordained, or perverted by any number of factors - hence - I'm torn. Is this not the right place to I discuss an issue on its perceived merits? It was not an invitation to a discussion about morality, but to one about social pressures women have historically encountered - (not all of them borne of 'morality' either).
For my part, what 'puzzles' me is why my original ideas were 'jumped on' in such an aggressive manner? Surely it could have invited a range of more interesting and stimulating responses than a rather snooty 'slap on the wrist' followed by a 'reprieve'! For what exactly? - someone else's inability to read an idea sympathetically and then draw an inference which didn't involve jumping to such bizarre conclusions about the writer's motives? Perhaps I should return to the jungle, where it is not so intellectually challenging . . .

Meg said...

Lee...the comment direction clearly said keep to the court case or protest. Your comment didn't. Keep the snark to yourself and just follow basic instructions. If you want to talk generally about abortion there is a page to do so. It isn't this page. End of

stargazer said...

gosh lee, maybe it's because we've had all these conversations on this blog many, many times before. maybe it's because this may be the first time you personally have commented about it on this blog, but nothing you've said thus far is new. if you had actually bothered to read the instructions on the post and have any consideration for the writers here, maybe you would have clicked on the abortion page & you would have taken some time to go through the extensive discussions that have been had to date on the issues you raise. that way, you wouldn't continue to drag us all back to square 1, when many of us have moved forward from there.

how about you take the time to do that background reading now, or at least to do it before you comment on this post again.

Julie said...

As stargazer has said, we do get a lot of trouble with comments on abortion-related posts, hence the reaction, and the rules.

In terms of your issue about the nature of choice, I tend to agree that there is much more to the choice of whether or not to abort/continue a pregnancy than whether there is access to abortion. You might want to check out a presentation I did on why abortion needs to be legal, for more detail on my thoughts on the matter. Probably best to stick to discussing the court case and/or the protest on this thread.

Alison said...

Julie, yeah, it was part of my training. Midwives provide a lot of the staffing for abortion clinics around the country. The lecture was interesting, and I guess there's about as much variation in attitudes to termination as you'd expect in any group of more than 40 women. I've heard two midwives speak recently on working with women having terminations, and they've both been amazing women, and amazing midwives.