UN Experts Are Calling On All Countries To Decriminalise Abortion — And That Includes Australia
HOW are we still fighting for this?
Today is International Safe Abortion Day, and to mark the occasion a group of UN human rights experts are calling on all countries to decriminalise abortion. Here’s your friendly reminder that that includes Australia! Abortion is still a criminal offence in NSW and Queensland, and can be complex to access in other states.
In fact, not only are we lagging behind on providing safe access to a medical service, but we’re actively choosing to stay that way. In May, NSW’s Parliament voted down an attempt to remove abortion from the Crimes Act, and a similar bill was scrapped in Queensland in February after the Liberal National Party said they’d vote it down.
Nice one, dickheads.
Today’s UN statement is pretty clear on why failing to decriminalise abortion is heinous. “Denying women access to necessary healthcare is inherently discriminatory and a violation of their human rights,” the experts say.
“Restrictions on access to safe abortion are the result of societal attitudes that stigmatise women and subject their bodies to other people’s political, cultural, religious and economic purposes. Criminalisation of abortion further perpetuates stigma and discrimination, and infringes women’s dignity and bodily integrity.”
“The mental and physical suffering that women endure when they are denied the procedure, or the stigma they face for seeking it, are further violations of their human rights.”
These are sentiments echoed by NSW Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi, who introduced the bill seeking to decriminalise abortion earlier this year. In a video uploaded this morning to mark International Safe Abortion Day, Faruqi notes that “at the heart of resistance to abortion reform is the deeply misogynistic view that women’s bodies do not belong to them”.
28 Sep: Global day of access to safe & legal abortion. In #NSW we're determined to decriminalise abortion, get safe access #IRESISTWEPERSIST pic.twitter.com/vyFc2JKUMb
— Mehreen Faruqi (@MehreenFaruqi) September 27, 2017
“Access to safe and legal abortion is a human right,” she says. “We will resist, and we will persist, until this access is a reality in New South Wales”.
This is the kind of message abortion activists in Australia have been patiently articulating for years. You’d think having the backing of UN experts might help, but unfortunately, Australia’s track record of listening to UN criticism of our human rights violations is pretty poor. See, for example, our offshore detention policy, which in case you missed it is in breach of the UN Convention Against Torture.