By ROSEANNE MASTERS*
Across Australia we have legalised what is known as abortion on demand.
This means that women can have abortions with no questions asked up to and even beyond viable gestations.
On the surface this may sound to some, like a step forward in female empowerment, but in reality, it is quite the opposite.
Abortion on demand pretends that all women who want abortions are homogenous.
They are all confident in their decision to abort, none of them are being coerced, they are in possession of all the information they need to make a fully informed decision and there would be no benefit to them at all in discussing why they are seeking abortions.
Not only does this completely ignore reality, it also denies women the opportunity to be heard.
It tells these women that no one cares to hear about their situation and why they believe abortion is their best option.
It also means there is no ‘input’ data to analyse with any ‘output’ data.
If women coming for abortions are unsure or feeling pressured or in other ways coerced or unsupported, how will they feel afterwards?
If they already suffer from poor mental health, low self-esteem or are engaging in risky behaviours, how will an abortion change any of that?
While in Australia, we do not collect or analyse data, at either end, for any of this, other countries do.
All of the things mentioned above increase the risk significantly of declining mental health following abortions.
Including an increase in risk of death via suicide or from an increase in risky behaviours.
Even the abortion friendly organisation, American Psychological Association (APA) has conceded that “Across studies, prior mental health emerged as the strongest predictor of postabortion mental health...” (APA Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion)
And these risks increase substantially with further abortions.
Even women with no previous mental health issues prior to abortion, abortion regret can spark that journey and see their mental health plummet.
Rather than empowering women, abortion on demand tells women that we don’t want to know and we don’t care why they want abortions.
We are quite literally telling them to shut up and get on with it.
As harsh as this is for women, when it comes to abortion with no questions asked, it is the babies who are, as always, the biggest losers.
It denies them the smallest of dignities in recording a reason for which they had to die.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite this, there are some clear winners when it comes to abortion on demand.
Abusers, paedophiles, pimps, perpetrators of incest or other sexual crimes, and anybody at all who has a personal interest in a woman having an abortion, abortion with no questions asked is a godsend.
They can be assured that there will be no uninvited probing.
For abortion providers, not only does abortion with no questions asked speed up the whole process and ensure they can move women through like a factory production line, they also benefit from having less exposure to the liability which comes with knowing too much about a woman’s personal circumstances.
Like any organisation, abortion providers have a responsibility to act, (or in the case of abortion, to not act), when they are aware of precarious situations.
The more they know, the more they bear responsibility for.
So why would they intentionally seek to know more and ask probing questions?
Any notes or information they possess about a woman’s circumstances, can be used at a future time if a woman decides to prosecute them for proceeding with an abortion when it should have been clear she was not consenting with her full facilities.
Abortion with no questions, and therefore no lengthy written record, is hugely beneficial to abortion providers as it reduces a woman’s ability to successfully sue for any negligence, thereby reducing their liability.
Despite claims to the contrary, it is hard to imagine anything more disempowering and downright cruel than abortion on demand for both women and babies.
It’s clear abortion on demand simply protects the interests of abortion providers and other nefarious characters who personally benefit from ensuring a woman has an abortion.
That is a bad basis for public policy.
*Roseanne is a Family First volunteer who sacrificially assists with the NSW election campaign. She is a long-time pro-life advocate.