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The last chapters in Australia’s century long battle to decriminalise abortion are being played out in the NSW Upper House this week.
It is ironic that last week, the Herald’s morning newsletter in its "On this Day" slot featured a photo from September 12, 1991. It depicts a walkout by 13 women members of the NSW Legislative Council over Reverend Fred Nile’s anti abortion bill. The boycott left only two women members inside the chamber. The walkout included representatives of all factions and parties – but not Fred Nile’s wife, Elaine.
The most extraordinary thing about the photo is not that the boycott was so strong but that almost 30 years later the same fight is being fought, in the same chamber and sometimes even with the same people. Why is this so?
Beryl Evans, Dorothy Isaacson, Helen Sham-Ho, Meredith Burgman, Patricia Forsyth, Franca Arena, Anne Symonds, Delcia Kite and Judith Walker walk out of the parliamentary debate on the Rev. Fred Nile's anti-abortion bill in 1991.Credit:Bruce Milton Miller
As conservative MPs argue for "more time" to discuss the issue, old feminists feel their hackles rising. This issue has been contested in the NSW Parliament since Labor MP George Petersen’s decriminalisation efforts in the early seventies.