Abstract
This chapter examines two contrasting movements for the repeal of abortion laws and the degree to which politicians deployed their contrasting frames of abortion in 1970s Australia. It argues that the radical gender politics that drove the Women’s Liberation Movement’s abortion campaign was largely disavowed in the formal political arena and, instead, anti-abortion sentiment was infused into the dominant mode of framing a position that would come to be called “pro-choice.” Such anti-abortion sentiment included a foetocentric framing of abortion, the privileging of other forms of contraception as morally superior to abortion, and the reiteration of class-based assumptions pertaining to “good mothers.” The chapter thus historicises an ambiguity regarding abortion—where it is simultaneously accepted as necessary and admonished as morally negligent—that lies at the heart of contemporary abortion politics.
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Notes
- 1.
In her landmark critique of the whiteness inherent in Australia’s women’s movement, Aileen Moreton-Robinson discusses the use of the harmful contraceptive depo-provera—banned in the United States of America in the 1960s and not approved for use in Australia—in Indigenous communities in the 1970s (Moreton-Robinson 2000, p. 171).
- 2.
Some politicians did express discomfort, however, in debating a “women’s issue” with no female participants (see, for example, Harry Turner, cited in Australia 1973, p. 1987; Keppel Enderby, cited in Australia 1973, p. 1979; Tom Uren, cited in Australia 1979a, p. 978).
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Millar, E. (2017). Feminism, Foetocentrism, and the Politics of Abortion Choice in 1970s Australia. In: Stettner, S., Ackerman, K., Burnett, K., Hay, T. (eds) Transcending Borders. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48399-3_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48399-3_8
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