Since his position is not consistent with the best expert advice provided to him through the health department, his continued tenure suggests that he has some popular support and important political allies.

Although bigotry, insensitivity and hypocrisy are galling, this is not a matter of just one politician or party. For at least a decade up to last year, Australian elections have been fought and won on ‘wedge’ strategies: demonising minority interests and appealing to tribalism of the privileged majority. Proven harm minimisation measures have been wound back or threatened in favour of stigmatising or criminalisation - e.g. abortion, contraception for teenagers, sex education, drug rehabilitation, needle-exchanges, refugee services, union and employee rights, social security, environment, indigenous rights and services.

Depressing, really.

I think banging his head against the desk is a better plan.

I agree with you on that point, I really do. Any woman who wants to talk about how her abortion affected her, I want her to talk, and I want to listen. I don’t want to go around telling women how to feel about what they go through (on any subject). But it’s usually not those women who are going around labling the procedure. Most of the time it’s men, be they politicians, religious leaders, or liberal allies, who bemoan the tragic nature of someone else’s choice. Well meaning as a few may be, giving voice for women they know who struggled with their choices, we still focus more on what other people think about abortion and not enough about what actual women who have gone through the procedure feel.

I get stigmatized for declaring that I didn’t feel sorry, guilty or traumatized for having had an abortion. I get stigmatized for claiming that, my personal experience, it was just a clump of cells I had removed. Because we’ve built up this cultural narrative that says that all abortions are tragic, and we let this cultural narrative shame women who have made medical decisions about their bodies. All I wish is for the procedure to be neutral so that we can hear all women when they talk about what they went through.

Abbott really really shits me. A couple of years ago, he was approached by this young guy (late teens, I believe) claiming to the his son, who he and a woman Abbott had sex with when he was younger had adopted out (it later turned out it wasn’t his son ‘cos the woman slept with someone else), and there was this big media thing, and he had this smarmy comment about how the guy wasn’t angry at him for adopting him out, but ‘glad to have been given a chance at life’ or some such garbage. I wanted to stab myself in the eye. Plus he’s still got a bone to pick because parliament voted to take away his power to veto RU-486’s approval for use in Australia, and give it to the TGA to decide, which is apparently some great tragedy, cos it’s not like the TGA is responsible for approving all the other medications. Particularly when Abbott’s not a doctor.

Being perfectly honest? I know the ‘just a medical procedure’ stuff has it’s place and is definitely useful in breaking down that stigma, but I think there’s also an important place for acknowledging that women can feel sad about their abortion without that meaning she regrets it, or it being a tragedy, or whatever. And I think a part of that comes down to actually listening to women’s stories and giving women the space to talk about what these things mean to them, which just doesn’t happen often enough, because of the stigma, and because of general resistance to women’s own stories. But yeah, I think “Investing emotionally in a potential person (or the cells that may form a potential person) while witholding emotional support from an actual person is pathologically cruel.” is really the crux of it. Because I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with emotionally investing in a potential person, but it’s when that latter part comes into play that it gets to be a problem.

Large numbers are always trotted out to shock people into making moral judgements. They don’t say “nearly one hundred thousand women’s lives are better because they can have this elective surgery”, they just put this huge number next to a word which is coded by politicians, religious institutions, and the media to be a negative word. People do this with divorce statistics as well, they never say “bad marriages are down by fifty percent”, they merely place a startlingly large percentage next to the word ‘divorce’ and then continue to preach about how divorce will be the undoing of the moral fabric of society.

Abbot’s coloring of abortion as a “tragedy for all involved” ignores the very positive effect that safe and legal abortions has on the lives of women who choose to have them. Every time I hear the best medical decision I ever made being touted as a tragedy, I point the person to “Abortion is Wonderful”. Abortion is a choice, not in the same way that gambling and drinking are, but in the way that chosing to have any surgery to remove an unwanted growth is. Yes, for the women who do not want to have a child, those for whom carrying a child to term would be dangerous, deadly, or detrimental to their mental health, it’s the same as having your appendix out. How a woman choses to feel about the surgery is entirely her business, constantly spouting off about ‘tragedy’ serves only to stigmatize what is ultimately just another medical proceedure. Abbot should shut his trap and actually listen to some woman tell him what abortion has meant to her, how it has affected her life. Investing emotionally in a potential person (or the cells that may form a potential person) while witholding emotional support from an actual person is pathologically cruel.

People like Abbot make me want to never stop banging my head against my desk.