Anti-abortion protester's appeal quashed

Melbourne

The Supreme Court of Victoria handed down its judgement on March 21, quashing the appeal of an anti-abortion protester who had been convicted for displaying images of aborted foetuses.

Michelle Fraser, an anti-abortion protester, had displayed placards of aborted foetuses with anti-abortion slogans, outside the Melbourne Fertility Clinic, in February 2013. In 2014, she was convicted of displaying obscene images.

The presiding judge had found that the display of the “disgusting” images had not been a form of political communication, but communication directed at the people running the clinic and those attending as patients.

Fraser sought to appeal the ruling as an infringement of the constitutionally implied right to free speech.

In dismissing the appeal, Justice Emerson noted that what is “obscene” or “disgusting” depends on the context: that images of aborted foetuses that might be shocking to the general public might be appropriate in a medical textbook or lecture.

She found that the law prohibiting the display of obscene images struck the balance between political communication and “the need to protect the public from unwitting and unwelcome exposure to images that are at the highest end of what is disgusting, repulsive, repugnant and offensive, having regard to contemporary standards.”

Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT and now the Northern Territory have now all legislated to create protest-free buffer zones around abortion clinics. The bill to decriminalise abortion in NSW, introduced by Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi contains a similar provision (as did the bill recently withdrawn from Qld parliament by Rob Pyne). The Victorian law came into effect after the incident for which Fraser was convicted.

Make abortion legal in 2017 - backgrounder and appeal

Abortion is still a crime in Queensland, even though 80% of people support a woman's right to decide. Queensland parliament recently failed to pass legislation to decriminalise and regulate abortion. Instead, the premier, deputy-premier and attorney-general promised to refer the issue to the Queensland Law Reform Commission (QLRC) and enact legislation based on the QLRC's report, in the next term of government. So far this referral hasn't been made, and there's every possibility it will report back too late for legislation to be introduced this year.

Join us to call for the referral to be made to the QLRC now, for it to report quickly, and for a public commitment that legislation to decriminalise abortion will be introduced in this term of parliament,this year.

The Queensland Criminal Code's sections 224-226 criminalise abortion. There are separate offences for the person performing abortion on a woman, for a woman trying to have one, and for anyone supplying or administering anything that will be used for an abortion. Judges have ruled that exceptions exist to prevent serious danger to the woman's mental or physical health.

There have been prosecutions but not convictions under these laws. There are doctors who will provide abortion more-or-less on request. But these doctors work mostly in the private sector, mostly in Southeast Queensland. They provide abortion with a thin legal protection (for women undergoing abortion and themselves), usually depending on forming a medical opinion that continuing the pregnancy and raising a child would pose a serious mental health risk.

This has wide-reaching impacts.

It means that women seeking legal, safe abortion are in a position where they must satisfy a doctor that the abortion is necessary to prevent serious harm to their mental health – that is, it is not recognised as simply a woman or pregnant person's right to decide. The law gives weight to anti-abortion stigma, by singling out a health issue and a women's rights issue, and turning it into a crime.

In practical terms, the legal ambiguity surrounding abortion means that anti-abortion hospital administrations don't need to ensure services are provided and can even discipline doctors who provide such services. While some public hospitals provide abortion according to the health department guidelines issued in line with the (restrictive) law, most abortions are provided outside the public hospital system and none in the publicly-funded, Catholic-run ones. Women and pregnant people pay more and travel further because the laws shield anti-abortion administrations who can hide behind a very narrow interpretation of “serious danger to the woman's mental or physical health.” For poor and marginalised women, especially those living in remote areas, the access barriers may be so high that safe legal abortion is simply out of reach.

The consequences – the invasion of privacy that occurs when prosecutions occur, the requirement for young people to get a court order to be allowed to undergo abortion, unsafe self-induced abortion, the birth of unwanted children, the financial burden of abortion provided privately, and disruption to medical careers as a consequence of legal or disciplinary proceedings – all add up to a current-day situation of inequity. Women and pregnant people are denied reproductive justice. Their health care professionals risk legal sanction and deregistration.

While getting abortion off the criminal code won't by itself solve all the access issues, they are a crucial step in that process. And it will be an important signal that the state recognises women to be the ones to make the decision about continuing or ending their own pregnancies – bringing it into line with contemporary Queenslanders' social values.

For decades, abortion rights campaigners have rallied and lobbied parliament for legal change and improved service access.

The ALP has a pro-choice position on paper, but refuses to ensure its members abide by it. Labor MP's have repeatedly told pro-choice campaigners that they didn't have the numbers to win reform, and that they'd legislate in their next term of government. The LNP has an anti-abortion position, but some of their members hold liberal, pro-choice views.

In 2016, Independent MP Rob Pyne introduced bills to decriminalise and regulate abortion. On March 1, the Queensland parliament was to have had the opportunity to put the 1899 laws in the dustbin of history where they belong.

The LNP promised they would allow a conscience vote on the bills to decriminalise and regulate abortion, but when it came down to it, announced they would all vote against.

Without a bound ALP pro-choice vote or LNP free vote, the bills were set to be voted down. Going ahead with the debate and vote in parliament would have forced all MPs to declare their position, allowing their constituents the opportunity to hold them to account.

The bills were withdrawn, with a promise by the premier, deputy and attorney-general that the issue would be referred to the Queensland Law Reform Commission and that the next Labor government would enact legislation based on the commission's report. So far, the QLRC referral hasn't been made.

The withdrawal of the bills means yet further delay to this already long-delayed step of justice for women and pregnant people. We refuse to accept quiet assurances that the next government will do what past governments have failed to do: to stop treating women like criminals for controlling our own reproductive lives.

It is not good enough to push it off into the never-never. No-one knows what the composition of the next parliament will be. However, since this is the path that has been promised, we want the QLRC referral to be made now. We want to ensure that it reports quickly. And we want this parliament, this term, under this government, to legislate to decriminalise abortion.

The parliamentary health committee has already twice conducted extensive hearings into the legislation, receiving submissions from psychological, medical, legal and ethical experts, women, women's rights and health care consumer advocates, abortion providers and numerous others. The 2002 Report of the Taskforce on Women and the Criminal Code advocated decriminalisation of abortion. While the QLRC will need to conduct its own research, it will have these reports, along with reports of the Victorian Law Reform Commission and those prepared for the Tasmanian parliament all available to it. Those who made submissions to the parliamentary health committee would be well placed to make submissions to the QLRC within a short timeframe.

The QLRC has a staff of 4, with only one other report currently underway, due to report at the end of June.

So a timeframe of 6 months for the report, which would potentially allow the matter to be dealt with in the term of the current parliament, would be quite reasonable.

We therefore request Premier Palaszczuk, Deputy-Premier Trad and Attorney-General D'Ath to ensure the immediate referral of this issue to the QLRC, with a timeframe for reporting of no more than six months, and to make a public commitment to introduce legislation to decriminalise abortion in this term of parliament, in 2017.

Sign the petition here: https://www.change.org/p/annastacia-palaszczuk-make-abortion-legal-in-queensland-in-2017

Resolve

Close the door, dear self; stride into the night.
Blow out the candle that burned  hot and bright.
When your gift is a burden to weigh down his heart,
Don't look back - it's time to depart. 

Climate fate

A piece I've been working on since mid-2016.


See my earlier post for references.... the reference to condo's to withstand the "inconvenience" of a superstorm is a reference to a real thing. (Some of the craziness of capitalism, the head-in-the-sand response to climate change... you just couldn't make it up.)

Climate Fate 气候·命运

By Kamala E
Translation by Christie Dai

I was sitting in the waiting room when you flashed across the screen
我坐在候诊室里，你闪现在银屏 A heatwave smothered India and you were on the screen 热浪吞噬着印度，你出现在屏幕 As you tried to cross the street, your shoe stuck to the road 你想要穿过那条街，路面却粘住了你的鞋 So you ran on scorched bare feet, as the black tar slowly flowed 你只好光着烧伤的脚，跑过已熔化的黑柏油 Where there once were straight white lines, a crazy pattern morphed and swirled 原来笔直的白线，呈现出疯狂的弧度 As if a giant with a paintbrush splashed out and dwarfed the world 有如怪兽用大刷子胡乱泼墨，将世界一番蹂躏 You long for cooling rain, but the monsoon will be late 你渴求雨水的洗去热浪，但雨季却姗姗来迟 And this is how some people face their climate fate 这就是有些人面对的气候带来的命运 You're a woman of Maharashtra: farm life is what you know 你是马哈拉族女子，一辈子都在田地里打滚 With the earth so cracked and bare, nothing green can grow 大地变得如此干涸贫瘠，无一物能生长 As the debt piles up for the chemicals and seed 种子和农药令你举债重重 As you wonder how to fill the many mouths you have to feed 你也为那一张张嗷嗷待哺的嘴而忧愁 As you turn to your husband to say somehow you will cope 你望向他，跟他说我能行的 You see in his eyes there's no room for hope 你注视着他的双眼，希望却已然泯灭 Your nightmare just gets worse, the day you lose your mate 噩梦延续，那天你终于失去了他 And this is how some people face their climate fate 这就是有些人面对的气候带来的命运 You've lived in Karachi all of your life 你一辈子都在卡拉奇 There with your kids, your parents, your wife 与孩子、父母和妻 Last year the heatwave rolled in and swept a thousand lives away 去年热浪来袭，上千条生命被掳去 Overwhelmed the morgue, corpses left out to decay 连陈尸的当所也满患，只能任其腐烂 This time you swear you will be ready and not have to face that smell 你说这次准备好了，一定不会再有那味道 Of those left to rot in the very place they fell 那些倒下便就地腐烂的身体 So you dig out mass graves and pray for rain while you wait 于是你挖了大坑，等待祈求降雨 And this is how some people face their climate fate 这就是有些人面对的气候带来的命运 When Sandy struck New York, you'd left for somewhere calm 龙卷风珊迪席卷纽约时，你选择风平浪静之地 Flew back when it was over, once you knew you'd meet no harm 她走了你再回来，一旦知道风险已过 Another super-storm to hit won't be so inconvenient 再一波来袭也不无妨 Even if next time, Mother Nature is less lenient 就算下次，甚至比这次更猛 For you've bought yourself a condo with rooms sealed water-tight 因为你买了防风抗雨的高档寓所 Floodgates, pumps, power and emergency light 一应俱全的防洪设施 So you gamble on oil stocks, knowing you'll be all right mate 所以你继续哄炒着燃油股票，明白自己的生活不坏 And this is how some people face their climate fate 这也是有些人面对的气候带来的命运

Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill

The Queensland Health, Communities, Disability Services and Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Committee has been tasked with looking into the Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill, put to Qld parliament in August 2016 by MP Rob Pyne. It's a private member's bill, and can be found at. It followed his introduction of a simple bill to decriminalise abortion, which the committee recommended against passing alone.

A summary of the second bill from the committee's website shows it includes provisions to legislate that:

• only a doctor may perform an abortion: a person who is not a doctor (or a registered nurse administering a drug to perform an abortion under the direction of a doctor) would commit an offence.
• a woman does not commit an offence by performing, consenting to or assisting in an abortion on herself
• an abortion on a woman who is more than 24 weeks pregnant may be performed only if two doctors reasonably believe the continuation of the woman’s pregnancy would involve greater risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the woman than if the pregnancy were terminated
• conscientious objection: no-one is under a duty to perform or assist in performing an abortion; however a doctor has a duty to perform an abortion if it is necessary to save a woman’s life or prevent serious physical injury. Also, a registered nurse has a duty to assist in such circumstances.
• patient protection or ‘safe zones’: a protected zone of at least 50 metres must be declared around an abortion facility; certain behaviour, e.g. harassment and intimidation, is prohibited within a protected zone. Publishing images of a person entering, leaving or trying to enter or leave an abortion facility is prohibited.

Below is the submission I made (half at the deadline, and half, just afterwards in the hope that it would be considered).

Submission to the Queensland Health, Communities, Disability Services and Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Committee regarding the Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill

Dear committee members,

I am writing as a woman who grew up on the Sunshine, Gold and Tweed Coasts, and as a doctor who has worked as a junior doctor in obstetrics, gynaecology and paediatric emergency, and as a general practitioner with over 20 years' experience working in women's health, sexual health, family planning and abortion services, in NSW, Tasmania and Western Australia.

I did not make a submission to the committee regarding the associated Abortion Law Reform (Woman's Right to Choose) Amendment Bill. However, I read the committee's report with interest and was disappointed with the decision not to recommend immediate passage of the bill to decriminalise abortion.

My daughter and I will be moving to Queensland next year, and these two bills, important for all Queensland women of reproductive age, will have a bearing on us, on my patients and on my medical practice.

Like so many who gave written and oral presentations to the committee, I am in favour of immediate complete decriminalisation of abortion.

I am writing this submission to give qualified support to the passage of the Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill 2016, only in conjunction with passage of the Abortion Law Reform (Woman's Right to Choose) Amendment Bill.

I believe this bill is too restrictive, however, I believe that on balance it would be better to be passed (in conjunction with passage of the Abortion Law Reform (Woman's Right to Choose) Amendment Bill), rather than having the Abortion Law Reform (Woman's Right to Choose) Amendment Bill not pass at all. I believe this bill makes substantial concessions to alleviate concerns raised in the committee's report, and should be seen as an attempt to introduce legal reform that will be generally workable, introducing legal protection for Queensland women seeking abortion and for health care professionals providing abortion-related services to women in good faith.

I would like to address each of the key elements of the bill in turn.

Only qualified health practitioner may perform abortion

This section of the legislation must be understood to be intended to protect women from unsafe procedures, and as such, is laudable.

Read in conjunction with the conscientious refusal provision, however, this section restricts abortion provision (apart from medication administration) to doctors only, while allowing doctors to refuse to perform a service that a substantial number of women in Queensland require (whatever figures we rely on for that estimate).

Experience from abroad indicates that first trimester aspiration abortion can safely be performed by appropriately trained nurse practitioners, physician assistants and nurse midwives¹. Although I am not aware of any jurisdiction in Australia where first trimester aspiration abortion is carried out by nurse practitioners or nurse midwives, there is no reason why, if proper training were introduced for willing clinicians, such an initiative should be ruled out in Queensland by a ban with a ten-year imprisonment penalty. Many women in remote and regional centres are unable to access first trimester abortion close to home. A new law shouldn't make it impossible to implement an initiative to reduce the number of late abortions by improving access to early abortions.

It has taken over a hundred years of the operation of criminal law restricting abortion for abortion law to be seriously revisited in Queensland. Medical, nursing and midwifery practice is continually evolving. It makes most sense for regulation of who can perform abortion, to ensure public safety, to be overseen by the medical and nursing/midwifery boards and by existing general laws restricting health care practice to only those who are properly qualified.

It would be preferable for this section to be amended to include reference to other appropriately trained clinicians, or to be omitted altogether, on the understanding that Queensland already has effective laws prohibiting untrained people from providing health care for which they have not undergone proper training.

Those objections notwithstanding, if this section is passed as it is, it would not restrict existing practice and would provide legal protection to doctors and nurses currently providing abortion-related services. If it's the best that can be achieved, I support it.

Abortion on woman more than 24 weeks pregnant

The notion that decriminalising abortion without restriction as to reason and gestation will result in a rash of third trimester abortions overtaking Queensland is an invention of those who are opposed to abortion on non-scientific grounds.

The experience of the ACT, where there is no gestation limit in law bears this out. The only free-standing clinic where abortion is available in the ACT provides procedures under 16 weeks' gestation only.²

In Canada, where there is also no legal gestation on abortion, it is estimated that abortion after 20 weeks makes up 0.86% of all abortion.³

The vast majority of pregnant women seeking abortion do so as early as they can. Reasons for presenting late for termination have been explored in the medical literature and may be complicated. They represent a tiny minority of abortions, but the women undergoing abortion late are no less competent to make decisions about their pregnancies than women requiring abortion who are able to present for medical care early. Late abortion is generally harder for women to undergo and clinicians to perform; no-one directly involved in the decision-making process does so lightly. There is no need for the additional restriction of law, in the way of restrictions as to reason beyond 24 weeks' gestation. If a woman 24 weeks pregnant or later determines that she requires an abortion – whether because in the opinion of her doctors it is necessary for her physical or mental health – or whether she determines it is in the best interest of the foetus, or for some other reason or set of reasons – there shouldn't be a legal restriction preventing her doctors from performing it for her.

As with the previous section, if the law will only be passed with this proviso, it is better than not decriminalising abortion. However, it represents an unnecessary interference in a woman's right to decide how and whether to proceed with her own pregnancy.

Patient protection

I support this section of the bill. I believe the protection zone should be greater, probably 150m, in keeping with the ACT legislation.

Protesting and expressing minority views about the morality of abortion can have a place in a democracy, but there is no absolute right to such political communication that outweighs women's right to privacy in seeking medical care. I have witnessed the impact of distressing, hostile protest actions outside abortion facilities on women seeking care and am in favour of measures to prevent harassment of patients and staff.

Duty of care

Most health professional codes of conduct recognise a right to conscientious refusal of care. The impact of this on restricting reproductive health care is not well documented, though an attempt to begin this work has been undertaken.⁴

What is important to note is that in general, where a right to refusal of care is acknowledged, it is not considered to outweigh the right of women to access needed healthcare. This generally includes an obligation of practitioners refusing to perform abortion to refer women to others who will provide services.

Again, it seems to me unnecessary to include this assertion of the right to refuse care in the law when it is already accepted in practice, but particularly without the inclusion of the complementary obligation to refer to a practitioner who will provide care. As I outlined in the section on who can perform abortion, when only doctors may lawfully perform or prescribe abortion medication, but they may refuse, if this is not combined with a safeguard obliging referral to a practitioner who will provide services, it could operate as a practical barrier to access.

In Western Australia where I currently practice, and where there is a restriction requiring a woman seeking abortion to be given information by a doctor not participating in the abortion, it is not unusual for women to see more than one practitioner; I have had patients who've needed to see 3, 4, even 5 doctors before being appropriately assisted to obtain an abortion. This clearly results in delay and later procedures. It is not known whether it ever results in women being unable to obtain abortion at all, but this possibility can't be discounted. I am concerned that the uneven emphasis on the right to conscientious refusal of care in the bill, if not balanced with the internationally recognised obligation to refer to a practitioner who will provide care, will result in unnecessary and unfair difficulties for women seeking abortion services, depending on the availability of clinicians who support women's access to the full range of reproductive healthcare services.

These are the concerns I have about the Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill. I believe the bill should only be passed in conjunction with the passage of the bill to decriminalise abortion, that its provisions don't represent the best for the women of Queensland, but that they should be supported as concessions to enable recommendation of decriminalisation of abortion, which would certainly be a step towards the 21^st century.

1 Safety of Aspiration Abortion Performed by Nurse Practitioners, Certified Nurse Midwives, and Physician Assistants Under a California Legal Waiver

Tracy A. Weitz, Diana Taylor, Sheila Desai, Ushma D. Upadhyay, Jeff Waldman, Molly F. Battistelli, and Eleanor A. Drey. American Journal of Public Health 2013 103, 3, 454-461

2http://www.shfpact.org.au/sexual-health/pregnancy-options accessed 6/10/2016

3http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/backrounders/statistics-abortion-in-canada.pdf accessed 6/10/2016

4http://globaldoctorsforchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/GDC_White-paper-on-CO-in-reproductive-health_ENG.pdf accessed 6/10/16

"Snowden"

Directed by Oliver Stone

In cinemas now

How often in real life do people stand up to the behemoth that is the mighty US spy/war apparatus and get away with it? Not often enough. But if you count living in limbo in Russia – unable to fly to asylum in a third country once his passport was cancelled, unable to return home to the USA without fear of a rigged, secret trial on espionage charges – as getting away with it, Edward Snowden not only did that, but in a massive leak of classified information, gave the US and world public information about the unprecedented surveillance of US and global citizens, information essential for public discussion about privacy and the reach of government and corporate data collection.

Oliver Stone's newly released film “Snowden” recounts the story in a dramatisation that takes us on a journey from Snowden's administrative discharge from the military with fractures in both shins in around 2004, into his career in the CIA and then as an intelligence contractor, up to the momentous events of 2013 when he passed information about the PRISM program and other surveillance activities to journalists Laura Poitras, Glen Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill.

The information is publicly available, so it's no spoiler to speak of Snowden eluding capture in Hong Kong and being granted first one then three years' asylum in Russia, where he remains now.

The film is well made, acted and scripted. It portrays Snowden's transition from a patriot who believes in the rightness of his country and his commander-in-chief's decisions, to one deeply troubled by the impact of surveillance activities justified in the name of counter-terrorism but in reality, designed to ensure US government supremacy. The final straw for Snowden is the realisation that unimpeded data collection by US federal spy agencies and their contractors is primarily focused, not on the USA's rivals or enemies, but on US citizens.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a convincing Snowden, and Shailene Woodley, as Lindsay Mills, Snowden's partner. Their political differences (she's a liberal who signs an anti-war petition; he's a conservative who is sure the Iraq war is right) make for an amusing foil to show that Snowden was no radical, intent on harming US security. It pitches him to a US audience as someone who simply takes seriously the US constitution's fourth amendment (against unreasonable searches and seizures), and who was prepared to defend it at great personal cost. The impact of the life of a spy and even more, of a spy who becomes convinced his government is doing something fundamentally flawed is played out in the strain on their relationship and in Snowden's decision not to tell Mills what he has found or what he is going to do, in order to protect her from being an accomplice in his data breach.

Snowden's relationships with others in the spy community add another interesting, and personal dimension, though it's the nature of the biopic genre that we're left wondering where creative license begins and ends. The portrayal of macho culture in the military and casual sexism in the spy community seems undoubtedly realistic. How Snowden copies and smuggles the all-important files out makes for great drama and suggests loyalty of like-minded friends.

This film has already begun to have an impact on audiences. It is likely to be more powerful for those not already familiar with the story, particularly those who haven't watched Laura Poitras' documentary, Citzenfour and perhaps other films. But even those who've seen Citizenfour may enjoy the background provided by “Snowden,” and the personal dimension it provides, even as it breaks down what's wrong with what the spy agencies are doing, in ways that non-geeks can understand.

Towards the end of the film, news headlines are used to indicate the extent of legal reform triggered by Snowden's leak. It would be too much to ask the film to delve into how much these laws are window dressing for public consumption and whether they have resulted in any changes in mass surveillance in practice, and it really doesn't go there. But what is clear is that Snowden's brave actions triggered a global discussion. And a US federal appeals court finding that the surveillance program was illegal is certainly vindication of his rationale for his leak.

In an unusual twist, Edward Snowden appears as himself at the end of the film, responding to questions in a forum connecting him by videolink to a live audience. It provides an extra dose of realism: it's a dramatic story, but true, and still being played out by a person still at risk from the secret government he exposed.

The release of the film is well-timed for the campaign for Snowden's pardon. Obama came to power promising whistleblower protection, but instead has made history as the US president whose administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other. As the campaign gears up to call on Obama to use his last days in the presidency to pardon the best-known US whistleblower of the 21^st century, “Snowden” has potential to entertain, inform, and call to act.

More information about that campaign can be found at PardonSnowden.

In song: Prism