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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 7. 11th April 1973

Women denied Contraceptives

Women denied Contraceptives

Abortion is not the only means of birth control women have difficulty in obtaining. The safest contraceptives are too costly for many, and moralistic doctors and chemists often refuse young or unmarried women who need contraceptives. All contraceptives must be made easily available and free to anyone wanting to use them. Since many unwanted pregnancies occur through sheer ignorance of the way our bodies work and of how to prevent conception, sex education should begin at a very early age, as an integral part of the education system.

If women choose to be sterilised, doctors should not have the right to refuse them the operation for other than strictly medical reasons, if indeed there are any. On the other hand, no doctor should be permitted to sterilise women against their will (for instance, as a condition for agreeing to perform an abortion).

People sometimes say that contraception, sterilisation, or even abstinence are better than abortion and offer them as alternatives. None of these are of any use at all to the woman who is already pregnant. In fact, to such women, the only alternative to abortion is compulsory pregnancy and childbirth. Enforced labour — used as a punishment for accidental conception.

Those who find natural human sexuality distasteful, and who call for abstinence, are quite unrealistic. Besides, even if women try to abstain from sex, our system of "justice" gives men the power to take legal action against their wives to obtain resumption of conjugal rights! Victorian morality does not recognise the rights of women to unhindered and satisfying sexual relationships.

Anti-abortionists claim to have children's interests at heart, but it is far more responsible and human to prevent the birth of an unwanted child than it is to bring it into the world regardless of its future and the feelings of its mother. Every possible measure should be taken to ensure that women who want children are not faced with economic or social deprivation. Yet even with such conditions available there will still be women who want to end a pregnancy they did not intend.