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Anne NEWSLETTER 1 Summers Reports Sane Factual Relevant Dear ASR Subscriber I am writing to you today for a couple of inspired by and is run by Australians. We are not reasons. I want to report on how ASR is just about iron ore. faring, and I want to let you know why We are steadily building our subscriber base; the next issue of the magazine is going currently more than 3000 people have signed on. to be published a little later than we had We have also ventured into social media and now anticipated, and hoped. have a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Our third issue of the magazine will be published Please ‘like’ us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at the end of June—later than we had planned, but @AnneSummersReps. The greater our numbers we do have a good reason. We have a very special (subscribers and social media), the easier it will be cover story, but the subject was not available for for us to attract funding in the form of advertising, interview until June. We hope that when you read sponsorship or large individual donations. the report you will understand why we decided We are thrilled at the numbers of people who have it was worth the wait, even though it meant an sent us donations and we thank you most sincerely overlong gap between the second and third issues. for doing so. Sadly, though, we are not yet even To fill that gap, and to keep faith with you, we close to becoming financially viable. This means have decided to produce this newsletter. As with we cannot pay writers, artists, photographers and the magazine, it contains good reporting on subjects our production team anything like the money they not adequately covered elsewhere, although in this deserve for the work they are doing. It is a huge format we are not able to produce the gorgeous tribute to their faith in the future of online ventures visuals you have become accustomed to. such as ours that they continue to donate so much We report on the alarming, and unreported, of their talent (strictly for the time being, I can assure change to the formerly pro-choice majority of you) and I cannot thank them enough. Federal Parliament. This has potentially grave We hope this short newsletter will tide you over implications for women’s right to choose if the until June. Thank you for your patience while we anti-abortion Tony Abbott becomes Prime Minister grow. Yours sincerely in September. On a lighter note, we bring you a story of ANNE SUMMERS Australian innovation in Asia: the world-renowned Shanghai Literary Festival which, as writer and Festival guest Charlotte Wood reports, was both @AnneSummersReps Publishing a free magazine is an expensive business … Use our secure PayPal link to help keep Anne Summers Reports going: you don’t need a PayPal account — just a credit card. DONATE NOW! 1 Senate considers whether to outlaw Medicare funding for gender-selection abortions By Anne Summers HETHER OR NOT a pro-choice majority 4. Support for campaigns by United Nations still prevails in the Federal Parliament agencies to end the discriminatory practice of Wcould be tested later this year if there is gender-selection through implementing disincen- a vote on legislation to wind back Australian wom- tives for gender-selection abortions; en’s entitlements to public subsidies for abortion. 5. Concern from medical associations in first- A Senate inquiry is due to report back on 25 June world countries about the practice of gender-se- on a bill that reflects the latest American export in lection abortion, viz. Canada, USA, UK. the anti-abortion battle being waged by so-called Once the Committee reports, we can expect a “pro-life” groups in this country. rugged debate on this issue and the bill will most The Senate referred the private Senator’s likely have to be voted on. The government has Health Insurance Amendment (Medicare Funding not yet adopted a position on the bill but there for Certain Types of Abortion) Bill 2013, intro- is increasing concern among some members of duced in March by DLP Senator John Madigan, to Parliament that the pro-choice majority that was the Standing Committee on Finance and Public evident when support for choice was last tested, Administration for further investigation. The in 2005, may no longer prevail. purpose of the bill is to outlaw Medicare funding These changed sentiments are due not to indi- for so-called gender-selection abortions, that is, vidual MPs changing their mind on the issue, but abortions used to terminate pregnancies because to carefully targeted campaigns to oust pro-choice the parent(s) object to the sex of the foetus. members. Senator Claire Moore, one of four fe- As is usual with parliamentary considerations male parliamentarians who in 2005 successfully of abortion, the Committee has received a very sponsored the bill that removed Health Minister large number of submissions. More than 500 had Tony Abbott’s right to veto the import of abor- been posted on the Committee’s website at the tion drug RU486, says there has been a noticeable time of writing but, the Committee’s secretary change in “the beliefs and backgrounds of the told me, many more were waiting to be processed people who have been elected” to both sides of before they could be posted. The overwhelming politics in recent years. majority of the submissions support the pro- posed legislation, with many of them being in the “IF RU486 OR THE STEM CElls research bill form of short, often just one paragraph, letters. were put before the Parliament today, we’d lose While it is not possible to anticipate the find- both of them,” one MP told ASR. ings of the Committee, the terms of reference To date, the response of women’s and pro- do seem to have been framed in such a way as to choice groups to Senator Madigan’s bill to restrict steer the Committee towards endorsing the senti- the Medicare levy payable on gender-selection ments of the bill. abortions has been to argue that it is irrelevant The terms of reference are: because there is no evidence of these abortions 1. The unacceptability to Australians of the use taking place in the Australia. of Medicare funding for the purpose of gender- The submission of the Women’s Centre for selection abortions; Health Matters, for instance, argues: 2. The prevalence of gender selection—with Were sex-selective abortions taking place in preference for a male child—among some ethnic Australia on a systematic basis, this would be groups present in Australia and the recourse to revealed through skewed gender ratios. Australia has Medicare-funded abortions to terminate female a normal ratio of male-to-female births. Looking at children; data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics from 3. The use of Medicare funded gender-selection 2011, just over half (51%) of all births registered abortions for the purpose of “family-balancing”; were male babies, resulting in a sex ratio at birth of 2 Gender-selection abortions who put feminist theory into practice by provid- 105.7 male births per 100 female births. This is a ing services that were safe and affordable and biologically normal sex ratio at birth and does not which equipped women with counselling and indicate a skewed sex ratio in Australia. Taking a contraceptive advice to help give them control of view of the population overall, we see that at June their reproductive health in future. She has since 2011 there were 124,700 more females than males extended her services to the former Soviet Union residing in Australia, with 11.2 million females and where women have been denied basic contracep- 11.1 million males. tives, forcing them to resort to multiple (and But we can be certain that the groups pushing often unsafe) abortions. this legislation will triumphantly find examples Described by Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor of such abortions being performed here in order Roosevelt’s biographer, as someone who “never to bolster their case. In any event, it would seem turned away from the harshest battles or denied prudent for those who wish to preserve the status the most painful truths”, Hoffman has played a quo of Medicare funding for abortion to be ready key role in defining and defending women’s human with their arguments to counter what is likely to and reproductive rights for over four decades. be a highly emotive debate. It is in order to as- She started the feminist magazine, On the Is- sist the discussion that ASR publishes the article sues, which was where this article was first pub- below by the American feminist and abortion lished. Merle makes the powerful case that while provider Merle Hoffman. we find the idea of aborting girls abhorrent, if I met Merle when I was Editor-in-Chief of we truly believe in a woman’s right to choose, we Ms. magazine in New York in the late 1980s. I have to respect each individual woman’s choice, was impressed by her on a number of counts. In even when we disagree with her reasons. 1971, two years before the US Supreme Court Merle’s article is provocative in that it forces us decision Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, she to confront the foundations of our fundamental established Choices, an overtly feminist clinic principles. It is a powerful piece of reasoning that to provide abortion services for largely young deserves to be widely read. We present it exclu- and underprivileged women.