Vol. 73/No. 26      July 13, 2009

The rally called for the charges to be dropped and demanded that the Queensland Labor government remove abortion from the criminal code.

This is the first time in 50 years that criminal abortion charges have been brought against a woman in Australia.

Leach, 19, has been charged with procuring an abortion and faces a maximum penalty of seven years in jail. Brennan, 21, charged with attempting to procure an abortion and supplying drugs to procure an abortion, faces a maximum term of three years.

The couple appeared in the Cairns Magistrates Court on June 11. They have been charged under the 1899 Criminal Code of Queensland. Anna Bligh, Queensland State Labor Party premier, defended bringing the charges against the couple despite the reaffirmation by the Labor Party state conference in June that those sections of the law should be repealed.

The couple allegedly arranged to get the abortion pill misoprostol from a doctor in Ukraine. This drug, which is used safely in Ukraine, the United States, and other countries, is legal but not easily available in Australia.

Misoprostol is often used together with RU486. Doctors and distributors of the pill in Australia have faced steep hurdles in getting approval to make it widely available.

Caroline de Costa, the first doctor in Australia to legally dispense RU486, condemned the prosecution of Leach and Brennan. “I would like to see [abortion] removed from the Criminal Code,” she said in an ABC interview April 6. “I think that the regulations covering abortion should be in the health regulations, as is every other health procedure and service … that’s where it belongs in the 21st century.”

De Costa has stopped prescribing the drug until the legal situation of her patients is clarified.

The Pro-Choice Action Collective has organized protests in Brisbane demanding the decriminalization of abortion and the dropping of charges against the young couple. “A visible movement on the streets is essential,” said Emma Tovell, one of the organizers of the protests.

Abortion has been removed from the criminal code in the Australian Capital Territory, Western Australia, and Victoria, but in the latter two states, in the process of decriminalization new laws restricting abortions were adopted.
 
 
Related articles:
Antiabortion rightists pushed back in Wichita
NOW conference discusses abortion, Afghanistan war  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home