I wrote this to the Legislative Council of Tasmania. Please tell YOUR story to help Tasmanian women. Martin Luther King Jr wrote: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Older women need to support younger women to grow up in a society that does not condemn their choices.
This is what I wrote to the Parliamentarians:
Hi,
The story below is mine, but I have written it in the third person because my parents would STILL (after almost forty years) be frightened that I’d shared such a ‘shameful’ part of my past.
Sometimes a choice has to be made between two lives.
It is terrible.
And better contraception and reproductive education can help this, and needs to be put in place.
But, when a choice has to be made, why is it always the unborn foetus who rules?
Please bear in mind the life of the woman concerned.
Here is my story.
There was a Tasmanian teenager in the mid-70s who found her self pregnant in her last year of high school. The fact of her pregnancy was clouded in the shame heaped upon her by two church ministers who told her she was sinful and would have to lie in the bed she’d made for herself. Her parents took her to a third minister, who suggested terminating the pregnancy and putting the girl on the contraceptive pill.
This teen was one of the first Tasmanian under-16 year olds to be allowed to take the contraceptive pill through the brand new Tasmanian Family Planning Clinic. Ending the pregnancy was illegal and the girl and her doctor knew it. She was banned from talking about it. She wasn’t even allowed to tell people she was on the pill.
The girl went on to become a professional, to marry in her mid-20s, to do postgraduate study, to have three children in her early 30s, and to become a senior executive.
Had she been forced to have the teen pregnancy, she would have been locked in to a relationship with a young man who went on to become a criminal. Her life would have been very different, and her three lovely children, borne in her early 30s would not have existed. The young man with whom she was pregnant as a teen went on to father about four children to different women before he was 20.
Her parents and one minister of religion allowed her to choose HER LIFE and contraception.
Had they listened to the two other ministers of religion, she’d have been locked in shame, a mother at 15, and probably a mother twice or thrice more before she was 20.
That’s my story.
And how sad that I still have to be careful about telling it.
But I am careful out of respect for my parents, so please do not put my name with this story.
But, I am so GLAD that someone chose ME over that unborn foetus.
I met one of that young man’s children when the child was about 15 and all I felt was abject horror that he could have been my son.
I did not want that path.
I’m glad someone chose MY LIFE.
Please consider this true Tasmanian story when you consider this world-class legislation, and please pass it.
Be brave for all the women who deserve to have lives.
Thank you
Dr ______________
I shared my name with those Parliamentarians, but I cannot share it publicly out of respect for my parents.
If you have a similar story, please share it.
In the emotive debate about legal termination of pregnancy, we need to remember that TWO lives are at stake. And sometimes it is the adult life that must be saved.
Please sign the petition: http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/last-chance-to-have-your-say-about-abortion-law-reform-in-tasmania
And also write to your lower and upper house Parliamentary Reps. Ideas about this can be found here: http://endtheconfusion.com.au/
Thank you
THE DEBATE
• For
• Against
