Author(s): Barbara Baird

Personal Health

A history of the challenges facing medical abortion provision in Australia and the people trying to overcome them.In Abortion Care is Health Care Barbara Baird tells the history of the provision of abortion care in Australia since 1990. Against the backdrop of a reticent public sector Baird describes a system of predominantly private provision, which has excluded women already marginalised by poverty, rural and remote residency, lack of Medicare entitlement, racism and other factors. Tracing changes in the private sector, the long struggle to make medical abortion available and the nationwide decriminalisation of abortion since 2002, Baird introduces readers to the large cast of 'champions' and everyday healthcare workers and activists who have persisted in their commitment to make abortion care available when governments and the medical profession have so often failed. Drawing on oral history interviews conducted nationwide with abortion-providing doctors, nurses, counsellors and managers, women's health workers, academics and community activists, Baird brings a critical feminist analysis to create a sophisticated historical narrative of abortion provision over the last thirty years.