CART (0)The Federal Health Minister is reported today (Sun-Herald 4 April, 2004) as proposing legislation that would increase the age at which parents can have access to their children’s medical records from the present 14 to 16. Mr Abbott wants to do this to prevent teens from being sexually active. “A society where a large number of 15- and 16-year olds are sexually active has a problem,” according to the Health Minister. “We are setting these kids up for failure in their later lives if we in any way accept this”.
Comment: Mr Abbott apparently figures that teenage girls will be less likely to go to their doctor for contraceptives if there is a risk of their parents knowing. Notice that it is only girls who will be affected by this. Boys can buy condoms over the counter – there is no plan to use federal parliament to curb their sexual activity. Another case of the double standard?
Mr Abbott might feel that teen sex leads to failure later in life. This is a dubious proposition but what is absolutely certain is that a teenage pregnancy can spell absolute catastrophe for a young woman. If girls are not able to easily obtain contraceptives the result is not that they will stop having sex, they will simply resort to unprotected sex. The certain result will be an increase in teenage pregnancies and in STPs.
Australia has been one of the most successful countries in the industrialised world in reducing the rate of teenage pregnancies from its high of 55.5 per 1000 of population in 1971. In 2001 the rate was just 17.6 per 1000 of population. (See The End of Equality p. 29) Teenage girls finding themselves pregnant are most likely to chose abortion, a potentially traumatic experience for a woman, especially if she has to try to do it without her parents’ knowledge. Surely prevention is the better option.
But Mr Abbott is one step ahead of us. Just a couple of weeks ago he commented that the 100,000 abortions performed in this country each year were a national tragedy. This was a chilling statement from a Federal Health Minister, the man who has portfolio responsibility for the policy of providing Medicare rebates for terminations. If Mr Abbott were to try to cut back on the rebate, many women would not be able to afford abortions. What would they do? Have unwanted babies who are at a higher risk of being subject to neglect or abuse? Resort to non-medically safe methods of ending the pregnancy? Would we see a return to the bad old days of backyard abortions, where it was not unknown for women to die at the hands of unsanitary and unscrupulous operators? Do we seriously want to go back to all that?
I don’t think so. So why is the Health Minister trying to stop young women having access to contraceptives? Why is he making it more likely that there will be an increase in the teenage pregnancy rate? Is this is a (not-so) secret plan to reverse Australia’s declining birth rate? Is this Tony Abbott’s version The Handmaid’s Tale (see The End of Equality p 225) – a world where women are forced to be breeders?