Trigger warning: this article discusses violence.
“She just totally got it”. That’s the phrase clinical psychologist, Dr Susie Allanson, uses to describe what it was like finding human rights lawyer, Lizzie O’Shea.
Susie felt a rising sense of anger and helplessness that she could do nothing to protect the patients of the Fertility Control Clinic in East Melbourne, a women-centred reproductive health care clinic with “every service under one roof”. While the FCC was a “tremendous place inside the clinic”, outside the clinic told a very different story. Harassment of patients and staff by anti-abortion and religious extremists was relentless. And nothing was being done about it. No one seemed to see how the behaviour of the fanatics was harmful to women. No one seemed to want to understand how women were experiencing this behaviour.
Then in 2001, security guard Steve Rogers, was shot and killed inside the reception of the FCC by an anti-abortion protester. It was the catalyst for Susie to take action. Self-proclaimed “accidental activist”, Susie felt a strong urge to do something. The prospect of sitting back and not doing anything seemed far worse than any alternative. In a world where she had seen too much of women being silenced, Susie set her sights on ending the ongoing violence against women seeking reproductive health care, and on finding the right person to help her.
Frustratingly though, law-makers failed to see the need or urgency, so Susie’s campaign became a 20-year legal battle for safe access zones around clinics providing abortion.
Through times of underwhelm, giving up and losing hope, Susie found Maurice Blackburn lawyer, Lizzie O’Shea, in 2010. Lizzie was feminist in her outlook and was prepared to advocate for legal change in a way that was “perhaps not the usual way”. Creativity, trust and an alignment of values were of utmost importance in securing the protection of women’s reproductive health care rights.
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Universal access to health care, without discrimination, is a human right enshrined in various international treaties. But, the ability of women globally to access reproductive health care is a continuing battle. Susie and Lizzie both acknowledge how “having more women in the room” is critically important in creating social change from the perspective of women.
While we have seen remarkable victories in Australia – most notably the introduction of legislation to create safe access zones in 2015 (meaning there can be no pro-abortion or anti-abortion protests within 150 metres of an abortion clinic), to a unanimous High Court decision in 2019 endorsing the safe access zones legislation, to the decriminalisation of abortion in all States – we need to continue to advocate and work together as women, and with allies of women, to protect women’s rights and the reproductive autonomy of women.
Tenacious advocacy efforts need to dismantle the stigma and shame so often associated with abortion by using the power of language and stories. Abortion involves women facing what Susie says is “a really urgent crisis”. An urgent crisis that requires urgent care. And urgent care that must provide women with dignity, respect, privacy and compassion. Without access to safe, affordable abortion, do women really have control over their lives at all?
Dr Susie Allanson and Lizzie O’Shea have documented and celebrated the success of this profound social movement to protect the women and girls of Australia in their book titled ‘Empowering women from murder and misogyny to High Court victory’.
