The role of the ‘withdrawal method’ in the control of abortion

‘Bringing the unclothed immigrant into the World’: Population policies and gender in twentieth-century Australia

“…In the still contested area of abortion the withdrawal in 1998 by the National Health and Medical Research Council of its report, commissioned in 1992, on termination of pregnancy services in Australia, raises doubts that such a topic can be viewed impartially. Ripper and Ryan (1998) reflect that 'lessons can be learned [from that withdrawal] about the difficulty (perhaps current impossibility) of transcending moral discourses when considering abortion' (Ripper and Ryan 1998:313). Significantly one of the issues which caused the withdrawal was the recommendation to remove abortion from the criminal law and to view it as a health service.…”