PRO CHOICE ABORTION RIGHTS MASS RALLY MELBOURNE

The first Action by the new open-to-all women’s collective Melbourne Feminist Action is THIS Saturday, 24 November, 10 am – a mass prochoice rally at Australia’s first clinic to offer safe, legal abortions, the East Melbourne Fertility Clinic. The action is timely and essential – coinciding with the news reports of the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland last month after being denied an abortion, and other prochoice initiatives including in Chile, where abortion is criminalized. Information below comes thanks to spokespeople for the MFA rally Jacinda Woodhead and Stephanie Convery.

The rally will DEMONSTRATE that the ongoing harassment, on a daily basis, of women patients accessing a legal health service will not be tolerated; also to point out that even in Australia, abortion is legal in only Victoria, WA and ACT. It remains criminalized in some areas of Australia. The clinic, on Wellington Street, East Melbourne, has been targeted by anti-abortionists since its creation 40 years ago but there has been an escalation by the anti-choice lobby in recent months. Women patients and partners are harassed on a daily basis – even filmed and photographed. All this in the media release prepared for the event below. Please share the invitation to join this event: OUR CLINIC. OUR BODIES. OUR CHOICE. The rally will be followed by a march to City Square. (Join / share at MFA Facebook.)

MASS RALLY THIS SATURDAY EAST MELBOURNE FERTILITY CONTROL CLINIC

‘OUR CLINIC, OUR BODIES, OUR CHOICE’

MEDIA RELEASE 19 10 12

A mass abortion rights rally and march has been called for this Saturday, 24 November (10 am), to show support for the East Melbourne Fertility Control Clinic. The rally at the clinic will be followed by a march to City Square.

Established 40 years ago as the first clinic of its kind in Australia to provide safe and affordable abortion, as well as other reproductive health services, the clinic has been picketed almost daily across its history by anti-abortionists. In 2001, security guard Steve Rogers was murdered at the clinic by an anti-abortion protester.

The anti-abortionists harass and bully patients and staff through their picketing, posters (showing anatomically incorrect dismembered fetuses), pamphlets, and physically and verbally intimidating patients, as well as filming them. The anti-choice lobby has in recent months escalated its focus on the clinic. The clinic sees thousands of women every year and anti-abortionists continue to target patients on a daily basis.

The pro-choice rally organisers are hoping for a strong turn-out at the rally. Spokesperson for the rally, Jacinda Woodhead, said the action had been called “to show very clearly that we think the harassment of women trying to access a health clinic is unacceptable – and we oppose it. Abortion in Victoria is both legal and safe, and we trust women to make informed decisions about their own bodies and lives.” The rally had the consent of the clinic, she said.

The East Melbourne Fertility Control Clinic was founded by abortion law reformers Dr Bertram Wainer, Professor Jo Wainer and Dr Peter Bayliss in 1972.

Woodhead said a recent study by Alexandra Humphries, a research student at the University of Melbourne, of 158 women attending the clinic found that 77.8 per cent felt stigmatised by the picketers. In her assessment of the study, head psychologist at the clinic, Dr Susie Allanson, described the harassment as “unwanted, demeaning and harmful attention” toward patients attempting to access a health service.

The Victorian Abortion Law Reform Act of 2008 saw abortion available when requested by a qualified medical practitioner until 24 weeks. 

“While abortion in Victoria is legal and safe”, says Woodhead, “this is also a national health issue.  Even now, more than 40 years after the Clinic’s founding, abortion is only legal in Victoria, WA and ACT – and has various restrictions placed on it by these states and territories.

“Abortion sits under the Crimes Act in most states, and women can still be prosecuted and publicly shamed for procuring abortion, as we saw in Cairns in 2010. In many parts of Australia, such as Queensland and the Northern Territory, it remains difficult for women to access abortion and other reproductive health services. The reality is we still have places in this country where women can’t access abortion.

“As we saw with the heartbreaking case of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland last month, who died after being denied an abortion, these are the consequences of having laws that restrict women’s reproductive rights.” 

The rally is being organised by a new open-to-all Melbourne-based women’s rights organisation, Melbourne Feminist Action, whose first meeting in October decided on the rally. MFA plans a series of actions around a range of women’s rights issues. The slogan for this rally is Our Clinic, Our Bodies, Our Choice.

The rally Facebook event page is: http://www.facebook.com/events/434217766626549/ 

Melbourne Feminist Action
On Facebook: facebook.com/MelbFemAction
On Twitter: @MelbFemAction
By Email: melbfeministaction@gmail.com

For more information or interviews, these spokespeople can be contacted directly: Jacinda Woodhead (0433 630 643)  or Stephanie Convery (0418 100 737).

WHAT I AM UP TO PART 2:

Attending THIS THURSDAY NIGHT ‘Melbourne Feminist Action: an open meeting’, Meeting Room 1, Trades Hall, 54 Victoria Street, Carlton, 1 November, 6.30 pm. This is a new location due to the hike in expected numbers. Enter Victoria Street. Follow Facebook event– convened by Jacinda Woodhead and Stephanie Honor Convery

Posted today under Poetry (above), Part 1 of a long poem on Love and also the Word – in the writing for the past year - titled overall ‘The Book of Assassination’. Sections to be posted sequentially in coming weeks. Also here is a poem by Fernando Pessoa (trans. David Butler), the enigmatic Portugese great (1888-1935), not only one of the major poets of the 20^th-C but also with acute, disquietening relevance into the 21^st.  From ‘Selected Poems – Fernando Pessoa’ (Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2009). For locals who want to support the great Collected Works bookstore in Melbourne, buy it there. Both posted poems read this week at what was a truly excellent Gilgamesh Readings (Evening Star, South Melbourne, Mondays, 7.30 pm for 8 pm).

Meditating this Friday evening: I am running the meditation segment at the end of a new FREESTYLE ECSTATIC DANCE evening 2 November, evening start 7.30 pm (meditation approx 9.15-9.45); $15 entry. All welcome. At St. Columba’s Hall, 24 Glenhuntly Rd, Elwood (entrance via Normandy Rd.) Facebook META(morphosis)Dance.

Still reading to review ‘Money Shot – A Journey into Porn and Censorship’, Jeff Sparrow (Scribe). A truly outstanding must-read for anyone who wants to think about the phenomena of pornography in our lifetime.

What I have been up to

Launching this blog now: which has been some time in the gestation and making. Go to ‘About’ above to see what I will be posting on. You can subscribe at right…Robust Debate Welcome. You can also cross to new, related Facebook page. Publishing and editing as Publisher at John Leonard Press a range of exceptional and eminent writers and poets. 2012 Releases: Robert Gray’s landmark Collected Poems - ‘Cumulus’; the late great Peter Steele’s Selected Essays - ‘Braiding the Voices’; Brook Emery’s poetry volume, ‘Collusion’; and Graeme Miles’ ‘Recurrence’. Writing a prose speculative-non-fiction book on spiritual perspectives on the feminine – just released – ‘The Divine Woman and the Twin Flame’. An article on the book – why I wrote it - is also posted here. Writing new poems and in final editing of a poetry volume for early 2013 publication, ‘The Book of Assassination’. The title follows the book’s long, long-line poem on love and the word. Poetry – others and mine, archival and new, Australian and international – will be posted regularly. Hosting this Monday, 15 October, 7.30 for 8 pm, a new reading/salon, Gilgamesh Readings. Featured writer is one of Australia’s finest poets Petra White. Free. At Evening Star, corner York and Cecil Sts, South Melbourne. Reading two extraordinary new releases, both world-class and both by Melbourne-based authors: the luminary literary prose of Alison Croggon in her new novel, ‘Black Spring’ (Walker Books), a rewrite on ‘Wuthering Heights’ among other things; and Jeff Sparrow’s narrative-journalistic ‘Money Shot – A Journey into Porn and Censorship’ (Scribe). Will also be posting on both. The blog has an ‘Inspire’ tag – about the work of others. Check a brilliant Australian-based initiative to provide tech-savvy downloadable apps which provide teenagers (and younger ones and adults if interested) with accessible, intelligent and practical short meditations about mindfulness. I’ve been practising the first one – highly commend the site and not for profit project: go to: smiling mind

 

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN WOMEN AGAINST VIOLENCE

WHY I WROTE ‘THE DIVINE WOMAN AND THE TWIN FLAME’

“The roots of violence against women lie in persistent discrimination against women and girls.” - UN

My new book, released this year, offers a spiritual template for individual women to explore living their full potential. But I also want to make it very clear that for me this feminine spirituality can be politically active and potent. By acknowledging the horrific circumstances faced by millions of women and girls politically, we can begin to contribute to the momentum and advocacy for positive change. Consider:

Among the poor, women are usually the poorest.

According to a UN briefing paper: “Violence against women and girls is not confined to a specific culture, region or country, or to particular groups of women within a society. The roots of violence against women lie in persistent discrimination against women and girls.

Up to 70 per cent of women experience violence in their lifetime, according to country data available.

Women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, car accidents, war and malaria, according to World Bank data.” (www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers)

The UN research reports that half of women who are murdered are murdered by intimate partners or ex-partners. According to the World Health Organisation, in Australia, Canada, Israel, South Africa and the US, this figure is 40-70 per cent.

Millions of women globally are paying money for, and enjoying, a book that eroticises contracted female submission (’Fifty Shades of Grey’).

Many women now believe it is compulsory that their ‘pussies’ be hair-free (resembling a child’s), and that a woman’s natural body state is socially and individually unacceptable, even ‘disgusting’.

There is considerable evidence that younger women now feel compelled to have sex according to pornographic paradigms.

The UN estimates that, worldwide, one in five women will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. Women and girls are systematically raped in almost every warzone in the world. Angelina Jolie expressly confronts this in her film, ‘The Land of Blood and Honey’.

Boardrooms remain filled with men and professionally powerful women often have to negotiate periods of discrimination to advance to higher levels.

As of February 2012 in Australia, women earned an average of 17.4 per cent less than men across all sectors (average fulltime weekly wage of $1186.90 cf. to $1437.40). In some sectors, the gap was much wider – eg. Health, 32.6 per cent. (Australian Bureau of Statistics)

Of 500 young people who contacted the Australian Kids Helpline counselling service (Jan-March 2012) about concerns about ‘sexting’, 75 per cent of them were female and most under 19. One in three were aged 10-14. (Wendy Squires, ‘The Age’).

Three million women and girls will face Female Genital Mutilation between February 2012 and 2013 (WHO, ‘The Guardian’). Simultaneously, the number of women choosing voluntary plastic surgery to alter the appearance of their genitals (labiaplasty) is ‘sky-rocketing’. (Deborah Bateson, Medical Director of Family Planning NSW, ‘The Age’)

As the author of ‘The Divine Woman and the Twin Flame’, I believe that, woman by woman, the lot of women worldwide can be changed for the better. ‘The Divine Woman and the Twin Flame’ offers every woman a spiritual template for connecting with her authentic power, as a woman, in all aspects of her life. When a woman integrates this power, she becomes self-directed (what I call self-sovereign) and if she chooses to, she takes this power out into the world for the betterment of all. This power is essentially humane and will also alter for the better a woman’s relations with men and the masculine.

The book explores the most important issues in women’s lives: vocation, intimacy, love, sexuality, health and vitality, mothering and family life, creativity, spirituality and men.

The ‘Twin Flame’ aspect of the book explores the potential for women to form intimate relationships of the highest potency – whether they are heterosexual or not, and whatever their relationship orientation.

Early readers have described the book as life-changing. It is available from bookshops or can be bought online at: Facebook, The Divine Woman and the Twin Flame. Publicity enquiries or for images: twinflamepublicity@gmail.com or call Rowena Fitzgerald on 0413 210 940.

Jacinta’s blogspot, which addresses related themes of the book and other issues, is: http://www.jacintaleplastrierofficial.blogspot.com