`The Incompetent, Barbarous Old Lady Round the Corner': The Image of the Backyard Abortionist in Pro-abortion Politics
The image of the backyard abortionist has a powerful currency in the discourse of the contemporary pro-choice movement in Australia, and in popular representations of abortion. It is used regularly and reliably to conjure up the horrors for women of the provision of abortion services in the era before liberalisation of abortion laws in the late sixties/early seventies. Anti-abortionists are generally not interested in a history of abortion nor, for obvious reasons, in the finer points of present-day service provision. Consequently the image is not usually one that …