Webbed feet and feathered wings protruded from a sack of pale white skin. There was another one not very far off. They were small and huddled into themselves. There was something about the image of those little birds lying lifeless on the nature strip that burned itself into my mind. A fly was buzzing around one of the carcasses.

It was 2008 and I had been working for Maxine Morand, Minister for Women’s Affairs in the Victorian State Government. My colleagues and I watched as hundreds of anti abortion letters poured in.

Many were clearly upset about Maxine’s decision to champion a Bill which recommended the removal of abortion from the Victorian Crimes Act. Previously under Section 65 of the Victorian Crimes Act (1958), a woman who had an abortion was liable to between five and ten years imprisonment, while a medical practitioner who provides an abortion could have been jailed for up to five years.

I remember accompanying Maxine to a meeting with her local constituents. One of the issues raised was about brochures some of those present at the function had received at home. The brochures contained graphic images of dead foetuses.

Campaigns often reach for an effect, maybe even a shock affect. In this case, those explicit images had been forced upon unsuspecting private individuals and their families. Individuals and their family members who after a long day, may have preferred no to come home to a pamphlet with dominantly placed image of the remains of an aborted birth. A pregnant mother who at the age of thirty four waits anxiously for the life growing within her to be born alive and healthy; a group of primary school kids who had been asked to go and get the mail; a woman who only a few months ago had tragically experienced a late term miscarriage.

I found a shovel perfect for the job. I gently wedged it underneath the remains of the little birds, and I carried them across to our backyard and dropped them gently into a grave.

I thought about the people who had sent out those materials. Had they been affected by the images of foetuses just as I had been affected by the carcasses I was about to bury? Did those images confirm or strengthen their faith and beliefs? In direct mailing hundreds of homes in the electorate materials containing such graphic images were they hoping to stun families into supporting their cause?
The hard hitting realities that underpin ethical dilemmas are not things we can bury with campaign slogans, graphic and shocking images, or metaphorically cover with dirt in one’s backyard. We often approach dilemmas with the knowledge of what matters to us most. The health and wellbeing of women in circumstances I could never imagine, mattered to me. The rights of those women to access safely and legally a health service, is a right that mattered to me.

I was there that day, when I saw Maxine do what she had faith in was right, and not what was convenient. I was there when her religiously conservative electorate voted her out. I was there when Minister Morand voted in a Bill that abolished common law offences relating to abortion and furthered the protection of women’s rights. I hope to be there again, when the Northern Territory Parliament does what is needed to be done to bring the Territory up to speed with the rest of Australia, and much of the developed world, where the health and rights of Territory women are concerned.

Shankar Kasynathan

August 2015