The New Testament According to the Lyons Forum : An Australia
Bereft of Abortion Rights?  Author(s): Lynette J. Dumble Date
Published: July 19, 2006 Source: (Political Environments #5,
Fall 1997)  BACKGROUND: Following the 1995 United Nations-
convened 4th Conference on Women, it was plain that
fundamentalist and population control forces were a double
challenge to women's reproductive freedom, which includes the
inalienable right to abortion that is lawful, safe, and
affordable. In Australia, where 80,000 to 100,000 abortions are
performed annually, abortion is the second most common
therapeutic surgical procedure. Medical speak has an identical
translation of both "abortion", with its connotation of
deliberate impropriety, and "miscarriage", with its implication
of biological mishap, which defines a pregnancy termination as
the "expulsion of the contents of a pregnant woman's womb at any
period of gestation short of full term" . "Abortion" is not
however a legal term, and in Australia there are no uniform gu