Lost

Illegal Abortion Stories

in English, 214 pages,
Melbourne University Press, September 01, 2009
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Twenty years ago, Dr Bertram Wainer, the abortion reform doctor and campaigner, placed an advertisement in a newspaper asking women who had illegal abortions to come forward to tell their stories. Their personal testimonies and the accounts from doctors and nurses are published for the first time in this collection. Women had to draw on deep reservoirs of courage and determination faced with the fear of illegal abortion. This collection tells of some of those acts of courage and the difficulties society placed in women’s way. Moving and candid, these stories uncover the hidden history of abortion in Australia.

‘It is chastening to read these bald tales, shockingly direct and unvarnished. Each story contains matter enough for a novel. Each one is a window onto a larger life, a broader world: a tantalising view of endlessly unfolding complexities.’-Helen Garner