Control Abortion Referral Service was a feminist Australian organisation active from 1973 through the mid-1980s that advised and supported women seeking abortion from New South Wales, other Australian states and from abroad, particularly from New Zealand. It also developed new women-run abortion services.
Origins – changing the law The United Kingdom Abortion Act 1967 legalised abortion in Great Britain on certain grounds by registered practitioners and regulated the tax-paid provision of such medical practices. This UK act became the basis of the Australian Humane Society's Abortion Law Reform Associations (ALRA) which set up in each Australian state and territory over the next few years.
On 26 May 1969 the Victorian Menhennitt ruling in R v Davidson ruled that abortion might be lawful if necessary to protect the physical or mental health of the woman. It was the first ruling on the legality of abortion in any part of Australia. In contrast, the New South Wales (NSW) conservative Liberal Party Premier Robert Askin cracked down on illegal abortionists, and by the following year, NSW had a full time abortion squad of 27 police officers.
On 11 May 1970, police raided the Heatherbrae Clinic at Bondi, NSW. Women patients were taken for questioning and medical examinations and five staff members were charged with performing illegal abortions. On 28 October 1971 the Sydney Central Court jury found the five clinic staff not guilty. The presiding Judge Levine's ruling, based on the Victorian Menhennitt ruling, established that an abortion would be lawful in NSW if there was "any economic, social or medical ground or reason upon which a doctor could base an honest and reasonable belief that an abortion was required to avoid a serious danger to the pregnant woman's life or to her physical or mental health". That danger might arise at any time during the pregnancy. The Levine ruling's more liberal interpretation of the existing abortion laws thereby made abortions more accessible to NSW women, ending the era of backyard abortions, and opening the way to specialised day clinics offering medically safe abortions.
Almost coinciding with the Heatherbrae raid, the first Women's Liberation National Conference was held at Melbourne University 16–18 May 1970. A key outcome was an Australian national campaign on abortion. The first public meeting of coalition groups to change abortion laws in Australia was held at Sydney University the following week. The rapidly growing Sydney Women's Liberation Movement felt need for a reliable New South Wales clearing house for information on fertility planning and safe abortion services.
Among the first organisers around access to safe and legal abortions were Communist Party of Australia campaigners Joyce Stevens, and Gloria Garton. Following a successful "Women's Speak-Out for Abortion" event at Women's Liberation House in October 1972, Stevens, Robertson, Nola Cooper and other feminists launched a two day "Women's Commission" congress, bringing together 600 women of different backgrounds and politics. Many issues were discussed, including abortion access. The organisers then convened a march on June 30 through Sydney demanding repeal of abortion restrictions. This was followed by a Hyde Park rally, after which some feminist activists returned to Women's House and laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Control Abortion Referral Service.
In May 1973 the intensity of these issues nationally was indicated by PM Gough Whitlam's consideration of abortion law reform. The initial David McKenzie and Moss Cass private members bills failed, but in September 1973 a bill by Race Mathews and Don Chipp, originally a royal commission into sex and abortion, was broadened to a Royal Commission on Human Relationships. It was carried in a free vote 85 to 11 and the Royal Commission was established 21 August 1974. The three commissioners Justice Elizabeth Evatt (Chair), Archbishop Felix Arnott and journalist Anne Deveson presented their final report in November 1977. This investigation originating from the abortion reform debate, it became "one of the most explosive and controversial social inquiries in Australia's history." Nearly three years later, in May 1977 Control was one of the many groups Australia-wide to make a submission on the quality of abortion services to the Commission, a submission signed by six Control workers who had recently resigned en groupe from the staff of then-leading abortion provider Population Services International (PSI) to protest the poor quality of conditions provided to women patients at its clinics.
Control's early years Launched July 1973, the Control collective provided advice for women seeking pregnancy testing and safe and affordable options for pregnancy termination. Volunteer counsellors based at Sydney Women's Liberation House responded to inquiries both by phone and in person, 6-9pm, Monday to Friday.
In August 1973, Joyce Stevens Lyndall Ryan, Betty Pybus and other Control members sought funding for a women's community health centre under the newly established Labor Whitlam government Community Health Program (Innovative Projects Program). Control registered a new company, The Women's Health and Resources Foundation and submitted an annual budget of $A55,000. This was approved by the ministry, much to the women's surprise. Control activists sought for premises and staff and the Leichhardt Women's Community Health Centre (LCWHC) opened in January 1974 as Australia's first women's health centre. It was formally launched on International Women's Day 8 March 1974.
Control had from the start pressed for LCWHC to provide outpatient abortion services. The first LCWHC administrator, Judy McClean and the first doctor Stephania Seidlecki asked the hospital if LCWC "could refer any women to them if something went wrong, and they agreed it was a good idea. They supported Leichhardt because it cut down the number of women to be referred to them. We did abortions one or two days a week, 8-10 women a day." However given the public fracas about publicly funded abortion services, LCWHC did not comment on whether it was doing abortions
Seidlecki later wrote: "Leichhardt was only a small centre. Its significance lay in what its stood for, not what it was. It changed the abortion environment in NSW and it was 'woman centred'. It also broke established conventions: it was a salaried service, it taught women to become familiar with their own bodies, and broke down professional barriers between staff."
Joyce Stevens, Betty Pybus and others in the Control collective, then secured additional federal funding for a second women's health centre, the Liverpool Women's Health Centre (LWHC) which opened on 21 April 1975, with first (short-duration) administrator Betty Pybus. Liverpool initially performed some early term abortions as part of its overall services."Tribune negatives including opening of Liverpool Womens Health Centre, 1975", ON 160/Item 0004, 1975, Manuscripts, oral history and pictures catalogue, State Library, New South Wales. Consulted 18 December 2023. In the changed political climate following the November 1975 dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and in the midst of a public health crisis caused by a NSW doctor's strike the police raided the Liverpool Women's Health Centre, arresting a woman doctor on the charge of conducting an illegal abortion on a minor and a counsellor on the charge of aiding and abetting a crime. The charges were dropped 18 months later when the NSW Attorney General ruled a "no-bill."
Control relocated in July 1976 along with Women's Liberation House to new premises in Chippendale, purchased with funds provided by the women's liberation movement.
Growth of free-standing abortion services in NSW In this post-Levine ruling era, new free-standing clinics not attached to or dependent upon hospitals began opening in Sydney and the price of abortion with private practitioners dropped from $350 to under $120. However as access became easier, the anti-abortion activities also increased. With the public controversy arising over the public funding of abortion, LCWHC stopped doing abortions following the opening of Preterm Foundation in June 1974.
Preterm Foundation in Surrey Hills was the first legal abortion clinic to operate in NSW. Preterm did 80–100 early terminations per week under local anaesthetic, charging $90 (with $56 reimbursed via Medibank). Preterm was inspired by Dr Ian Edwards, modelled on USA services and supported and privately bankrolled by media magnate and Liberal Party politician Clyde Packer, Australia Party founder Gordon Barton and barrister Country Party politician Geoffrey Keighley. Dr Dorothy Nolan was the first Preterm medical director. Newcastle gynaecologist Dr Lachlan Lang trained Preterm and LCWHC doctors in no-touch vacuum extraction technique under local anaesthetic. Preterm finally closed in 2015. Siedlecki claimed that "Preterm was a model for the feminist centres Bessie Smyth Foundation and Control's Darling Street Women's Health Centre", which both opened in the late 1970s. Feminist clinic workers disagreed with this claim, given the non-hierarchical structure and work practices of collectives.
In March 1975 Population Services International (Australasia) (PSI) opened a clinic in Arncliffe, Sydney, which did abortions up to 20 weeks LMP, under general anesthetic. In April 1975, PSI opened a smaller clinic in Challis Avenue, Potts Point, Sydney. They carried out well over 150 abortions per week in 1975. Whilst other private doctors also provided late term abortions under general anaesthetic, their practices were smaller and their reputations affected by their having practiced in the 1960s, prior to the partial decriminalization of abortion in NSW as per the Levine ruling.
PSI Director Dr Geoffrey Davis, who had also practiced in Sydney in the 1960s, made a concerted effort to recruit feminist staff, seeking to leverage the referral power of the growing women's health movement. Margaret Hooks, an activist in the Sydney WLM movement and volunteer at the Leichardt Women's Health Centre and with Control, was the first non-medical staff member hired directly by Davis to become lead counselor at the PSI clinics in Sydney.
In 1972, the Queensland Abortion Law Reform Association in Brisbane was renamed Children By Choice (CBC) and began referring women to interstate for abortion, given Queensland's very restrictive abortion laws. By early 1975 CBC was referring about 50 women a week to the St Ann's Private Hospital in Killara. Then, in February–March 1975 the new PSI service negotiated with CBC and won most of these referrals.
On 6 March 1975, Davis wrote a signed letter to PSI international headquarters, including the words: "Rader Rollen fur den Zeig, as we used to remark while warming ourselves round the burning Reichstag. This week we crushed St Annes; next week Preterm."
On 7 April 1975, four weeks after Davis wrote this letter, Preterm burnt down, just one year after it opened. The fire burned for 4–5 hours but the causes of the fire started were not established by the police. Davis was allegedly one of the first on the scene. The Commonwealth Family Planning Program with approval from NSW government provided $80,000 for Preterm's re-establishment. Preterm Director Dorothy Nolan had "darker suspicions". She told the Sydney Morning Herald that a doctor "who had run a lucrative abortion business in Arncliffe" had been making repeated threatening phone calls to her home. PSI was the only abortion clinic in Arncliffe at that time. Preterm continued to provide women abortion, temporarily moving to St Ann's Hospital in Killara.