The Abortion Game

287 Pages·2015·1.19 MB·English

The Abortion Game: Writing a
Consciously Political Narrative
Nonfiction Work 

A PhD research thesis (Creative Writing), with manuscript (creative
component) and exegesis (analytical component), submitted for
the College of Arts, Victoria University

Jacinda Woodhead
June 2015

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The Abortion Game: Writing a Consciously Political Narrative Nonfiction Work
Abstract 

In this creative‐writing research project, I set out to create a narrative nonfiction
manuscript that investigates the contemporary politics surrounding abortion.
The fundamental question driving the creative manuscript was, ‘Why is abortion
largely invisible in Australia?’ Abortion is the second‐most common therapeutic
surgical procedure in Australia, yet the history, the politics and the practice of
abortion remain hidden from view. This invisibility allows us to avoid grappling
with and confronting the complicated issues abortion raises. Using techniques
commonly associated with fiction writing, such as narrative arc, characterisation,
dialogue and scenes, the 69,000‐word manuscript investigates the factors, tiers
and characters involved with abortion in Australia. The narrative nonfiction
manuscript should be read first.

The manuscript is accompanied by a 31,500‐word exegesis analysing the
production, lineage and ethical implications of consciously political narrative
nonfiction, a term that refers to works that make deliberate political
interventions. Similarly to Hartsock (2000), I argue that when writing a
consciously political narrative nonfiction work, the writer does not objectify the
world as something different or alien from the reader, and instead strives to
render characters as complex human beings. The exegesis reviews theories of
ethics, objectivity and narrative within a form that is fundamentally journalism,
yet can never fit within this narrow definition as it is primarily about mapping
the cultural other (Sanderson 2004).

The exegesis also scrutinises the usefulness and complexity of immersion as a
research methodology. While I initially attempted to immerse myself as a limited
participant‐observer in the world of pro‐choice and pro‐life politics, over the
course of the research, my methodology resulted in a kind of radicalisation
prompted by my fieldwork. For example, after witnessing the ongoing
harassment of clinic patients and staff, I found myself openly hostile to the
position and tactics of pro‐life activists. While I felt I remained capable of
transcribing and depicting the worlds of these subjects, a seditious need grew to
challenge their authority and worldview outside the text. This led me to make a
political intervention inside and outside the text, and I thus crossed the precipice
from observation to active participation.

While I acknowledge that this is an unconventional narrative position, one that
rejects ideals of journalistic objectivity, I argue that this subject position was
born of the research and practice of this project – that is, of actually participating
in the world of my subject, abortion.

Moreover, this level of participation in the world of the textual subject is a direct
result of writing a consciously political narrative nonfiction work, a subgenre
that allows for the practitioner’s politics and reactions to situations to help shape
the text, and the consequences beyond.

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The Abortion Game: Writing a Consciously Political Narrative Nonfiction Work
Statement of Authenticity 

Doctor of Philosophy Declaration (by creative manuscript)

I, Jacinda Woodhead, declare that the PhD exegesis entitled ‘The Abortion Game:
Writing a Consciously Political Narrative Nonfiction Work’ is no more than 100,000
words in length including quotes and exclusive of tables, figures, appendices,
bibliography, references and footnotes. This exegesis contains no material that has
been submitted previously, in whole or in part, for the award of any other academic
degree or diploma. Except where otherwise indicated, this exegesis is my own work.

Signature:

Date: 10 June 2015

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The Abortion Game: Writing a Consciously Political Narrative Nonfiction Work
For my grandmother

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The Abortion Game: Writing a Consciously Political Narrative Nonfiction Work
Acknowledgements 

I would like to thank the many individuals, organisations, activists and writers who
helped me in the course of this research. In particular, my supervisors, Dr Barbara
Brook, Dr Fiona Capp and Dr Jennifer Lee, and my colleagues, Dr Jeff Sparrow, Alex
Skutenko and Bec Zajac – thanks for the patience and the unwavering support.

Organisations instrumental to this research included the East Melbourne Fertility
Control Clinic, Children by Choice, Jessie Street National Women’s Library, Friends
of the Fertility Clinic, Marie Stopes International Australia, Victorian Trades Hall, the
State Library of Victoria, Radical Women, the Campaign for Reproductive Rights, the
Sex Party, the Greens, Melbourne Feminist Action, the National Union of Students,
the John & Shirley McLaren Collection at Victoria University, Reproductive Choice
Australia, Albury Choice, Right to Privacy Albury, the Englehardt Street Clinic,
Albury Wodonga News Weekly, Meanjin, Overland, the Australian Christian Lobby,
and Victoria University.

Special thanks to Dr Pieter Mourik and Elizabeth Mourik, Dr Jo Wainer, Dr Susie
Allanson, Dr Leslie Cannold, Dr Mark Schulberg, Dr Darren Russell, Colleen
Hartland, Elizabeth O’Shea, Dr Cathy Oke, Dr Caroline de Costa, Dr Kate Gleeson,
Cait Calcutt, Prof Barbara Baird, Susie Reid, Debbie Brennan, Chris Johnson,
Stephanie Convery, Margarita Windisch, Elizabeth Reichardt, Clare Strahan, Ian See,
Graham Preston and Anne Rampa and their families, Ann and Josephine from
Rachel’s Vineyard, my mum, and all the doctors I spoke with along the way.

I must also thank my writing group – Jo, Nean, Melissa, Ilka, Simon and Benjamin –
for their feedback and for not minding me workshopping a manuscript about abortion
in a writing group focussed on children’s literature. Much gratitude, too, to Sophie
Splatt, Simon Mitchell and Stephen Wright for their close readings and insights.

Finally, thank you to all my interviewees, and to all my comrades, most especially
Benjamin and Bert.

Manuscript note: some names in this book have been changed.

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The Abortion Game: Writing a Consciously Political Narrative Nonfiction Work
Contents
THE ABORTION GAME: WRITING A CONSCIOUSLY POLITICAL
NARRATIVE NONFICTION WORK I
ABSTRACT II
STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICITY III
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V
THE ABORTION GAME: HOW IT’S PLAYED WITH WOMEN’S LIVES
PROLOGUE 2
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION TO ABORTION POLITICS AND PROJECT 6
CHAPTER TWO: THE EAST MELBOURNE CLINIC 19
CHAPTER THREE: THE CLINIC DEFENDERS 37
CHAPTER FOUR: THE PRO‐CHOICE BUSINESS 63
CHAPTER FIVE: RELIGIOUS WEDGES 85
CHAPTER SIX: THE DEEP NORTH 106
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE ABORTIONISTS 133
CHAPTER EIGHT: WOMEN’S BUSINESS 158
CHAPTER NINE: IN THE END 174
NOTES 181
EXEGESIS: THE ABORTION GAME: WRITING A CONSCIOUSLY POLITICAL
NARRATIVE NONFICTION WORK
INTRODUCTION 192
CHAPTER ONE: THE TRADITION OF CONSCIOUSLY POLITICAL NARRATIVE NONFICTION 201
CHAPTER TWO: ETHICS AND OBJECTIVITY WITHIN CONSCIOUSLY POLITICAL NARRATIVE
NONFICTION 219
CHAPTER THREE: SUBJECTIVITY IN IMMERSION AND PARTICIPATION METHODOLOGIES WHEN
MAKING POLITICAL NARRATIVE NONFICTION WORKS: A FRAUGHT SPACE 238
CHAPTER FOUR: BEATEN UP BY BIKIES IN A CAVE IN KENYA, OR HOW TO WRITE AN ETHICAL
ENDING 251
CONCLUSION 265
WORKS CITED 270

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The Abortion Game: Writing a Consciously Political Narrative Nonfiction Work

The Abortion Game: 
How It’s Played  
with Women’s Lives
Prologue 

‘Dear Peter Knight,’ I wrote. The cursor waited, blinking and hostile, while I
struggled to fill in the rest of the letter. What to ask?
I had never tried to interview someone in prison before. I studied the online
maps of Barwon Prison. The aerial layout, with its rotor-shaped buildings and cog-
like flow, looked like a diagram for something unrealised yet profound.
On Monday 16 July 2001, Knight walked into a clinic that performed
abortions and shot another person. It was Australia’s first, and so far only, anti-
abortion murder.
As maximum-security prisoners don’t have access to the internet, my first
attempt at contact was sent not to Peter Knight but to the Department of Corrections.
It was more direct, I told myself: prison officials would open, read and most likely
withhold my letter anyway.
I’d already interviewed a broad range of people with radical views, I told the
Department of Corrections email recipient. But Peter Knight’s case holds a unique
and extreme place in the struggle for abortion rights in this country.
On that Monday morning in 2001, when patients had been registered, anti-
abortion protesters had disbanded and the lone security guard had left his post, a man
walked into East Melbourne’s Fertility Control Clinic, the oldest abortion clinic in
Australia, with a large duffel bag.1
Steve Rogers, the security guard, was still there although it was 20 minutes
after his shift had ended. Rogers was 44 years of age. He lived in Melton, in
Melbourne’s west, with his wife and seven children; his father had died a fortnight
before. He had worked at the clinic for only two months. He was an atheist.2
Exiting the bathroom, Steve Rogers confronted an unaccompanied man – a
conspicuous presence in a women’s fertility clinic – and asked if he needed help.
The stranger is believed to have muttered ‘gun’ and ‘shoot’. Of the 41 other
staff and patients there at the time, most were out of hearing range.
‘Are you serious?’ Steve Rogers asked in return. ‘Are you for real?’ (Of Steve
Rogers’ response, witnesses seemed sure.) They were the last words he spoke.

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Steve Rogers died on a patch of worn, beige carpet between reception desk
and filing cabinet. The gunshot wound, police said, would have proved fatal wherever
the bullet from the high-powered Winchester rifle landed on his unprotected body.
As well as the stolen gun, Peter Knight was carrying 16 litres of kerosene,
cigarette lighters, ropes and gags, a mass of ammunition, and a note he’d handwritten
that read, ‘As a result of a fatal accident of one of the staff, we have been forced to
cancel all appointments today.’
Whatever Knight’s plans, he was stopped by two men waiting for their
partners in the next room. They, along with clinic staff, pinned Knight down by sitting
on him until police arrived.
For almost three months following his arrest, Peter Knight refused to
communicate. He remained anonymous for a fortnight, referred to as ‘John Doe’, a
term reserved, in popular culture, for unclaimed dead bodies. His silence hung like a
threat over the clinic: police knew nothing of his motives, nor even if he was working
alone.
In the weeks and months afterwards, the staff were on tenterhooks. ‘You’d
kind of look at everyone suspiciously, wondering what they were up to, if they were
connected or not,’ said one of the doctors who’d been at the clinic when Steve Rogers
was shot, who’d tried to halt his bleeding. ‘We knew that things like that happened in
America. But we never assumed that it would happen here.’3
When details of Peter Knight’s character finally emerged, some traits were
unsurprising, such as his deep, Christian-influenced religiosity. Other aspects hinted
at something more aberrant: he counted his age from the moment of conception; he
led a hermetic existence in a humpy in the Killonbutta State Forest in New South
Wales; he refused to ‘submit’ to the Australian legal system because he opposed
oaths; he had devoted himself to the fight against abortion after discovering the
number of abortion services on display in the telephone book.4
Peter Knight had previously protested at abortion clinics and claimed to have
some involvement with Right to Life Australia, a conservative, Catholic organisation
opposed to abortion, stem cell research and euthanasia; but the grimness of his crime,
along with his unique interpretation of the Bible, saw most pro-life groups swiftly
distance themselves.5
The American-based Army of God, however, continues to laud Peter Knight
as a Prisoner of Christ, ‘incarcerated for saving unborn babies from babykilling

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