it's called the pill

This may sound cruel but I have a word of advice for a 16-year-old pregnant girl from Kyabram. Her name is Jessica  Hawker.  I can use her name because she posed provocatively – hugging a tree and barely wearing a short skirt – for the Sunday Herald Sun yesterday.

She is pregnant for the second time in two years. The first time she was fourteen. That pregnancy was terminated.  My advice to Jessica is get yourself a birth control pill and hold it between your knees. It just might help you.

She is in the news because of lack of support from the federal government for her plight. The headline said: “Pregnant Jessica’s anger at Abbott Fund cut has met me down”.

Apparently the Goulburn Valley Pregnancy Support Service – in nearby Shepparton -- is about to close down. Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott cops a spray because he has supposedly failed to come to the centre’s financial rescue over the past eight months. In recent days the taxpayers (through the Health Department) have infused $100,000 into a service which supposedly has been staffed by volunteers for thirty years.

According to the Herald Sun, assistance provided by the pregnancy support service “includes finance, baby and maternity clothing, furniture, relationship help and parenting guidance”.

This may sound cruel – but why?  Why should the Federal Government, why should taxpayers, pay for somebody’s furniture? For her maternity clothes?  For her baby clothes?

This sixteen-year-old has got herself pregnant twice in two years. She claims that she had an abortion the first time around because her then boyfriend would not support the baby. 

A financial decision. Not a passionate one. Not a moral one. But, I’ll admit, a tough one.

Now she is pregnant again, three months pregnant, and it’s all the government’s fault.  All Tony Abbott’s fault.

Keep that pill firmly wedged between your knees Jessica.

Monday, October 31, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005