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Book Details

LOST

Illegal Abortion Stories

Jo Wainer (ed.)

Foreword by Helen Garner

Here for the first time are edited transcripts of women who had illegal abortions dating from the 1930s in Australia.

Opinion

"To read Lost is to plunge into a forgotton place of shadows and whispers and deadly secrets; of well-meaning doctors, money-hungry shonks and lethal old wives' tales."
(Fenella Souter, Good Weekend, 25/3/06)

"Lost is an indispensable compilation of Australian women's voices."
"far from providing emotive fodder for anti-abortion campaigners, Lost presents incredibly affecting evidence for the necessity of safe, legal and accessible abortions."
(Brianna Summers, The Big Issue, 8/5/06)

About this Title

'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.

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.

With a foreword by Helen Garner.

About the Author

Jo Wainer is Director at the Centre for Gender and Medicine, Monash University and custodian of the transcripts. Her late husband Dr Bertram Wainer was the leading abortion reform doctor who in the 1970s led a long and difficult campaign to overturn the existing abortion laws which led to the Kaye Inquiry into police corruption.

978-0-522-85231-8