The Scarlet Letter | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Ronli Sifris

As of September 2023 when Western Australia decriminalised abortion, the procedure has officially become legal nationwide. But it begs the questions – why has abortion only been fully decriminalised now? Who was making those decisions about women’s bodies? And what was being done about it? From her family’s legacy of resilience, to her cutting-edge research on reproductive rights, Dr Ronli Sifiris takes the mic and shares her journey through the legal landscape of feminism. We dive deep into abortion laws, involuntary sterilization, and the heated debates around surrogacy. She also shares insights from her empirical research on abortion clinic protests and the impact of safe access laws.

First published 2017.

The Scarlet Letter podcast is produced by the Feminist Legal Studies Group. This podcast features interviews with feminists connected to the law, discussing their life, work, and feminist perspectives. It's perfect for anyone passionate about feminist legal scholarship.

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Transcript | The Scarlet Letter | Season 1 |Episode 5 | Ronli Sifris

Azadeh Dastyari: [00:00:00] Good morning, we are Azadeh Dastyari and Ronli Sifris, and welcome to the fifth episode of the Scarlet Letter, the podcast of the Feminist Legal Studies Group at Monash University's Faculty of Law. As with our previous episode, we are joined by the wonderful Tamara Wilkinson.

Tamara Wilkinson: Hi.

Ronli Sifris: You may remember that Tamara is a researcher in the Faculty of Law and a Monash University graduate.

She's spent the past three years researching Australian innovation and venture capital law and is responsible for managing an Australian Research Council grant focused on designing world class venture capital programs.

Azadeh Dastyari: Like our last episode, Tamara will be a guest interviewer and she'll be helping me interview my co host, Ronli.

Tamara Wilkinson: Ronli's main area of research focuses on women's reproductive rights and the intersection between reproductive rights, health, and the law, both domestic and international, which is obviously extremely relevant.

Azadeh Dastyari: Ronly, perhaps you can start by telling us what does feminism mean to you?

Ronli Sifris: [00:01:00] Feminism to me I think is really about equality of opportunity which sounds really basic but I think that's what it is at its roots.

It's about thinking about a world where people are equal. Which means for me being a feminist is actually about a lot more than just talking about women's rights. In our episode our last episode where we interviewed Azadeh, we were talking about, other rights, like the rights of a citizen.

And I think really, if we're going to envisage a society where women are equal, we also need to think about a society where we're advocating for people who suffer from other forms of discrimination, whether that's race based discrimination or discrimination based on disability or whatever it is. We need to be thinking about sort of feminism in a much broader way because women can't be equal unless we're also fighting for other groups who are in some way marginalized or vulnerable.

Azadeh Dastyari: Yeah. Is there a point [00:02:00] when you started identifying as a feminist?

Ronli Sifris: So for me not unlike what you were discussing in the interview that we did with when we interviewed you last episode I wouldn't say there's one point in time, I'd say it was more a sort of something that's been with me forever, if you like and I think in some ways it's both genetic and epigenetic in the sense that It's, it's been passed down in a way, so my maternal great grandmother has legendary status in our family.

So that's my mother's mother. Because she really was a feminist before that became a popular word and would never have called herself a feminist, but in her actions, that's very much what she was. And she was a woman who had to leave school when she was eight years old. So she had no.

And then fled Lithuania. She fled persecution and fled to South Africa. And so arrived with, no English language [00:03:00] and no formal education. And my grandmother always used to talk about the fact that despite all of that, she was one of the few children at school who had shoes to wear and a hot lunch.

Because my grandmother's mother, was industrious and innovative that she managed to, she managed to buy a cow and then use the milk to make butter and cream and sell that. And she had borders in her house and so she got some money that way. And, by doing all of that she was able to really be the primary breadwinner and homemaker.

Amazing. So yeah, really quite extraordinary when I think about that. So for me, it was just, it's, it is, has always been a kind of way of being, and I've never really thought about it until things that have happened in my life that made me realize, Oh yeah, like the way I think is not necessarily the way everybody thinks.

It's confronting, isn't it?

Tamara Wilkinson: It is. It is. It is. Always a disappointing realization.[00:04:00]

So given that much of your research is focused on reproductive rights, which is in many ways an inherently feminist research agenda, can you tell us a bit about how you first became interested in this field of research?

Ronli Sifris: Sure. So for me, it was incremental. I started off feeling as though international human rights more broadly was my calling as I think a lot of people do.

And I went and did a master's at NYU, which was focused on, it was a master's in international legal studies. And as part of that most of the units I chose were human rights based units. I was always interested in that area, and I increasingly became interested in women's rights as human rights.

So then when I decided to do a PhD it made sense that I was gonna focus on a women's rights kind of issue. And the issues which for me which I was finding particularly compelling was the intersection of kind of women's rights and [00:05:00] health. And so that's where I started looking into reproductive rights issues.

And because my background was in international legal studies my PhD really focused on the international law side of things. So I ended up looking at the international legal prohibition of torture. And looking at whether restrictions on women's reproductive freedom, so restrictions on abortion or involuntary sterilization procedures, whether they could be categorized as either torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

So really it has all then flown from my PhD because once I finished my PhD I realized There's also lots of interesting stuff happening at the domestic level when it comes to reproductive rights, not all Australian jurisdictions have even decriminalised abortions, so there's lots going on right here.

So now my research kind of straddles between the international realm and the domestic realm in terms of looking at reproductive rights issues. [00:06:00]

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah, that's fantastic. Can you tell us a bit about particular areas of your research that really link with feminist ideas? What are some of your main areas of focus?

Ronli Sifris: They're odd.

Yeah,

So I do a lot of work on abortion rights. And that's clearly an inherently feminist issue in terms of, if women don't have control over their own bodies. That's really the starting point, that right to reproductive autonomy and to self determination, the right to choose when and whether to continue with the pregnancy is a key feminist issue.

Ronli Sifris: But also other areas like I've done some work on involuntary sterilization which is, I think, really interesting from a feminist. standpoint because it's not immediately apparent that it's a feminist issue because you think men can also be subjected to involuntary sterilization. That's not like abortion where, only women become pregnant.

And yet if you look at sort of circumstances globally where there's been kind of mass [00:07:00] sterilization programs like indigenous women in Peru. Or, there have been many instances of Romani women in Eastern Europe being sterilized without, full informed consent. You realize that actually, in most cases, it is women who are being targeted, subject to a few exceptions.

It raises some really serious and interesting feminist questions about, society. Control over women's bodies, particularly where in the case of sterilization, the vasectomy, which is the male procedure, is a much easier medical procedure than any of the sterilization procedures performed on women.

So I think that's a really interesting feminist issue. And then an issue which I've been focusing on a lot recently has been surrogacy. https: otter. ai Which is also really interesting from a feminist perspective, particularly compensated or commercial surrogacy where a surrogate gets receives some form of compensation.

And that's really interesting, I think, because feminists have been very polarized on that [00:08:00] issue. Some feminists have come out and said that, It's a terrible thing that it's commodification of women, that it's exploitation of women. And certainly in some circumstances, it can be.

My personal view is that that, that's not a generalizable position. And other feminists have come out and said in fact, it's exploitative to require that, to say that if a woman wants to be a surrogate, she can't be paid when doctors can be paid for providing fertility based services and certainly that the clinics can be paid.

Why not an individual woman? That sort of perpetuates the idea that women should perform, the work of gestation and childbearing for no money, for no compensation.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah.

Ronli Sifris: I think that's a really interesting feminist issue as well.

Azadeh Dastyari: I also know that you're doing some really interesting work with Tania, I don't know how you do it all.

All the different areas that you work in and the incredible work you're producing. But on top of that, you're doing some empirical research with Tania. Can you tell us a little bit about that as well?

Ronli Sifris: Yeah. So that's [00:09:00] been a really great experience. My colleague Tania Pinovic and I who's also part of the feminist legal studies group.

So I'm sure there'll be an interview with her in due course. We've been doing interviews with staff who work at clinics that provide the full range of reproductive health services to talk to them about The protests which used to take place outside Australian some Victorian abortion clinics and the effects of those protests, and then to talk to them about the legislation that was brought in to try to stop that protesting from occurring and, what the effect of that legislation has actually been.

So that's been a fascinating experience for us to get those insights. We're planning to expand that research Australia wide and to also interview people working at clinics in other states where safe access zones don't currently exist so that we can really do proper comparisons about the status where there is legislation preventing that sort of protesting to where there is [00:10:00] no such legislation.

Azadeh Dastyari: Given you work on so many different issues what do you think are the pressing law reform needs in Australia today? Where do you think we need to change?

Ronli Sifris: So I think decriminalization of abortion is an absolute no brainer. To me, it is absolutely mind boggling that in the year 2017, there are still jurisdictions in Australia where abortion sits on the criminal statute.

Can you tell us a bit about that? So New South Wales is one example where abortion is still technically a crime and there have been attempts in recent months to decriminalise but the the bill didn't get through Parliament. And so I think that's absolutely extraordinary that the numbers weren't there in Parliament to actually pass it.

Decriminalization legislation. Similarly, in Queensland, we actually had a prosecution in 2010, which is not very long ago of a young couple, I think she was 20 and he was 21 and they were prosecuted [00:11:00] under the abort under the criminalization of abortion laws for yeah.

For medical abortions. So they basically imported the abortion drug from the Ukraine. And And in a police raid it was found and they were prosecuted. So I think that is absolutely extraordinary, that level of interference in people's private lives. I just don't think it should be the business of the law to be intruding in people's health and privacy in that way.

Tamara Wilkinson: But to what extent when we're talking about law of these bills, is it men's voices that are being heard in these debates rather than women's voices? Look,

Ronli Sifris: I think it's hard to say. I haven't actually looked at that particular issue closely. What I think is really interesting in the work that Tania and I have been doing on the protests outside abortion clinics, is that it is notable that a lot of the protesters are women.

Protesters seem to be older white men protesting against [00:12:00] what women should be allowed to do with their bodies. So I think that's quite interesting. Yeah, definitely. My understanding is that a lot of the opposition in the New South Wales Parliament to decriminalization in that state a lot of the very strong vocal opposition has come from male politicians, but I really, I couldn't give you the stats.

Yeah.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah.

Azadeh Dastyari: I'm sure. Yeah. Thank you very much, Ronli. I wish we could just sit down and ask you about your research for hours and hours. I think there's so much to learn from you about the work that you do. But I guess that's it for today. Another time, hopefully.

Ronli Sifris: Thank you guys very much.

Tamara Wilkinson: That was yeah, fantastic to be able to share in that way.

And thank you all for listening to The Scarlet [00:13:00] Letter.