Staff member's life work to become ABC telemovie
The first stages of a lifetime of hard work by a Monash University staff member and her late husband to legalise abortion in Australia is the basis of an upcoming ABC telemovie.
Dangerous Remedy is a police drama inspired by the story of Adjunct Associate Professor Jo Wainer, from Monash University’s Eastern Health Clinical School, and her late husband Dr Bertram Wainer, and their first steps on their 40 year journey to make abortion safe and legal. Professor Wainer continues this work today.
“I started in 1967 when I was an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne, from there I became the inaugural secretary for the Abortion Law Reform Association, which is how I met Bert,” Professor Wainer said.
“We set up Australia’s first abortion clinic in 1972.”
Professor Wainer was part of a small team that worked for four years to support state MPs and ministers, including Candy Broad, Maxine Morand and Daniel Andrews, to introduce the Act in 2008 that took abortion out of the Crimes Act and left it as a normal medical procedure, with the decision in the hands of the woman and her doctor.
Dangerous Remedy is a ‘cops and docs’ drama based on the story of their struggle to expose police corruption in an effort to change the law on abortion and put an end to the illegal backyard operations that were killing young women.
Professor Wainer has published Lost: illegal abortion stories with Melbourne University Press and has been awarded membership of the Order of Australia for her work in reproductive health and research on female doctors.
She was recently made an honorary life member of the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine for her work with women who are rural doctors.
Dangerous Remedy will premier on ABC1 at 8.30pm on Sunday, 4 November 2012.