Book of the Week: The Racket - How Abortion Became Legal in Australia by Gideon Haigh

Gideon Haigh is best known as the premier cricket writer in the world, but his interests and skills stretch far beyond cricket, as his absorbing and confronting account of abortion in Australia demonstrates.

The Racket is a history of abortion practices in Melbourne prior to decriminalisation. Haigh explores the relationship between the police and abortion and demonstrates how it wasn't a law that the police regularly enforced due to a mix of  heftty, payoffs, difficulties in obtaining convictions and a feeling that it wasn't as important as some of their other duties.

The books greatest strength is Haigh's trenchant exploration of the reality of abortion when it was banned. A piece of paper declaring it illegal wasn't going to stop women who did not want the baby from not having the baby. What it did very well was force them to abort themselves in dangerous, unhygenic manner or work with abortionists who would do the job for them, often in a dangerous, unhygenic, manner for a great deal of money. Many abortionists charged according to how expensive your car was.

I did find it difficult to identify with any of the characters from the book, possibly because the major characters were largely dead when Haigh wrote the book and a great deal of their motivations and concerns could only be inferred. Consequently the book was slow going at times and it wasn't an easy book to read in any case due to the subject matter. Nevertheless, it comes highly recommended as an account of what illegal abortion looks like in practice.

At time of writing, the book could be found on sale here