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Population Services International (Australasia)

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Stuartyeates (talk | contribs) at 18:15, 2 November 2023 (Commenting on submission (AFCH 0.9.1)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

  • Comment: Looking good overall. First reference is primary and need to be removed. Link to Abortion in Australia needs to be working into lede. Feel free to pin my talk page when these are done. Stuartyeates (talk) 18:15, 2 November 2023 (UTC)


Population Services International (Australasia) Ltd was an Australia-based subsidiary of the North Carolina, USA-based Population Services International, operating as a not-for-profit corporation continuously registered in Australia from mid-1973 to 1992,[1] with the mission of providing contraception and safe abortion services.

PSI Australasia’s founding Director was Geoffrey Davis, an Australian physician who in the 1960s had provided discreet early-stage pregnancy termination services from clinics he operated in the Potts Point and Arncliffe,[2][3] two suburbs of Sydney in New South Wales, prior to the partial legalization of abortion in New South Wales in 1971.

After additional training and practice in London in the late-1960s, Davis was hired as a Director of the PSI parent corporation in 1971.[4] He was best known for his work the following year in Bangladesh,[5][6][7] leading a team performing an estimated 200,000 abortions[8] on Bangladeshi women and girls, who had been systematically raped by Pakistani soldiers during Bangladesh's 1971 war of national liberation.

By the time he assumed the direction in 1974 of PSI Australasia under the title PSI Project Director - Southeast Asia and Oceania[4], Davis had accumulated extensive experience in terminating first-trimester pregnancies via menstrual extraction (aka vacuum aspiration)[3] and was using an expeditious technique for terminating second-trimester pregnancies that he had developed two years earlier in Britain[5] and had already deployed on an “industrial scale”[9] in 1972 in Bangladesh.

PSI Clinics

The first PSI clinics to open in Australia were in the Sydney inner suburbs of Potts Point and Arncliffe,[10] the same locations where Davis had provided abortion services while in private practice in the 1960s. The Potts Point clinic served as the headquarters of PSI Australasia.[11] An anesthetist by training, the Australian Medical Association reportedly would not allow Davis to publicize his association with the PSI clinics at the time.[10]

The new PSI clinics operated within the context of increasingly high demand from women across Australia[12] and New Zealand[13] for safe and legal abortion, following court rulings in the states of Victoria (1969) and New South Wales (1971) that permitted abortion when a medical practitioner determined that failure to terminate a pregnancy posed a risk to a woman’s life or her physical or mental health.[14][15]

Davis planned to address the high-demand market opportunity by using quick-turnaround pregnancy termination procedures he had developed, delivering easily accessible, "high through-put"[16] services, both by appointment or for "'walk-in clientele'... accepted for same-day treatment".[16]

The first clinic, opened in late 1974 under his direction as the head of PSI Australasia, was on Challis Avenue in Potts Point and mainly provided first-trimester abortions. The experience for women patients, as later described by Davis, included an optional interview, a medical exam "and theatre time would usually be three minutes... within 15 minutes of entering the theatre, most are back in the dressing room recovered from the anesthetic."[16]

The second and larger clinic to open in 1975 on Foster Road in Arncliffe[12] was “equipped to deal with later-stage abortions”[16] and was located in premises rented from and adjacent to the Rosslyn private hospital[17] – a convenient location in case of complications that might arise in the more difficult later-stage procedures, requiring hospitalization.

The services offered by the new PSI clinics differed in two substantial ways from services being delivered by existing abortion clinics, including its main competitor Preterm. PSI offered much later-stage abortions, beyond the Preterm limitation of nine weeks' gestation, and PSI abortions were performed under general anesthetic, rather than the then-customary local anesthetic[12].

The system Davis had devised was intended to deliver “a technically perfect procedure in minimum time. The reason for speed was to shorten the period of anesthesia.”[16]

References

  1. ^ "POPULATION SERVICES INTERNATIONAL (AUSTRALASIA) LIMITED ACN 001 186 401". Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). Retrieved 7 September 2023.
  2. ^ "Gynaecological surgical kit used by Dr Geoffrey Davis". Powerhouse Collection. 2000. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
  3. ^ a b "Vaculyser, medical electrical vacuum pump". Arts CHM Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital Project. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
  4. ^ a b Davis, William (2008). "DR GLR Davis, 1933-2008" (PDF). Sydneybashi-bangla.com. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
  5. ^ a b Trumbull, Robert (12 May 1972). "Dacca Raising the Status of Women While Aiding Rape Victims". The New York Times. p. 2. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
  6. ^ Australian Associated Press (AAP) (22 May 1972). "Bangla move on woman's status". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 4.
  7. ^ D'Acosta, Bina (15 December 2010). "1971: Rape and its consequences: How an Australian doctor tried to help rape victims of Bangladesh". bdnews24.com. Archived from the original on 3 April 2023. Retrieved 2 September 2023.
  8. ^ Mokherjee, Nayanika (August 2007). "Available Motherhood: Legal technologies, 'state of exception' and the dekinning of 'war-babies' in Bangladesh". Childhood. 14 (3): 252. doi:10.1177/0907568207079213. S2CID 144568760 – via SAGE Publications.
  9. ^ Mokherhee, Nayanika (August 2007). "Available Motherhood: Legal technologies, 'state of exception' and the dekinning of 'war-babies' in Bangladesh". Childhood. 14 (3): 344. doi:10.1177/0907568207079213. S2CID 144568760 – via SAGE Publications.
  10. ^ a b McIlraith, Shaun (2 February 1976). "Birth control by regulating menstruation". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 8.
  11. ^ Cunningham, James (30 August 1975). "Birth control expert looks at the Cross". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 2.
  12. ^ a b c McIlraith, Shaun (3 February 1977). "Assessing the demand for abortion". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 9.
  13. ^ Brown, Hayley Marina (2004). "'A Woman's Right to Choose': Second Wave Feminist Advocacy of Abortion Law Reform in New Zealand and New South Wales from the 1970s". University of Canterbury Library. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
  14. ^ Simon, Kathryn (December 2008). "Recent Developments in Abortion Law" (PDF). NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service.
  15. ^ Legal Helpdesk Lawyers (28 October 2014). "R v Wald | 28 October 1971". Legal Helpdesk Lawyers.
  16. ^ a b c d e Frith, Marion (12 March 1977). "About 140 abortions a week planned". The Canberra Times. p. 9.
  17. ^ "'Abortion profiteers' run clinic, says MP". The Sydney Morning Herald. 3 September 1977. p. 9.
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