CSIRO's political partisanship.

• Author: Francis, Charles
• Position: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation editorial on abortion - Critical essay
• Pages: 70(3)

Last year, the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) journal Sexual Health (2007, 4) published an editorial by Jo Wainer entitled "Abortion and the full humanity of women: nearly there". It strongly supported the legalisation of all abortion.

There were many aspects of the abortion debate to which Wainer had not adverted, so I sent CSIRO Publishing an article approximately the same length as Wainer's three-page guest editorial. This was promptly rejected; but CSIRO Publishing indicated I could submit a shorter article complying with their guidelines for scientific manuscripts (which Wainer's clearly had not), which they might publish provided it was peer-reviewed.

I duly prepared an article complying with the CSIRO guidelines. It came as no great surprise when I received a letter on 29 May advising me that my manuscript was not suitable for publication.

There was, of course, virtually no scientific evidence in Wainer's article. She devoted much of her article to attacking Australia's heritage of Irish Catholicism and "fundamentalist" religious opposition to abortion, which, she said, stemmed "from an unstated position that the role of women is to serve the family, in which the male is the head of the household and draws his authority from an all-male clergy, which derives its authority from the male Christian God". One wonders what this analysis had to do with scientific facts in relation to women's health, and what place it had in a journal purporting to be science-based.

What follows is an edited version of my so far unpublished rejoinder to Ms Wainer's article:

*****

In her article, Jo Wainer categorises abortion as a "health service". However, most abortions today have nothing to do with women's health. Advances in medical science have ensured that pregnancy seldom constitutes a serious danger to a woman's life or health. There is now abundant evidence that abortions performed for mental health...