Dr Bertram Wainer - hero to millions of Australian women

Bertram Wainer (1928-87) grew up fatherless in Glasgow’s poor Gorbals district during the Great Dep­res­­sion. He had to go to work after primary school. Fortunately the lad immigrated to Aus­tralia, worked, returned to high school and joined the Aust­ralian army, the institution that funded his medical studies. He studied tropical medic­ine at Sydney Uni then spent 2 years in Papua New Guinea before taking charge of Brisb­ane’s biggest milit­ary hospital. Acting Lieut Col Dr Wainer only quit the military in protest over the Vietnam War, in 1966.

 

Women’s rights didn’t become an issue to Bert until after he had a medical practice in Melbourne; in 1967 a young woman collap­s­ed in his surg­ery, haemorrhaging from an il­l­egal abort­ion. She refused hos­p­it­al for fear of arrest so Bert treated her in the clinic! After that, Dr Wainer dedicated his life to women and fam­il­ies.

Abortion Law Reform Association/ALRA campaigned from 1966. It was there, at meetings of the ALRA, that Jo Rich­ard­son and journalist Lionel Pugh met Dr Wainer. At an ALRA meeting Wain­er proposed doing a test case. If it was breaking the law, the pol­ice would arrest them and they could argue it in front of a jury. 

Bert was angered by safe illegal abortions being av­ailable only to the wealthy. He was further outraged when the police raided Dr James Troup’s gynaecology surgery in 1968, seizing private medical files. Between 1967-71, ill­egal abortions in the two biggest states (NSW, Victoria) were the largest single cause of maternal deaths. 

In Feb 1968, gynaec­ol­ogist Dr James Troup and Sister Peggy Berman were arrested in Melb­ourne by Inspector Frank Holland, and ch­ar­ged with abortion offences. Mrs Berman had been forced to carry sums of cash (in a wheelbarrow) on behalf of her boss, over the years, functioning as a go-between for the doctor and senior police­men, Vic­toria Police homicide squad chief Jack Ford and Jack Matt­hews. Brave Peggy Berman provided sworn testimony about the police protection rackets. 

In 1969, Dr Charles Davidson was charged with an abortion crime. Victorian Supreme Court Justice Cliff­ord Men­hen­nitt, in his landmark Common Law decision of 1969, found a doctor not guilty of perf­orm­ing an illegal abortion on the grounds that a lawful ab­or­tion is one believed by the doctor to be necessary to preserve the woman from serious dan­ger to her life or her mental or physical health. 

The Menhennitt ruling established the Common Law right to legal ab­ortion, the decision meaning Victorian doctors could perform a legal abortion if the danger of con­tinuing the preg­nancy was greater than that of termination. Yet despite the Menhennitt rul­ing that Dr Davidson was not guilty, Vic­t­oria’s written Civil Law re­main­ed unchanged. 

So Dr Wainer set out to test it. He organised abortions for 3 women, one a poor immigrant mother who had 9 children, and publicly invited the state to prosecute. Aw­are of the widespread public support for abortion reform, the government refused to prosecute him. 

Wainer’s fight against the abortion laws brought him into dir­ect conflict with the police and the Conservative state govern­ment. So to expose cor­ruption, he obtained many sworn affid­avits from witnesses involved in the illegal abortion rack­et, women willing to risk police victimisation. These plans demanded enormous personal sacrifices from Dr Wainer and his fellow camp­aig­ners. Journalists pub­lished the evidence, even though Lionel Pugh must have known the risk of him being murdered by the police was high. 

Wainer then placed newspaper ad­ver­tisements calling on women to con­tact him with their evidence. Inevit­ably the doctor and his closest supporters were subjected to ongoing violence and intim­idation. In 1969 Dr Wainer was stab­bed by unknown men and left for dead; his sister’s home was fire bombed; and both he and Jo Wainer were shot at! In 1970, Pugh’s young body was found in a Parkville street with a shotgun and a “suicide” note. The autop­sy found that Pugh could not have fir­ed the shot that killed him. Even the corr­upt­ion evid­ence that Pugh had been coll­ecting disap­p­ear­ed from his home when he died. 

With the help of a journalist Evan Whitton, Wainer rel­eased the aff­idavits to the press. Public pressure forced the government to call a formal inquiry into police corruption. A 1971 Board of Enquiry into Corruption in the Police Force was pub­lished and presented to both Houses of Parliament. Headed by my cousin Judge Wil­liam Kaye, it revealed organised graft since c1953. Each of the corrupt policemen was named individually and his crimes revealed, Superintendents Ford & Jack Matth­ews being gaoled for 5 years and others less. Read Dr Wainer’s own book It Isn’t Nice 1972 . 

Wom­en and families had won. In 1972 Dr Wainer and 3 other doct­ors set up East Melbourne Fertility Control Clinic/FCC. It off­ered pub­lic access to Medibank funded contraception, abortion & steril­is­ation, and counselling. I was head psychologist at FCC from Jan 1976 on.