She thought she was too young to care for a child and was doing what she needed to do. He thought he was taking care of his woman. The Crown wanted them both convicted as criminals. The court heard uncontested evidence that Brennan had arranged for the medical abortion pill, a prostaglandin called misoprostol and anti-progesterone called mifepristone, to be posted from Russia by his sister, and that these pills were taken by Leach after she thought she might be pregnant. The jury acquitted them both following direction by the judge that the Crown had to demonstrate that the drugs must be ''noxious'' to Leach (but not to a foetus which may or may not have been present). Nicholas Fiske, dean of health sciences at the University of Queensland, for the prosecution, had provided expert evidence that medical abortion had been used by millions of women around the world and the drugs were safe for women. The law the couple were alleged to have broken was an old one, based on the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act of the English Parliament. Crafted in another century in another country and for another time, the law was designed to protect women from the harmful effects of abortion carried out with the coathangers and poisons that preceded surgical and medical abortion and antibiotics. Women died from abortion then as they do all around the world, even now, wherever abortion is illegal.

The law, the police, the judge, the lawyers, the doctors were all men, acting in a drama that had its origins when women were chattels and there was no notion that ''women's rights are human rights''. Our sensibilities are different now. It felt plain wrong that the most intimate details of a woman's reproductive body should be on display for the court, the full public gallery, and the media. The date of her last menstrual period, the result of the pelvic exam, the bleeding and pain: all explored in detail in the police interview and replayed for the court. The police had gained access to medical files, pathology reports and the results of ultrasounds and presented the details as evidence. Three reluctant doctors were required to testify about their consultations with Leach, consultations which they and she would have presumed were confidential. These are details properly reserved for private consultations between a woman and her doctor. In Victoria, the last time we had to witness police trawling through women's intimate medical records was when doctors were raided in 1967 and then charged with unlawful abortion, and in 1986 when a doctor was charged. The jury acquitted those doctors, too.

Changes to Victoria's abortion law in 2008 mean that no woman or her doctor will be forced to undergo this ritual humiliation ever again. In model legislation that is among the best in the world, abortion is no longer in the Crimes Act in this state and is dealt with as part of normal medical practice. Women, their partners and doctors in Queensland and New South Wales, however, are still at risk of prosecution for illegal abortion under archaic laws unsuited for a modern century. This is despite widespread, consistent community support for decriminalisation of abortion. In Cairns, the Women's Network has directed this support towards the politicians whose responsibility it is to change the law so that women and their doctors are no longer at risk of public humiliation for carrying out an essential medical procedure. The public reaction to the charges against Leach and Brennan was all in support of the young couple. The 24-hour vigil when they were committed for trial, the three-day tent embassy outside the court during the trial, the signing of postcards and petitions and the presence of women from all over Australia to witness the trial were evidence of how out of touch the Queensland Parliament is on this issue.

Loading They say the best way to have a bad law changed is to enforce it. I hope that this attempt to enforce the law that makes criminals out of women who have abortions and those who help them leads the Queensland MPs to replicate the wisdom of their colleagues in Victoria, and remove this ancient and offensive provision from their Crimes Act. Abortion law reform activist Jo Wainer is a senior research fellow at Eastern Health and Monash University.