Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Caroline De Costa, Allen & Unwin, $32.99.
Caroline de Costa is the first woman to become a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology in Australia, and she has been an inviolable protagonist standing on the frontline of campaigns for women’s reproductive rights.
Early on in her career she knew the path she would follow. As she recalls, it was 1972 in Dublin: “The entire delivery had taken three minutes and 50 seconds … I was breathless at the excitement of it all. I wanted to be able to do that!”
Her true stories about delivering babies over five decades are emotional and humourous, enlightening, at times irritating, but always inspirational and drenched with resilience. Along the way, she has also made history.
It’s hard to believe that when Caroline applied to become a junior registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology in 1974 she was told: “We never train women in Sydney”. That’s when she and her husband packed their bags, took their children and headed for Dublin.
The professor at James Cook University in Cairns says men have always wanted to control women’s bodies. Caroline has been instrumental in giving Australian women of all backgrounds the opportunity to resist, and to choose when and how they have babies. Her behind-the-scenes stories reveal it’s often the little things that win a campaign.
She “learned even more about taking time to respect women’s decisions about their own health, and to allow them to make their own choices about what they want for themselves”.
When the editor of The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, mother of seven children and author of 15 books first started in medicine, being an unmarried mother was frowned on, cane toads were used for pregnancy tests and giving birth was much riskier than it is today.
The Women’s Doc reveals much has changed in the medical world, but women still work hard and it remains a bloody business.
It certainly has been an engrossing and extraordinary life: Caroline’s personal journey is also the story of women, “… their struggles, resilience and achievements in the face of a patriarchal system that cannot hold them back”.
