Caroline Le Couteur is a valued MSI Asia Pacific donor, whose support makes incredible things possible. Here, she shares the events that shaped her, and her hopes for women and girls everywhere.
At the time, I wouldn’t have called myself a feminist but… the late 60s and 70s were a pivotal time in my life, and the lives of many women. For a start, we had accessible birth control for the first time. The pill changed everything.
This, combined with the freedom enabled by the pill, meant that we had choices our mothers never had.
The Vietnam War also had a huge social impact. While women weren’t drafted to fight, it impacted our families, friends and partners, and reshaped our roles as women in society.
My passion for sexual and reproductive choice began… in a period that enabled great hope for the future. The Whitlam Government implemented the single mothers’ pension, which gave mothers in tough situations a much-needed means of surviving.
The Vietnam War was over, which was huge. Women had rights – both for technological reasons and social reasons – that we’d never had before.
It was a time of great, great optimism.
My perspective grew when… I went to Papua New Guinea. It was a program set up to enable Australian uni students to live in villages in Papua New Guinea over the long summer vacations. For a few months, I lived in a tiny village called Buka, off the coast of Bougainville.
While I was there for a relatively short time, it was one of the pivotal influences in my life. I was the only foreigner I saw in that entire time, and I saw firsthand how traditional practices shaped the people’s way of life. It became obvious to me that rapid cultural change was challenging the structures that had maintained stability.
I feel angry when… I think about the banning of abortion rights in parts of the US.
I feel hopeful when… I see the passionate reactions of many people in the US and worldwide, who are fighting to make sure reproductive healthcare remains a human right.
I hope that for women and girls, MSI’s work means… that they only get pregnant if that’s what they want to happen for themselves. And that they get pregnant with the partner that they choose.
I would encourage others to join me in donating to MSI… so that every child is a wanted child, and women have control over their bodies.
Our work wouldn’t be possible without generous donors like Caroline. Will you join her?