Janet Fraser Janet Fraser i(20061546 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 I Could Be a Hero i "Ride forth on the appointed day", Janet Fraser , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Hecate , January vol. 46 no. 1/2 2020; (p. 122)
1 y separately published work icon Born Still : A Memoir of Grief Janet Fraser , North Melbourne : Spinifex Press , 2020 20061586 2020 single work autobiography

'How did we move so far from love that a mother’s grief became the vehicle with which to punish her?

'Losing a baby during childbirth is one of the most heartbreaking things imaginable. But to then be accused of causing that death is nothing short of soul-destroying.

'Janet Fraser’s story shows what happens when private grief is turned into a public accusation against a woman who dared to exercise choice about how and where she gave birth.

'This sobering book demonstrates the penalties dished out to women who question medical orthodoxy and to make decisions for themselves about their own bodies.

'When things go wrong in a hospital, it is seen as unavoidable, and no one is to blame, as the medical institutions are seen as the arbiters of decision-making. The layers of bureaucracy protect insiders.

'Yet if a baby dies in a home birth, the full weight of the law comes down upon the woman who dared to give birth outside a hospital.

'Janet Fraser is that woman and this is her story of injustice, loss and grief. This painful yet enlightening book shows that the patriarchy still wrestles for the control of women and their bodies —and punishes them with every tool in the legal handbook when they contest the view that their bodies are public property.'

Source: publisher's blurb

1 Towards an Autoethnography of Stillbirth Janet Fraser , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: Hecate , vol. 45 no. 1/2 2019; (p. 175-186, 309)

'In 2009, the author gave birth at home to her third child, and second daughter, who was stillborn. This paper is about some of that experience of birth, police investigation, the coronial inquiry and the personal aftermath over the last seven years since the inquest. There was a three-year wait from birth to inquest which was a very long gestation and a time in which she could not speak out. Between her activism on behalf of birthing women through a long campaign by doctors and some midwives to remove consumer-driven homebirth from Australian women, and her refusal to be an obedient woman, public punishment had to be devised. The paper draws out the ways in which loss is described depending upon the perceived level of social compliance of the woman, or girl, who was pregnant, including experiences of pregnancy and birth that were made public such as those of Keli Lane, a young Australian woman convicted of murdering her baby.' (Publication abstract)

1 Hag i "Once upon a time mourning", Janet Fraser , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Hecate , vol. 45 no. 1/2 2019; (p. 115-116, 309.) Hecate , January vol. 46 no. 1/2 2020; (p. 186)
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