Gideon Haigh is quite simply one of the best – and most intriguing – writers working in Australia today. He is amazingly prolific on a variety of subjects, but entirely consistent in delivering elegant prose that engages thoughtfully with his subject and wears its (often considerable) research lightly.

The Racket is a narrative history of abortion in Australia prior to its legalisation in 1968, detailing the Mob-like web of criminal influence that ran the highly lucrative ‘racket’ and fleshing out the stories of the people caught in it, from the abortionists, police and courts; to the hospitals often charged with finishing dangerously half-done jobs; the women and their families who were driven to what was then a dangerous and desperate act; and Bertram Wainer, abortion’s crash-through-or-crash campaigner.

This is not a book that makes moral judgments on either side, but it does give us a local and historical perspective on an issue that is often framed, these days, in terms of the quite different contemporary American debate about right-to-life versus right-to-choose. For me, this book brought home how important it is to have access to safe medical abortions – the alternatives for desperate people, as shown here, are deeply disturbing.

[[jo2]] Jo Case is the editor of