ABSTRACT
This final chapter thinks about the way the past has directly informed the present, especially when considering matters of contraception, abortion, and sexual education in a politically conservative state, to demonstrate the importance of this research. The research is significant because it provides the necessary and original historical context for ostensibly anomalous incidents and provides an analytical framework in which to understand contracepting lives in Queensland. When examining the history of birth control and abortion in Queensland through discourses of power and gender, the previously understudied motivations behind twenty-first-century reproductive politics become much more obvious. This research is not just about the legal and political regulation of particular sexed bodies by the state, it is also about agency and resistance to state control. The emphasis on rights, morality, and autonomy are as present in current debates as they were in twentieth-century Queensland. Understanding this historical context is crucial in giving careful and considered analysis of present-day debates, but it is equally as important in the historical canon on its own.
