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Hazel Hawke





MARRIAGE TO BOB HAWKE


Hawke met her future husband Bob Hawke at a church fellowship in Perth. They married on March 3 , 1956 . They lived in Melbourne from 1958 until 1983 , although Bob Hawke spent much of his time in Canberra after his election to Parliament in 1980 . After he became Prime Minister on March 5 , 1983 , the family lived in The Lodge in Canberra until Hawke was replaced as Prime Minister by Paul Keating in 1991 .

Hazel and Bob Hawke have three children: Susan (born 1957 ), Stephen (born 1959 ) and Roslyn (born 1960 ). Their fourth child, Robert, died in his early infancy in 1963 .

Hazel and Bob Hawke divorced in 1995 .


ABORTION


Hazel Hawke has acted as a prominent pro- Abortion advocate in Australia , often drawing on her personal experience of having an illegal abortion in 1952 so that her then-fiancé, the future prime minister Bob Hawke , could further his education at the University Of Oxford .


ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE


On November 3 2003 , the ABC aired an episode of '' Australian Story '' in which Hawke publically revealed that she was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease . Her family had noticed significant short-term memory loss in 2002 , leading to the diagnosis. She had been reluctant to go public about the illness she called the 'Big A', but eventually did so to publicise a fund for supporting Alzheimer's sufferers that she had jointly set up with Alzheimer's Australia .

In , 2004 , Pieters-Hawke revealed that her mother had reached the mid-stages of the disease and was now suffering from quite severe short-term memory loss.


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