Passing Reference To Form From Non-input Field

I have a bunch of forms in my page, and want to pass a reference to the current form to a javascript function - when, say, a user clicks on a particular element. Normally, within any type of input field, I'd just add something like this:

onclick="my_function(this.form)"

Then, in my_function( form ) I could refer to form. No worries.

But here's the interesting bit. I also want to run the same function when the user clicks on any <a> tag within a form, like:

<a href="javascript: my_function(this.form)"> ... </a>

Problem is, with this code, the form reference isn't passed to the javascript function. the "this.form" bit doesn't work...

I find this rather curious. So the question is, how do I pass a reference to the current form from within a non input field?