THE current debate about RU486 is primarily concerned with two topics.
The first is the “conscience vote” of all parliamentarians and the power of Australia’s Health Minister Tony Abbot to veto the drug RU486 or Mifepristone instead of the Therapeutic Goods Administration approving the drug.
Secondly, it is about the “issues” associated with “access” for country women to abortion, and therefore, the medical and emergency services available for rural women.
It is clear that the media want to avoid (where possible) the argument about abortion being “right or wrong”, and whether RU486 is a “healthy, safe and legal” option (thus avoiding culpability).
The next step deserves a separate debate/argument all to itself, and, defended with great fervour by pro-life supporters, it would be the ultimate victory.
Like it or not, Mr Abbot has the right to veto. John Howard (who we voted back in) gave the Health Minister that right in 1996 as a concession to Senator Brian Harradine to gain support for the sale of Telstra.
The concession was supported by both Liberal and Labor parties.
Parliamentarians (elected by us) are going to have a “conscience vote” on the topic.
All members from every party, all backgrounds and beliefs in parliament are voting on a topic which when looked at in black and white is asking the question: “Do we allow into our country a lethal cocktail that constitutes a new form of medical violence, endangers Australian women’s lives and violates their right to be free from bodily harm, trivialising a very serious situation that jeopardises a woman’s life and ends that of her unborn child?”
Due to the nature of the debate John Howard has asked members of parliament to vote with their conscience – the faculty or power of inward principle which decides the character of one’s own actions, purposes and affections, warning against and condemning that which is wrong and approving and prompting that which is right.
Why all the worry? Why the media frenzy?
If abortion of any kind is morally right and not contradictory why are all pro-choice people worried about RU486 when it comes to a vote of conscience?
How can you make a decision in the best interests of Australian women’s health conscerning a drug if you don’t assess all its social, moral and ethical implications?
Pro-choice groups have presented traditional abortion as “safe and legal” for decades.
Now faced with the introduction of RU486, conventional abortion is being referred to as “surgical” and therefore unsafe.
How could a “chemical” abortion be safer?
RU486 abortion has a grave difference and it lies in the fact that once the drugs have entered a woman’s body, the risks of chemical abortion defy control.
Complications that can occur with RU486 tablets (and prostaglandin taken two days later) can draw out the abortion process to two weeks or more.
Some common side-effects are nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, pelvic cramps, and bleeding for up to 40 days.
As a mother and concerned country woman I could fill pages with the documented complications but instead here are two that should be enough!
About 33,600 US women annually undergo a second and surgical abortion because their RU486 abortion was “ineffective”, 16,000 women per year required blood transfusions due to haemorrhage. Not an insignificant few. I would hardly consider RU486 “safe”.
It’s not just about “choice” and issues associated with “access” to abortion for rural women.
How on earth is RU486 going to help country women in already under-resourced and overburdened rural hospitals?
It would be parliamentary and medical gross negligence to allow such a dangerous cocktail fraught with serious known consequences into Australia.
It is blatantly obvious, we don’t need it!
ANNELISA CORBOY
Wangaratta, Vic
