The Senate Committee enquiring into the RU 486 ("the Abortion Pill") availability within Australia has called for submissions.

Submissions to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee are due by January 16th. E-mail your submission, which must include your name, postal address and telephone number to:

community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au

There are two central issues at play here.

Firstly, there's the issue under investigation by the Senate Enquiry: should the availability of RU486 be determined by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which ordinarily determines both whether a pharmaceutical should be available and what form that availability takes. The Health Minister, Mr Tony Abbott, has used his ministerial power to ban the availability of RU 486. This is his prerogative. But there is a Private Members Bill to take that power away from the Minister and have RU 486's availability determined by the TGA. This is actually what the Enquiry is about.

Secondly, there's the main issue at stake, which most of the submissions to this Enquiry will probably address, but which is actually not under investigation by this Enquiry: the morality of abortion.

While these are two separate issues they are actually inextricably linked for good reason. The Federal Health Minister has exercised his powers because this "Abortion Pill" has several extremely concerning health risks which are disclosed by Danco, the manufacturers of the drug, in their new Medication Guide which states-

* "About 5-8 out of 100 women taking Mifeprex will need a surgical procedure to end the pregnancy or to stop too much bleeding"
* "Some women should not take Mifeprex. Do not take it if:

you cannot return for the next 2 visits

you cannot get emergency medical help in the two weeks after you take Mifeprex.

This alone is grounds for the Health Minister to ban RU 486. But Mr Abbott has also exercised his discretion because we have more information today about the implications of terminating a pregnancy. The decision to legally allow abortion on demand (rather than for serious maternal life-threatening reasons) was achieved in the early 1970s. At the time, it was argued that pregnancy was just a biological condition of the mother and that in the early weeks/months of her pregnancy she was only assembling a new human life.

The following story shows how this myth (that a fetus is just parts of a woman's body coming together over weeks and months to make a new human life, so that when an abortion is done in the first trimester of a pregnancy it is not a human life being terminated but the superfluous parts of the woman's own body) began to unravel even very shortly after the legalising of abortion but there has been what some may call a conspiracy to cover it up...

Dr. Bernard Nathanson was the leading abortion doctor in the United States in the 1970’s. He had campaigned vigorously for the legalization of abortion and he himself had performed 60,000 abortions. He even believed his intentions were good and that he was doing a righteous thing by providing a service that guaranteed a woman’s right to control her body.

But something changed Dr. Nathanson’s point view. It was a medical breakthrough called the ultrasound, introduced in 1976. This device literally opened a window on fetal development. The first time Nathanson saw an ultrasound in action, he was with a group of residents gathered around a pregnant patient in a darkened examining room watching a demonstration by a technician. The technician applied a conductive gel to the woman’s abdomen and then began working a handheld sensor over her stomach. As the screen clarified, Nathason was amazed. He could see a throbbing heart. When the technician focused closely on the image, Nathanson could see all four chambers of the heart pumping blood.

And during the scan Nathanson became convicted. He said that his mind had dropped the word fetus in favor of the word baby. Suddenly, everything he had been learning about the child in the womb since his entry into the medicine snapped into focus. He had known what took place in the womb but somehow seeing it for the first time changed everything.

Bernard Nathanson, the leading abortion doctor in America, became convinced that human life existed with in the womb from the onset of pregnancy. In an article he wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine he wrote, in abortion “we are taking life." That fetus is not mere tissue it is human life.

And another story from the late 1970s makes the same point...

Professor [Robert] George [of Princeton] debated abortion at a convention of the American Political Science Association. His opponent was well-known deconstructionist Stanley Fish. In published articles, Fish had dismissed arguments against abortion as based on "religious conviction" alone, while suggesting that the case for abortion is based on "scientific facts."

But George argued that, on the contrary, what science supports is the pro-life view, by demonstrating that the fetus is fully human. Sonogram pictures show the unborn child responding to stimuli, and doctors are performing surgery on babies in the womb. Today the pro-life position can be supported by empirical evidence that is accessible to everyone.

Before the convention, George sent his paper to Stanley Fish, and when the debate opened, Fish shocked the assembled professors by throwing his paper on the table and announcing, "Professor George is right, and he is right to correct me. Today the pro-life position is supported by scientific evidence."

The audience sat in stunned silence.

(SOURCE: Chuck Colson 7/27/01 Breakpoint Article)

Not only are there serious health issues associated with RU 486, there are major psychological ramifications as well. For example-

Dr. Anne Catherine Speckard, of the University of Minnesota, reports the following long-term (five to ten years) consequences of abortion:

· 81 percent reported preoccupation with the aborted child
· 73 percent reported flashbacks of the abortion experience
· 54 percent recalled nightmares related to the abortion
· 23 percent reported hallucinations related to the abortion
(SOURCE: Josh McDowell, Right From Wrong, page 158)

There are already far too many abortions performed. Some may argue that we have no right to impose "our morality" onto others who are pro-choice (if its possible to consider it 'choice' if only one option is acceptable to an abortionist?). This is an obscene objection. Pro-life is not just defending the rights of the unborn, but of the "already-born" such as political prisoners. How would the same Pro-choice objection sound if used to defend the right of an oppressive military regime to commit genocide (the attempted murder of an entire race of people)? Therefore, this is not an issue of imposing an opinion on others- but the defence of the most basic human right! It has become perhaps the single greatest travesty of justice in human history. The following story illustrates this-

Back in 1994 the featured speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., was a small, fragile woman with no political credentials. Yet she spoke confidently at the podium, surrounded by President Bill Clinton and Mrs. Clinton and various other government officials.

With a steady voice of certainty, Mother Teresa declared: “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion. It is direct war against the child, a direct killing of an innocent child …Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use any violence to get what they want…By abortion the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And by abortion the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.”
(SOURCE: Michael G. Moriarty, The Perfect 10: The Blessings of Following God’s Commandments in a Post Modern World, pp. 133-134)

--------------------
Therefore, please consider putting in a submission to this Enquiry. There's a lot at stake! Submissions can be posted or sent as an email attachment (perhaps using WORD). Something like-

The Secretary
Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600


In regard to the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486) Bill 2005 please accept these comments.

Pharmaceutical drugs should be allowed into Australia only when they enhance life or health. RU486 is a chemical designed to kill unborn children. It has no place in our approved drugs and should remain a restricted good.

The Committee should recommend that the Bill be rejected.

Andrew Corbett, December 2005

_________________