Today Pregnancy Help Australia, which is funded by the Government to give impartial advice to women about pregnancy choices, argued the abortion rate is already very high.

"Responsibility for approval for the use of a powerful drug which has controversial consequences, is deliberately life-destroying…should remain with the Minister for Health and Ageing." – PHA Executive Officer Anne Foster.

PHA receives nearly $250,000 a year in federal funding to provide impartial and non-directive advice to women about unwanted pregnancies.

I assume in an effort to show non-directive and impartial advice the PHA also makes submissions to social support seminars advocating for the reduction of pregnancy-to-birth rates in Australians living in poverty and disadvantage, as the rate of children growing up in such life threatening conditions is already very high.

Counselling under the guise of social engineering is despicable.

Using your position of expert to a vulnerable person is unethical and morally bankrupt. Make no mistake PHA, your comments today with terms such as ‘unborn baby’ ‘slowly killed’ clearly articulate your ideological outlook.

Using taxpayer money to fund your agenda in a secular society is actionable. 

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Next Monday, the 6th of February, Edith Weisberg will give evidence in the Senate inquiry into the federal Health Minister’s power of veto over the licensing of the abortion drug RU486. The session precedes a parliamentary conscience vote on the issue, expected on Thursday. 

"I’m going to say that it’s not a question of the availability of abortion in Australia. It’s a matter of women having the same choice [of abortion method] as women in other Western countries." – Dr. Edith Weisberg.

"If you’ve had fun, you can’t get away with it. You have to punish them [women] for their irresponsible and lascivious behaviour." – ibid.

Despite society’s ostensible progress in endorsing women’s sexuality, Weisberg believes abortion control is about repression and so do I.

We are women who can be trusted to make reproductive choices. 

We are NOT little girls who need to ask permission or forgiveness of a patriarchal society.   

Mr. Abbott you are wrong. 

In fact you are brimming over with wrongability.  Lets just see how wrong the current situation with accessing the drug RU486 in Australia is.

1. You are not a scientist.
2. You do not do medical research.
3. The WHO does not run programs with you.
4. You have no medical training.
5. You have no pharmaceutical training.
6. You do not have a uterus.
7. You have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and make grand claims based on assumptions/expectations.
8. You are informed by belief as opposed to evidence.
9. You are not the TGA. 

"There were perfectly good reasons, reasons of principle, not of sordid calculations for saying that this is such an important thing that it shouldn’t be in the hands of the … unaccountable bureaucrats." – Tony Abbott. 

"This use of the drug is sufficiently controversial, if you like – there are sufficient public interest issues involved – for the added accountability of a ministerial decision to be part of that process." – Tony Abbott.

Clearly, in your mind Tony you are Australia’s most pre-eminently, accountable bureaucrat – Wrong again!

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Tonight SBS is showing a documentary examining both sides of the abortion debate across the southern states of the US.

Mississippi is widely known as the most pro-life state in the union. Anti-choice activists pride themselves in making it harder and harder for women in their state to access an abortion.

ROE v. WADE which was decided 33 years ago, made it legal for American women to have an abortion in the first trimester. Since the 1980’s Mississippi has passed 12 laws restricting abortion in the one clinic left in the state. Women accessing the Jackson Women’s Health Organisation where only two of the five Doctors live in the state for safety reasons, must comply with ever increasing laws.  These include:

1. If the woman is under 18 both parents must sign for the abortion to be performed
2. If the woman has travelled from other parts of the state she must wait 24 hours before having the abortion
3. If a woman does not have health insurance the use of Medicaid is banned for an abortion
4. Any Doctor in the state can refuse to discuss abortion or contraception with a patient if it is against their religious beliefs 

Pro-life Mississippi who plan on dismantling ROE v. WADE "limb by limb" is hoping to add six new laws to restrict abortion. These include a sonogram requirement giving a woman the opportunity to view her unborn child and hear the foetal heart tones. 

24/01/06, 8.30, SBS. CUTTING EDGE – THE LAST ABORTION CLINIC

This program looks at how Pro-life advocates are winning the day in Mississippi. In the summer of 2005, more than thirty years after Roe v. Wade established that access to abortion services is a fundamental right, the documentary team behind The Last Abortion Clinic spent two months travelling across North America’s South where states have been particularly active in passing restrictions on abortion. In interviews with abortion providers and their patients, staff at a pro-life pregnancy counselling centre and key legal strategists on both sides of the national debate, the program documents the success of the pro-life movement and the growing number of states with regulations limiting access to abortion. The procedure, while still legal, has become daunting and expensive in Mississippi and elsewhere. Nationwide, there are now fewer abortion providers in the U.S. than at any time since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. The documentary looks at how the ever-increasing number of state abortion regulations and the steady decline in abortion providers will affect the level of influence the pro-choice movement will have in this enduring debate. 

Australia is not Mississippi and this is clearly evidenced in minimal uptake of aaRU486 by the media.

Thankfully here in Australia the buddhists get as much airtime as the uniting church.

"We have already had the public debate about abortion.  The issue is whether or not this particular drug is safe to be released for use in a country where abortion is legally available." – Uniting church’s Australian president Dr. Dean Drayton.

"Although the Buddhist community is opposed to killing of any kind, it is not Buddhist policy to impose its views on others." – The Chairman of the Buddhist Council of NSW, Graeme Lyall

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Queensland MP Peter Slipper is quoted as saying: 

"I believe it would be a negation of our responsibility if we were to flick the decision to an unelected body, an unaccountable body, such as the TGA. I believe the minister is the appropriate person to make the decision. Governments and elected representatives are elected to govern – it is important to stand up and take a stand on issues of importance. This is a key issue on whether there ought to be legalised another means of killing unborn children." 

If this is the case then I demand that the government stand up on all issues of importance such as the slump in the building industry.  The rate of building permits for new houses has dropped significantly and if we don’t build our houses now, using strong saplings, then there will be no houses for when our house-building population ages. 

Every sapling needs to be saved from the axe. If the government is serious then it would ban the axe. You could still use a chainsaw (and we won’t acknowledge chainsaws), but the axe would be banned.  Axes can only be used with the express permission of the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.  The minister owns no hand tools, has never built a house and has a distrust of axe wielders, but he is an elected representative.

Non-axe users would be paid $3119 dollars every time a sapling is saved to become a house.  This amount could be increased to $4000 from July 2006 and $5000 from July 2008.

This is a key issue on whether there ought to be legalised another means of killing unbuilt houses.

Image from here