Moore TGA, less Health Minister
I was pleased to hear the focused clarity of Claire Moore’s speech to the senate committee this morning in ABC radio’s AM program. Senator Moore is the Deputy Chairwoman of the Senate committee on the question of whether the Health Minister should be allowed to veto RU486 or if its approval/non-approval should be left to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
Senator Moore has warned her colleagues not to turn today’s Senate hearing into a wider inquiry into abortion itself.
In describing what she saw as the committee’s agenda, senator Moore said,
"Well, I’ll listen with an open mind, but I think I would be unlikely to be swayed by any evidence that could possibly say why ministerial discretion should be used in health issues. I have made no secret of the fact that I think that in this process we should be looking at a single referral for all medications."
Thank you Senator Moore!
Unlike your colleagues – One who is woefully ignorant of the law and the other who espouses pro-women policy, yet would be anti-woman 90% of the time.
Image from here
December 17th, 2005 at 8:53 pm
Isn’t it extraordinary that the most vocal pro-lifers’ are all men?
Though Abbott presents a facade of being concerned about the negative effects of RU486, his Opus Dei agenda is transparent.
December 17th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
Great score on the Alcaraz toon, Suki.
There’s no medical grounds on which to continue to restrict RU486, thus ministerial discretion is completely irrelevant.
I frankly had not known that the Health Minsta was solely responsible for approving medications in Australia since 1996, else I would have had something to say about it much sooner.
Tony Abbott is not a qualified medical practitioner. Doesn’t his control over approving medications constitute practising medicine without a licence?
December 17th, 2005 at 11:59 pm
David,
That could be because women who are pro-life just go ahead and have their babies and women who are pro-choice make a choice. Whereas men are always without the power to give birth.
This seems to really piss some of them off.
December 18th, 2005 at 6:01 am
No doubt, something I don’t fully understand is going on in their heads of pro-lifers.
I see one such motivation for their actions as captured in the signs in the back of the cartoon, such as “A woman’s body belongs to a man”. That people who legislate against women’s choice, see women as objects whose purpose is to satisfy their desires/values. Women as objectx rather than as people.
But no doubt other stuff at work in their heads too.
What do you see as motivating the people who fight against pro-choice? Not their arguments that abortion is murder, but the values and motivations behind their actions? I’d ask them, but I seldom can make sense of them.
December 18th, 2005 at 9:06 am
I often see fear and anger.
The really radical pro-life men are truly terrified that women can terminate a pregnancy that they (or one of ‘theirs’) feels they are ‘part owner’ of. They can feel grief and a great sense of rejection.
In this patriarchal society where men are often the most powerful members of our society they have no power in the decision of aborting life. Sure they can (marcel-style) make their positions known, but in the abortion clinic only the woman and the health care provider/s matter.
Some men take this ‘my property’ to extremes in the case of domestic violence hurting both their partners and their children.
I did a post where I explored Russ Nelson’s piece on ‘uterus for hire’
I found it fascinating that the whole idea of money to breed is so abhorrent to society, preferring to go with vague assumptions (what a marriage or de-facto relationship entails) and great expectations of gender roles and responsibilities…sorry I digress.
Christianity or fear of the power of the woman and her ability to summarily dismiss him and his potential progeny usually motivates men who are the most vehemently pro-life. I believe hurting a man rarely motivates a woman when she seeks an abortion, but it is a common unintended consequence.
Consequently, many relationships do not survive beyond the decision to abort a foetus.
December 18th, 2005 at 9:28 am
Excellent distillation, Suki.
Religious belief in the abortion debate is a canard- a total red herring. This isn’t about religion or associated moralities- it’s about power over women. Men want that power- and some women will give it to them. However, no woman should be obligated to give up the power to manage their own bodies as they see fit.
Not until all people have an absolute right to force all others to operate their bodies as they so choose- a very basic, natural human right- will anti-choicers have the right to tell women what to do with their uteri. Wonder how the anti-choicers would feel when women started to demand that all anti-choicers have their legs amputated solely on the will of women who are otherwise fully unknown to them.
December 19th, 2005 at 8:57 am
Suki – Your post reminds me of an article I read in D!ssent. Especially the part about fear and anger.
I’ve put a blog post of it here
I don’t know if it’s still valid, but I liked the ideas it presented.
Weeze – very true. You could start a campaign “my eggs for your legs”.
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A question I’m struggling with at the moment: If it is wrong for pro-lifers to try to abolish a woman’s choice, is it also wrong for scientists/atheists to try to abolish faith.
Basically, I don’t believe in Jesus or God, and I believe it causes more harm than good to believe in someone in the sky looking out for you when there actually isn’t anyone there.
But I can’t see how I can say that other people can’t have a religion, if I can’t say pro-lifers can’t determine my abortion. It seems I’m transgressing their rights to believe what they want to believe.
Any insights?
December 19th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
Unless you are standing outside their churches, trying to stop them getting in, or lobbying politicians to make religion illegal, then I don’t think it’s the same thing.
I don’t mind people saying abortion is wrong. What I mind a great deal is people trying to take away my right to have one.
December 19th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
Maybe.
I guess I’m trying to work out at what point the protecting or endorsement of my rights and values becomes the destruction of some one elses.
I could argue that just as the forcing of Christian Patriarchy values on women leads to the erosion of women’s human rights, the enforcement of women’s human rights leads to the erosion of Christian Patriarchy values.
(About time too, I say.)
I think it is a good thing that it is happening. I fully support woman’s choice and believe in human rights above and beyond all. But it makes me wonder, what do we have the authority to enforce our fellow human beings to do? Is it rights under pining all? Is it values vs rights?
Any thoughts welcome.
December 19th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
My feeling is that it is still different. The women’s vs patriarchy rights is a good example, really.
No-one is stopping women and men from signing up to a life where the man is the head of the household – whereas enforcing the opposite values means that other women are forced to live a certain way.
The difference between negative freedom (the freedom to live your life as free from restrictions as possible) vs positive freedom (the freedom to live your life in the best possible way, according to the values I think are important).
As a general rule, I’d say the main difference is whether the values you are promoting are allowing others to make their own choices, or whether you are seeking to force others to live according to your values. If you are trying to force others to live according to your values, then the burden of proof must be on you to prove why it is necessary to do so, rather than for those opposing it to prove why you shouldn’t.
December 19th, 2005 at 5:25 pm
Well put amanda, with the operative word being ‘force’.
December 20th, 2005 at 5:38 am
I don’t know. I agree with the idea about not forcing others into my values without proving it to be necessary.
But it seems that if I was anti-choice, I could easily justify why it was necessary that we should enforce this principle – as long as I was justifying it to other anti-choice people. They would accept my proof that it is the moral thing to do because they would believe the same. Like, if I was a Christian, I could easily prove the existence of God to other Christians.
(Also – speaking of necessity – wasn’t that one of Howard’s reason’s behind his terror laws – that they were necessary to protect the population.)
Proving things necessary also seems to be a numbers based game. If there were more anti-choice people in a country than pro-choice, then more people would believe the idea that it was necessary to be anti-choice. Too few people would share my values to see that it was necessary to be pro-choice.
Belief that values are neccessary is based on one’s initial values.
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I can now see the struggle involved in all of this. Struggle to educate others, struggle to get others to see our points of view. Which you guys are doing, via the blog, via the activism, etc, etc. Viva la struggle.
Perhaps this struggle is the fuel behind the maturation of a society? We struggle with each other, we grow as a society?