Acting with impunity
It is no secret that the Federal Heath minister Tony Abbott and I do not agree on much. In fact I have argued his belief system interferes with his ability to deliver health services to a pluralistic society for some time now…search ‘Abbott‘ on my blog if you want the full bile.
Today it was announced that the Centacare group, the health and welfare arm of the Catholic Church is to receive a portion of the $51 million of a four-year scheme to offer pregnancy support counseling through a new Medicare payment and a 24-hour, seven day a week telephone help line for women, their partners and their families.
This has so many implications. Firstly, the sneaky creation of a specific Medicare payment that will be able to ‘split’ what is currently covering a variety of gynaecological services as to the reason/s for the patient’s visit to a doctor. This specific Medicare number could theoretically be cross referenced with women who then go on to be admitted to the variety of gynaecological services which cover the current Medicare number… and by default get a clearer picture of what’s not going on to full-term in the uteri of the nation’s uppity women.
Then our government, perhaps using the Access Card, could link into Centrelink and find out who the women are who go on to claim a baby bonus within say, 12 months of the date of the call to the pregnancy counseling services. Perhaps our government could track who does the better pregnancy counseling service and pay productivity bonuses.
How will this specific Medicare payment record a call taken from a woman’s partner and a woman’s family? Will it make vulnerable women more or less likely to confide in their partner or family…or anyone?
“Hello is this the pregnancy counseling service? My name is Marcia and I am Steve’s mother. His girlfriend Tracey is pregnant and I am horrified to hear him talk of abortion. I don’t think Steve is comfortable about all this abortion talk, but Tracey is strong willed and I am worried about him not being able to talk Tracey into doing the right thing. I’ve told Steve and Tracey that I’m more than happy to help with the baby and could move in with them if it helps, but she keeps saying she does not want any children. Is that normal? How am I ever going to have grandchildren if she can so easily get rid of her baby? Can I give you Tracey’s number and you can talk some sense into her… “
Perhaps I am being a touch cynical, but if you trust this government or this Health Minister to be truthful, to not have an agenda or to not work towards an annual ‘acceptable’ number of abortions that it would be comfortable with, then I wish you and your reproductive rights well.
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:28 am
What used to be called prying and spying is now known as ‘data mining’ or simply ‘information resource management.’
Take a lesson from the US Social Security card experience; it is their de-facto national ID card but started off as a heath and social services card. These days, you can’t get a job, open a bank account or even rent an apartment without one.
Now Our Masters in Canberra want a bit of that for you & I.
Doesn’t Julian McGauran know quite enough about the medical history of Australians?
January 3rd, 2007 at 3:07 pm
[…] Suki Lombard agains rips Father Tony Abbott, this time for his decision to award a contract for pregnancy counselling to a Catholic faith based service organisation, Centacare, instead of evidence based counselling services. On the issue of privacy in the digital age, Suki rightly and frighteningly observes: This has so many implications. Firstly, the sneaky creation of a specific Medicare payment that will be able to ’split’ what is currently covering a variety of gynaecological services as to the reason/s for the patient’s visit to a doctor. This specific Medicare number could theoretically be cross referenced with women who then go on to be admitted to the variety of gynaecological services which cover the current Medicare number… and by default get a clearer picture of what’s not going on to full-term in the uteri of the nation’s uppity women. […]
January 4th, 2007 at 12:58 am
I cannot believe this latest move by the mad monk – if anything, this should be the definitive sign of Abbott’s inability to do the job, due to his own biases.
January 4th, 2007 at 4:12 am
I would hope that enough people agree with us ab and the portfolio changes hands or better still a change of government.
January 4th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Though I’m confident that a change of government is a tick over 10 years past due, what exactly will we get if Labor wins? After all, Krudd has already allowed his own religious biases to creep into his Parliamentary voting record, this on the stem-cell issue.
While the Greens have done better than ever in the recent elections, that’s mainly due to Labor voters, annoyed with Beazer’s failure to run a real opposition policy (read: not left enough), defecting to the Greens. However, I don’t think there’s quite enough popular vote to seat the Greens, so the preferential system will seat Labor.
A real test of Labor in government would be positive moves to reduce power of the government of the day. If they’re really on our side and not their own, they ought to reinforce federalism, repeal WorkChoices and protect rights to privacy and individual civil liberties.
I spoze we’ll have to suck it and see.
January 4th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
‘Reinforce federalism’ and ‘reduce the power of government’. You are starting to sound like a Burkean conservative Weezil, so there is still hope for you.
On Tony Abbott, I agree he is not fit for the port folio. Tony’s problem, alas, is that he has never been pro-life enough. He is a guy who has described abortion ‘as the least worst option’. He has backed up Mr Abortion Clinton on his dictum ‘safe, legal and rare’.
If I were Health Minster (don’t laugh guys, stranger things have happened) I would immediately call for an end to all funding of abortion, and criminalise the procedure in the Territories. If I was overruled by the Cabinet or the party room, then I’d resign and excoriate my colleagues for their lack of prinicples.
Tony is the wrong man for the job. Get a pro-lifer in there…
January 4th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Be careful Minister,
If you did that then I would postulate that impregnating a woman in the first place is aiding and abetting or accessory…perhaps even conspiracy.
Where would we keep all those criminal seedspreaders Marcel?
January 5th, 2007 at 5:32 am
Marcel, I am a fiscal conservative, a fan of LIMITED free enterprise and an opponent of big government. I’m probably not a Marxist, though I certainly appeciate the finer points of socialism. When I lived in the USA, you probably could have called me an Eisenhower Republican, which is of course worlds away from ‘neo-cons’ or ‘neo-liberals’ like King Shrub. Part and parcel of that sort of conservativism is a granite conviction that government has got absolutely no business under one’s skin and religion has even less place in government.
Still got high hopes for me? Heh, didn’t think so… Still, I’m not done flogging you yet, bud.
Suki’s point is plain and obvious to me. If you can criminalise a woman’s desired operation of her own reproductive bits, why isn’t there any law defining ‘reckless or neglectful impregnation’ by men? Boys ought to be more careful where they point that thing… and a law which makes them face a 21 year mandatory 50% child support obligation- or, as Suki suggests, a hitch in Long Bay- might be just the thing, as long as we are running about shoving religious morality into public law.
Now wouldn’t that create some interesting Parliamentary discussion?
You want a piece of this, Marcel? 😀
January 5th, 2007 at 8:36 am
oh dear Mr Every Sperm Is Sacred has checked in as usual.
Marcy Babe – do you have a spybot that sieves the ethernet day and night for any mention of abortion?
As for you ending any FUNDING for terminations when you are Health Minister, that will not affect the teenagers like I was when I paid cash in a Fitzroy backyard.
Apologies to Suki for even speaking to marcy at HER place.
I have always put forward the view more neatly expressed above by Weezil: since EVERY sperm is apparently SACRED to Tony Marcy and Ratzy, then by bloody hell all the sperm showerers who fail to Follow Up on their fun – should have the damn head removed.
January 8th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Brownie said: “all the sperm showerers who fail to Follow Up on their fun – should have the damn head removed.”
Which one? Any man who recklessly impregnates clearly has only used one head. May as well simply remove only the defective unit. 😉
January 9th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
No one is suggesting that every sperm is sacred. Babies are sacred. Life is sacred.
I am also not suggesting that if every pro-life law was passed then there would be no abortions. Just like anti-kidnapping laws don’t stop all kidnapping and anti-child molester laws don’t stop all child molesting. Better to have strict laws on the books anyway, because it will stop most of the abortions.
Some people are just very determined to kill their unborn child (and then spend the rest of their life shouting at anyone who disagrees with their decision, because they have been so emotionally affected by the trauma, and deep down know it is gravely wrong).
January 9th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Marcel said,
“and then spend the rest of their life shouting at anyone who disagrees with their decision, because they have been so emotionally affected by the trauma, and deep down know it is gravely wrong”
Marcel, I urge you to conceptualise that a woman can also feel gloriously empty with an overwhelming sense of relief that she is no longer pregnant.
These are the women quietly and rightly getting on with their lives.
Have you ever thought that perhaps women have to make their voices heard regarding their right to reproductive choice because of people like you, who are constantly and singularly working towards removing their right to choose. You Marcel, you and people like you, with your dichotomous thinking with no place for empathy, compassion or understanding as to the agonising a woman does before she decides to abort, do more to create trauma for a woman as she is forced to seek out assistance- quietly, guiltily, shamefully, secretly… or god-forbid she calls a pregnancy support counseling service to get advice on her options and gets the ‘religious spin’ which may further add to her trauma…
Fuck! You idiot… take the time to listen to these women and hear their pain that is as much to do with the procedure, the lack of follow-up support, the dearth of skilled therapists that will acknowledge that there can be grief, but their decision remains extant.
While you have a right to your beliefs, your rights stop at my and every other woman’s skin. Write your letters, use this democracy and save the unborn, but do not pour your bile on vulnerable women with your value judgments and expect to use my bandwidth to do it!
January 10th, 2007 at 8:16 am
I don’t know why you even bother to let Marcel comment here, Suki.
If legislation such as he suggests were ever to get Parliamentary airtime, not only would he be laughed out of town, he’d be run out on a rail by at very least half the population.
The point which ALWAYS passes Marcel and his ilk in both lanes at high speed is that NO woman seeks to become pregnant just so she can go out and have an abortion. Abortions are neither fun nor pleasant. It’s not like anyone is making choices between a picnic in the park and a nice, cosy abortion. “Oh boy! You know, for some wacky reason today, I really REALLY want to lie half-naked on a cold exam table, put my legs in some stirrups and have some unfamiliar person jam sharp objects in my uterus! Whee hoo!” is a phrase you will never, ever hear from any woman, no matter how strongly she supports a woman’s right to decide how to operate her reproductive bits.
Abortion, however, remains a necessary medical procedure. It remains the preferable option compared to the psychological trauma of a woman giving up a child for adoption and also the psychological trauma of said child bouncing through the adoption or foster care systems. Moreover, women will continue to assert the right to manage the healthcare of all their body parts, uteri and elbows included, in the way they see fit- and Marcel will remain a furious, raging but completely impotent and inert noise factory.
January 13th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
“The bishops specifically affirm the value of pregnancy counselling that does not direct a client to obtain a particular service, but provides information about all the available options and assists a woman to make their own reasonable decisions after informed discussion. They believe that it is important to support a new system that will reduce abortion advocacy in pregnancy counselling and ensure that the counselling is provided by independent and professional counsellors. So it is pregnant women who find themselves in vulnerable circumstances who we have in mind. We are delighted to be involved in this new Government initiative so as to help them.” -The chief executive officer of Centacare, Bernard Boerma.
January 15th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
i’ve been away for three weeks, and this bit of bollocks was the most disgusting thing i saw when i got back. you could write a book on why this is shit.
i’ll be more eloquent next time i soil your comments.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Helen The Blogger On A CastIron Balcony
has a good post for Blog For Choice Day 22/1/07