Kamala Emanuel
Pro-choice forces registered a victory when the Senate voted on February 9 in favour of a private members' bill removing the health minister's veto over the availability of the abortion drug RU486.
The bill, which is yet to pass the House of Representatives, repeals legislation enacted in 1996 that has resulted in the banning of import, evaluation and prescription of the drug.
The current federal health minister, Tony Abbot, is an anti-abortion Catholic. In 2004, he sparked a public debate about abortion, claiming Australia was in the midst of an "abortion epidemic".
The 1996 legislation was the outcome of a deal with then senator Brian Harradine in return for his backing for the part-sale of Telstra.
If passed by both houses of parliament, the bill will restore the situation prior to 1996, enabling abortion-inducing drugs to be treated like any other drug, subject to the approvals process of the regulatory Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
The bill was introduced by Democrats Senator Lyn Allison and co-sponsored by women senators of the National, Liberal and Labor parties.
Proponents of the bill pointed out that as the TGA is responsible for the approval of every other drug, it is an anomaly driven by ideology, not science, that abortion-inducing drugs should be singled out for special veto.
Given the support for the use of the drug by a large number of health experts — including the World Health Organisation, the Australian Medical Association, the Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Public Health Association of Australia and Sexual Health and Family Planning Australia — it is expected that an application to the TGA would lead to RU486's approval.
A range of pro-choice groups and individuals made submissions to the Senate inquiry into the legislation.
The Senate committee's report noted that RU486, or mifepristone, is an anti-progesterone that disrupts the endometrium or lining of the uterus, making a pregnancy unable to continue. It is generally used in the first seven to nine weeks of pregnancy, in conjunction with another medication that causes the uterus to contract.
It can also be used in later, second-trimester abortions, although there is less global experience with this.
RU486 has been used in more than a million abortions in Europe and half a million in the US, with few serious adverse effects. It has approval for use in 35 countries, including Britain, New Zealand, South Africa, India, the US and the countries of the European Union.
The report noted that attempting to carry a pregnancy to full term is 8-10 times more likely to result in the pregnant woman's death than having a termination using RU486.
Abbott lobbied strongly in opposition to the bill, making sensationalist claims such as that approval of RU486 would lead to a spate of "backyard miscarriages" — a hypocritical reference to the harm endured by women as a result of "backyard abortions" in the days of illegal abortion.
Debbie Brennan from the Melbourne-based Campaign for Women's Reproductive Rights argued: "We reject the minister's anti-choice attitudes and the mock concern for women's health. If the minister was really concerned about women's lives he would be supporting free safe abortion on demand."
In the weeks before the Senate vote, pro-choice campaigners held several pickets, including outside the hearings of the Senate committee in Sydney, at an Endeavour Forum meeting addressed by Abbott in Melbourne, and at the office of the newly formed group Australians Against RU486 in Sydney.
The bill passed through the Senate with a vote of 45 in favour to 28 against, with the majority of women senators (24 out of 27) and a little under half of the men (21 out of 49) supporting it.
All Greens and Democrats senators supported the bill, while the "conscience" vote of the Coalition and Labor parties split the major parties' vote. Left-wingers found themselves agreeing with Liberal Senator Amanda Vanstone for the first time, when she argued: "To those people who choose to list details of adverse reactions that might have been had to someone who's taken RU486 to list of deaths that might be attributed to it: their argument would carry more weight if they equally listed off the adverse reactions and deaths from surgical abortions and for that matter, from any other medical intervention.
"Life is a risky business. Yes, things go wrong. But where they go wrong is not necessarily an indicator of what we should do for those for whom it will go right."
The vote in the House of Representatives is expected to be closer than it was in the Senate. PM John Howard has indicated his opposition to the bill, and Labor leader Kim Beazley, while anti-abortion, has indicated his support.
A majority of Australians (70% of women and 66% of men) are in favour of RU486 being available, according to a January 19 Newspoll conducted for the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance.
So a vote by the House of Representatives against the bill would be proof of how out of touch the members of the lower house are with community attitudes on abortion and would be one more argument against politicians' interference in women's reproductive affairs.
Either way, the campaign for women's access to safe medical or surgical abortion will continue.
From Green Left Weekly, February 15, 2006.
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