RU486?
RU486: good news for women's health
The Senate voting to overturn the restrictive legislation banning RU486 is good news for democracy and good news for women's health. This reflects the broad community attitudes that politicians are not medical experts and these complex medical decisions must be referred to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, as it is for all other drugs. Now it depends on the House of Representatives to get it right this week and transfer the responsibility for importing this drug into Australia.
Incidentally, I wonder how many people are aware that RU486 does not cause the abortion of pregnancies; it simply reduces the natural progesterone and makes the uterus respond to the second medication, prostaglandin (which is an approved drug!). All this hysteria about RU486 is not relevant. But why let that get in the way of a good media story!
Dr Pieter Mourik (obstetrician and gynaecologist), WodongaAbortion, anyone?
In the RU486 Senate debate, those describing themselves as pro-choice repeatedly said the debate was not about abortion, only the process for the approval of RU486. However, all who described themselves as pro-choice voted to give responsibility for RU486 to the Therapeutics Goods Administration. On the other hand, all senators who declared themselves pro-life or anti-abortion voted to keep the control of RU486 with the Minister for Health. The Senate simply voted along lines for or against abortion.
Please, pro-choicers, be honest! Admit the RU486 debate is about abortion. Then please finish your sentences. Please tell us you are for the choice of a woman to end her baby's life.
Reverend Eugene H. Ahern, Saint Francis Xavier parish, FrankstonSo let's debate it
There is no doubt in my mind that the only reason that the pro-choice people want the responsibility for RU486 taken away from the Health Minister is to make its introduction easier. Any talk about administrative rights is just noise to hide the true purpose of the debate, which is really about abortion itself.
Australians have never had a proper debate to consider the question of abortion, nor do I expect there to be one in the near future. Instead, the laws on abortion followed the extreme examples of life-threatening illness or mental illness to justify what as claimed to be only a few cases per year. No one could ever imagine that this would lead to 90,000 per year.
Flicking responsibility of this 90,000 to the states raises the question of why federal funding is used for the procedures. Approval of money cannot be separated from how it is to be used. Approval of a drug cannot be separated from its purpose.
Damian Murphy, WestmeadowsBeyond Abbott
If politicians of an anti-abortion persuasion have the numbers, they will be successful in having approval for the use of RU486 pill determined by Health Minister Tony Abbott. However, a future health minister may not share Mr Abbott's doctrinal values and could permit its use. Will those now arguing that this should be a matter for ministerial determination accept that decision?
Roy Arnott, Reservoir
RU486 is a drug that facilitates pregnancy termination. Surgical pregnancy termination does the same thing. Anti-abortionists are attempting to completely hijack the private member's bill on who approves the drug by using it to generate a debate about abortion - which is going to continue regardless of whether or not RU486 is available. The Reverend Eugene, for example. Do these people think if they say it enough times that it will miraculously become true? Do you think that's the miracle they're praying for each night before they go to bed?
Even if the bill is defeated, abortion isn't going to be stopped. But if RU486 isn't available it will simply be a small victory for the vindictiveness of the anti-abortion lobby and their disregard for the welfare of women who have an abortion. Spiteful little cunts.
Added to that, the way that they use the emotional hyperbole is disgraceful. Fuck you, Eugene, and your guilt inducing accusation that women are killing their babies. Get off your high-moral superiority-horse and get a bit of compassion about you, fuckwit. They're not babies and your lies don't help anyone at such a point of stress in a woman's life.
As for the abortion debate in general, you might want to have a look at a new documentary, screening its world premiere at ACMI as part of the Real Life on Film documentary festival - abortion, corruption & cops: the bertram wainer story - set in times before abortion was legal, when backyard abortions were the second greatest killer of women in Australia. But then, I guess the anti-abortion lobby hasn't baulked at the challenge of murdering medical practitioners who carry out abortion procedures so why should I be surprised that they would want to take this country back to the days when the deaths of a few godless bitches wasn't such a bad thing.
And how curious that all these men see it as their place to determine what women can do with their own bodies.
Technorati Tags: ru486, abortion, pro-choice, real, life, on, film, acmi, backyard, abortions, mortality, medical, practitioners, documentary, godless, australia, vindictiveness, anti-abortion, abbott, termination
ABC
Why we need a 'biased' ABC
The ABC has survived despite the appointments of several inadequate general managers — and despite Government bias against it. The organisation can still hold its own in terms of its brilliant current affairs and good news services even though it is underfunded and criticised.
It's a wonder that with a Liberal-biased board of directors that it has the latitude to report freely at all.
Governments continually condemn the ABC's left-wing bias and yet without the ABC there would be little account for the Government's decisions.
It is necessary and essential for the ABC to always be left of centre — whichever Government is in power. To be completely "unbiased" and not be opinionated is to be weak in my terms.
The people of Australia need the ABC and all its multi-functions, and it is a sad reflection that perhaps the ABC is not getting the general managers it deserves. For all his "calming" influence, Russell Balding was not the right man for the job. He is an accountant, a numbers man, and accountants should not be at the head of an expansive, free-thinking organisation. We need men of vision as managing directors, inspired leaders with a grand vision of where the ABC ought to stand in our society.
These days, in particular, when the Liberal Party has a free hand to make terrible blunders, we need an unshackled ABC with enough funds to keep us freely informed.
Gordon Bick (former ABC Four Corners producer), RosebudAlert and alarmed
Past defender of the ABC against political attacks Russell Balding has resigned at a crucial time — during a Government review to determine future funding for Auntie. It's time to set up a 24/7 "citizens watch" for any sign of a Jonathan Shier look-alike lurking in the wings.
Lesley Cowie, Blackburn
Not only does the ABC need to be allowed to run without government interferance but it should be properly funded to do so as well. Since when did politicians become such gutless turds that they have to destroy all organs that provide a level of accountability? Oh, that's right, since they could because the people can't be stuffed making a ruckuss about anything.
I used to like the ALP. Hell, I even used to be a member. But that was before they completely sold out and became a spineless mass that couldn't make a decision without checking in with the pollsters to see what Jane A. Citizen living in Waverley thought about it and then go along with that view.
Hear hear, Lesly Cowie, it's beyond time we had a citizens watch to look out for the ABC. I'm with you - who else is coming?
Can we start by pressuring 3LO to stop installing vapid, tedious afternoon announcers that wouldn't know how to be controversial if their lives depended on it?
Technorati Tags: abc, bias, alp, liberal, russell balding, citizens watch, accountability, pollsters, funding
The depressed nation
Get back on the horse
PREMIER Geoff Gallop's resignation sends the wrong message regarding depression. How many people have the luxury of retiring on a government pension the moment they become ill?
As a GP who has successfully treated hundreds of patients with depression, my first advice is to always get back on the horse as soon as possible after falling off. By all means take some sick leave, reassess the priorities, rediscover the importance of family and take responsibility for your own health. With modern medicine and supportive counselling, depression is an eminently treatable disease.
If Dr Gallop was sick of politics he should have taken a leaf out of Mark Latham's book and said so!
Dr Colin Hughes, Glen Forrest, WANot funny
DEPRESSION is a major clinical illness with large personal and social costs, as articulated in the opinion piece by beyondblue chairman Jeff Kennett (Opinion, 18/1). But not for cartoonist Michael Leunig who, to have a go at John Howard, on the same day conflates the word "depressing" with the much more serious mental health descriptor "depression". Not only is his cartoon politically inaccurate in that Howard is preferred as PM by a majority of Australians, but the crass insensitivity of the would-be jocular play on words belies Leunig's recent maundering self-professed concerns for humanity
Thomas Hogg, East Melbourne
Depression in Australia has been gaining prominence in the past few years, especially with the publicity of the Beyond Blue organisation - driven primarily by former Victorian premier, Jeff Kennett, as its public face - and the recent retirement from politics of the premier of WA, Geoff Gallop. I wonder if the incidence of depression is growing or just being diagnosed more often because of the growth of public awareness.
If one thinks of the Australian electorate as a person (forget about the politicians for a moment), would it be fair to describe that person as depressed? It would make sense, wouldn't it? It would explain the last federal election result. The hopelessness of the situation that the country is in with: the Australian involvement in Iraq; the entrenched apathy about the wellbeing of asylum seekers in this country with refugees fleeing tyranny or mortal peril being locked in cages out in the desert and being driven slowly insane; Tampa; kids overboard; ... the list goes on. There's surely a national guilt about what has been done in our name so when it came to election time and the agenda was shifted to 'the economy' and what was in it for each individual, financially, and no one was being held to account on these travesties, the electorate glibly nodded along with Howard, figured they'd get something in return for the loss of international karma points and gave the 1 vote to the Libs.
Maybe.
I have to hold out some hope that Australians aren't all money-grubbing, heartless fuckers that stand by the atrocities resulting from the actions of the Howard government. It'd be to depressing to believe otherwise.
I reckon Leunig is completely spot on with his cartoon. And it was funny in the aftershock of Gallop's resignation. If only it were true.
Technorati Tags: depression, beyond blue, jeff kennett, john howard, tampa, children overboard, australian electorate, geoff gallop, leunig