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Political will or safer pill?

By David van Gend - posted Friday, 9 December 2005


Just over a week ago in Brisbane 700 women gathered to demand this sort of constructive approach. Melinda Tankard Reist, spokeswoman for Womens Forum Australia, said:

We've got all this political will to give women a drug, a poisonous drug, a chemical cocktail, to abort their pregnancies.

What about some political will into providing them with support and bringing about structural changes so that they can have their children and don't have to have unwanted abortions?

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RU486 is a uniquely complex social challenge and its fate should be decided by those elected to judge on matters of public concern - not by bureaucrats dealing only with sterile technical matters of safety and efficacy.

If parliament votes to dodge responsibility, by supporting the Democrat amendment, it will by timid default give its imprimatur to the misguided and unjustifiable practice of abortion on demand for non-medical reasons.

Instead of addressing the root cause of those social abortions through creative social policy initiative, it will callously permit a human pesticide to be inflicted on mothers and their babies, a drug which will be part of this terrible disease, not part of the cure.

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First published in The Courier-Mail on December 1, 2005.



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About the Author

Dr David van Gend is a Toowoomba GP and Queensland secretary for the World Federation of Doctors who Respect Human Life.

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