The Irony Party of Australia
Encephalatronicalogical Pamphlet
10th February 2006
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Health Minister Put Down on Termination Pill
After the Australian Senate yesterday voted to remove Australian Health Minister Tony Abbott's veto on the approval of the pregnancy termination drug RU486 for public use, Members of the House of Representatives will next week vote on the private members bill that could, if successful, strip Abbott and future health ministers of Ministerial discretion in the matter of the availability of chemical abortion in Australia.
The Senate was decisive last night in passing legislation that could return control of the controversial drug to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, a panel appointed for the purpose of determining which drugs should be available to Australians, and which should be listed on the taxpayer-subsidised Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme . A conscience vote allowed for a significant result: 27 of the 30 women who hold Senate seats in Federal Parliament in Australia voted in favour of the bill. After a self-referential plea from the usually fish-cold Finance Minister Senator Nick Minchin concerning a traumatic incident in his own life, Liberal Senator Amanda Vanstone, briefly freed from the brutally ugly agenda of her Government cohorts, was eloquent in defence of moves to end the Minister's special power and give women access to the termination pill.
If you can come to a view that there can be a just war, why can there never be a just abortion?
Senator Amanda Vanstone, Immigration Minister speaking in the Senate, from ABC TV Lateline report on vote, Feb 9 2006
After a convincing majority of Senators voted for control of the future of RU-486 to be placed in the hands of the gentlemen of the TGA, supporters of the bill are now, to some extent, confident of victory on the contentious change in the Lower House. The rare vote of conscience, in which Party lines are abandoned in a majority ballot, has excited the passions of Parliamentarians, lobbyists, propagandists, and the public alike in recent weeks. Fifty-one of seventy-six Senators stood to speak on the issue Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan, right-hand man of the Prime Minister and infamous loon, put the hysterical case for the negative, after melodramatically indicating to the gallery with a gesture of the hand the 'Killing fields of the Senate.'
Eventually euthanasia will be legalised in Australia. It's trendy, it's the way it will go. And guess what will happen? There'll be a pill come up and it will go to the TGA, not to knock over babies, but to knock over people and we will sit there and say, "Well, that's a matter for the TGA, they're an independent body."
Senator Bill Heffernan speaking in the Senate, from ABC TV Lateline report on vote, Feb 9 2006
However, others spoke well in opposing the bill, particularly where their opposition was not based on ideological and immutable commitment to preventing women's individual choice. And again, both the Coalition and the Labor parties were represented.Queensland Senator Barnaby Joyce found a more moderate expression for his absolute position against the use of RU486:
"Mankind comes unstuck when it fails to respect human life,"
Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce speaking in the Senate,quoted in Sydney Morning Herald article Feb 9 2006
Others, such as Senator Stephen Conroy and Senator George Brandis, posed alternate reasons for their opposition to a bill that will confer power for determining the level of access to the abortion drug:
STEPHEN CONROY: I believe the process should be more open and transparent and accountable and that's why I cannot support the bill, a bill that simply says we give it over to scientists and doctors.
Labor Senator Stephen Conroy speaking in the Senate, quoted in Sydney Morning Herald article Feb 9 2006
While Ministerial Discretion in the matter of RU486 remains the demesne of the staunch anti-abortion Health Minister, it appears there will be no legal access in Australia. Many people perceive the Health Minister's fundamentalist Christian perspective as a dangerous and a primary motivator in preventing the drug from reaching pharmacy shelves here in Australia, despite its ready availability in some countries overseas. Abbott, a Roman Catholic, has used his time in the health portfolio to campaign against abortion, which is legal throughout Australia, reduce women's public access to IVF technologies. In 2004 Abbott warned there was an 'abortion epidemic' in Australia, and raised the prospect of restricting access under Medicare to women seeking late terminations.
Tony Abbott has insisted in recent days that his fundamentalist Roman Catholic perspective is not an over-riding consideration in his determination, generally, of the health policy of the country, or specifically, of the Federal Government's policy on the termination pill. For some critics, however, this raises more questions suggesting that before he makes a Ministerial decision Abbott sets aside his ethical and moral foundations and most deeply held beliefs, in order that he can be more politically lucid, efficacious, and unencumbered. (One question raised: should a Minister represent the people's will, or should a Minister represent the people's will?)
But relief at the prospect of the prising away of the Minister's cloying grip on the controversial drug is tempered somewhat by consideration of the proposed alternative. The issue is distinct from the central issue of abortion. The Therapeutic Goods Administration is a body populated largely with former and aspiring pharmaceutical industry insiders, who are generally disposed towards allowing drug companies access for their products in the Australian market without undue hindrance, particularly if already approved by the equally industry-friendly Food and Drugs Administration of the United States.
Links between the company most actively involved in the development of RU486 in the 1980s - Hoechst A.G. of Frankfurt, Germany, and the eugenics policies that were part of the ideology of the Nazi regime of the 1930s and 1940s, are exploited by critics of the termination pill eager to disparage supporters of abortion in any form with tar from the least salubrious brush imaginable.
In 1947, 24 Farben executives were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials. I.G Farben Chemical Company. It was found the chemical giant was guilty of using Nazi slave labour to build massive chemical plants where the company manufactured Zyklon B, the cyanide derivative used by the Nazis in the extermination of undesirable humans. Originally the Allies planned after the war to split Farben into dozens of individual entities. Ultimately, though, it was divided into three parts - Bayer ,Basf ,and Hoerscht. The Twenty-First Century manifestation of this descendent company of the old pharmaceutical giant Farben, is the world's third largest pharmaceutical conglomerate Sanofi-Aventis. After fifty years of operation of the splinter operation Hoechst the company was operating in 125 countries. Hoechst merged with Rhone Poulenc, another European pharmaceutical giant, in 1999, and became Aventis. A 2004 merger created the modern entity.
The suggestion that Hoechst distanced itself from the development of RU486 in order to avoid the ugly connotations derived from tangible links with the Nazi regime of pre-World War II Germany is plausible, but the use of its Paris-based subsidiary' Roussel Uclaf for the purpose could equally have stemmed from a desire In 1994 Hoechst and Roussel donated the American patent for RU 486 to the Population Council of New York for further development and manufacture within the United States. At the same time Hoechst for a time prevented Roussel from commercialising RU 486 itself.
Whether these sensitivities are interpreted as covering up a sinister continuation of a eugenic philosophy, a manifestation of the distaste of the company's modern executives for the practises of their genocidal predecessors, problematic legal environments, or an awareness of possible sensitivities and consequences, the consideration of underlying or accidental connexion between the production of two lethal substances designed for two very different kinds of euthanasia gives pause for though. Certainly the company was implicated in other devastating chemical-caused human disasters in more recent decades.
It remains unclear whether or not Australians should feel safer, or reassured, that the drug's accessibility may now be determined either on commercial grounds or based on 'scientific merit', neither of which approaches are necessarily the most humane. Again, these concerns are not necessarily related to , but could represent real concerns about the mode of delivery.
The only thing all can agree on is that in the context of the welfare and rights of 10 million Australian women no human, or committee, is well placed to judge on behalf of all.
More variously interesting to ludicrous quotes on the debate in this ABC News article
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