It doesn’t matter if abortion drugs become legal or not, as a doctor prescribing such drugs to a woman will still have to abide by the abortion legislation of that state.

As discussed in another forum, many doctors do not understand legislation relating to abortion, and the legalisation of abortion drugs may not necessarily improve their understanding of abortion legalities ( See http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/181_04_160804/dec10242_fm.html)

The issue of Senator Barnaby Joyce is interesting in the context of the OLO iParliament article in which Senator Andrew Bartlet has condemned Senator Joyce’s desire for secret ballot in the Senate. http://www.iparliament.com.au/media.asp?id=274.

However one has to look at the Senate as it operates now. Few Senators will even respond to letters from the public, and for the most part, most Senators are completely unknown to most members of the public.

Secret ballot in the Senate could help to make the Senate into a true house of review, instead of just being a faceless but expensive rubber stamp for the House of Representatives.

At present all attention is on Barnaby Joyce, but with secret ballot, much more attention will be given to every senator (and maybe they will have to stay awake more often in parliament, and properly earn their keep)

Could be intruding,

but see the chance as an old countryman, to show anger over the way Barnaby Joyce voiced what was a dinkum old Country Party grizzle, but quickly succumbed to a Federal National Party group who might as well now be known as members of the Liberal Party.

Such would no doubt have had Black Jack McKewan turning in his grave especially as our new farmer's rep' in the Federal Government, Mark Vaille is a former real estate agent.

Looking at the situation historically it is believed that farmers should return to their real historical roots, as the French would say, agrarian socialism, which interestingly can be either right or left, as were Hitler's Volk as right wing, and Stalin's Kulaks as left wing, but whom Stalin largely destroyed because though they agreed a single authority was needed to sell their produce, they refused to give away their rights to farm ownership, Stalin sending most of them to Siberia.

In modern terms, this means that farmers should not give away their special historical rights in regard to terms such as economic rationalism and the free-market, terms really more related to neo-colonianism, and corporatism, meaning the big takeovers of the little by the big, as we are seeing with George W's Americans, and with the Howard government right now.

Politicians both like Barnaby Joyce and Mark Vaille, could learn much from certain old retired cockies, but maybe better to go back to university for a while, if indeed they've ever been there?

Abortion is one of the greatest crimes of our time, where irresponsible people use abortion as an equivalent to contraception. Go for it Barnaby! The heading to this article regarding a pound of flesh is soo tastless and dehumanising it should be removed. It identifies the case of murder of the pound of flesh of the innocent.

I am anti-the anti-choice movement.

Though I wouldn't be too concerned. The extremists who promote federal restrictions on abortion (which would have to be quite limited anyway) clearly do not have the balls (or the ovaries) to actually effect any changes.

When one considers the Coalition's industrial relations cop-out, one cannot help but be reassured that there is no way whatsoever that the government would go anywhere near any radical reform in the abortion rights area.

When a government with an overwhelming mandate can't even stomach a genuine, positive, progressive reform, it is hard to see them pulling off a retrograde one.

BotanyWhig,
The use of wording by the author (eg “demanding a pound of flesh for his support” etc) would indicate that she would be “progressive”, and I can tell by the language in your post, (eg “do not have the balls (or the ovaries)” etc), that you would be “progressive” also. And the latest abortion technology also seems “progressive”.

Instead of the child being stabbed to death, dissected, poisoned, or sucked out through vacuum tubes, the latest technology involves giving the mother a drug which induces contractions, but up to 8 months prematurely. The birth can often occur in the toilet.

But abortion drugs such as mifepristone, do not absolve the doctors from following abortion legislation, and words such as “choice”, and even “progressive”, are not included in that legislation. They are propaganda words only.

This is from another forum, but would be relevant here.

“Much emotional language is contained in [this] article also, but few verifiable facts, and of course fathers, reducing unwanted pregnancy, and adoption are never mentioned in the article. It appears almost universal, that feminists believe fathers are irrelevant, and find the thought of abortion highly attractive.”

No, I’m not at all “progressive”. A friend of mine once described me as a “conservative fascist” (note, not a “progressive conservative fascist”) and I am quite capable of gabbing on for ages about such important topics as how the “ist” appears to have been excised from the adjective “socialist” (see “social justice”, “social housing” and “social welfare” for example).

However, I digress. Yes, abortion is already regulated by the states. I believe that in Victoria, for example, it is still possible to be criminally charged for performing an abortion on a willing patient. I oppose these and any other restrictions on women’s reproductive freedoms. Though this does mean that there is a limit to what the Feds can do about abortion.

As for the emotive language allegation: sure, we all have our words that we choose for emotional effect. Like “progressive”, which is normally deployed as a positive-sounding euphemism for “left wing”. We’re all guilty of this. In the abortion debate, for example, the word baby often seems to be used instead of foetus.

I think it is important for those who are in favour of greater restrictions on abortion to remember that even the pro-choice brigade don’t actually like the idea of abortion. We’d all prefer it if unintentional conceptions were averted in the first place through effective use of contraception and even (gasp!) abstinence. I told you I’m not progressive.

Nonetheless, unwanted pregnancy happens. And the right to access an abortion, even constrained as it is at present, is something to be protected