I would be interested to know the number of people who have actually taken the pill. Without that data, the number of reported deaths is meaningless.

[[This debate is beginning to fracture - see earlier and later posts]]

MP links Nguyen, RU486 debate

December 01, 2005
A LIBERAL MP has tried to link tomorrow's execution in Singapore of Australian Van Tuong Nguyen to the debate over the abortion pill RU486.

Pro-life Tasmanian Michael Ferguson has accused fellow MPs of double standards on the two issues.

"It's breathtaking hypocrisy for some people in the Australian parliament to be fighting to save one young man's life, while at the same time fighting for a drug which will allow the death penalty to be imposed on unborn babies," he said.

"Certainly in the new year when the abortion debate begins anew, I think that we ought again to be reminded of this week in Australian parliament, of this week in international relations, when people were fighting for the sanctity of life."

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Opposition women's affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said it is disgusting for Mr Ferguson to link a tragedy like Nguyen's execution to a debate over the availability of a drug.

"For anyone to try and profit from what's happening tomorrow for a short-term point score like that, I think is just tasteless in the extreme," she said.

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Hmmm... perhaps Tanya to denigrate Ferguson rather than sticking to the debate is 'tasteless and disgusting'; you'd think¿

So- given that one guilty dealer/mule/smuggler and thousands of innocent children are both to sentenced to death and executed => accepted facts for Australia December 2005

A rather clear and simple question; how do you - Tanya - resolve the extreme 'sanctity of life' contradiction¿

{Note:-
1. No points will be given for 'those whom you think disgusting'.

2. Take as given - carrying drugs is 'tasteless in the extreme' & killing innocent children defies moral and ethical cognition.

3. In your own wêds pliza..

I agree with the first poster -- and you also need to supply comparitive figures for death/infection etc. rates for surgical abortions, the results of which show that RU486 is at least as safe as surgical abortion. In addition, having an abortion is also very much safer than having childbirth. Thus, if you don't want a child, then not having it via an abortion of any kind is safer than having it.

These figures should be easy to obtain, since France, for instance, has an excellent health care system (better than Australia), and has allowed the use of RU486 since 1988 (and that is also true of many other European countries where you don't have strong right-to-life groups trying to enforce their opinion on others via authoritarian measures). Presumably, if the results were worse than surgical abortion, then they would have retracted its use.

The RU 486 availability in Australia for womens choice is the issue.

Lifting of the present ban is a matter of weighing ALL the statistical evidence, not the selective data offered by Donna Harrison who must assume that Australians havent been following the debate in America where the pro life lobby receives Presidential blessings and where appointments to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush are being closely scrutinised by the Senate for their likely bias to overturn the Roe Vs Wade precedent.

Australian Gynaecologists and Obstetricians are overwhelmingly in favour of overturning the ban which was imposed due to a political deal by the Howard Government with Independent Brian Harradine to secure his vote for the sale of Telstra.

Australian Women who want to have terminations of pregnancies must have the choice of Surgical or Chemical abortion and not have supply witheld because of politics and the Health Minister's moral objections.

It's all a beat up that's why they won't give the figures the drug is considered safe by the standards we set for any drugs( hell peanut paste can kill some people). The facts are that this drug is a viable alternative to surgical abortion. The only people who have concerns are those who wish to take us back to the day's of back alley abortions.

As for the comment about linking the death penalty to abortions for an answer to that one try talking to your anti-choice friends in the US were most of them support the death penalty. trying to save zgotes and wanting to kill adults yea nice one.
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Donna Harrison, I suspect, argues more from an anti-choice ideological position than from an objective medical one. If our College of Obstretrics and Gynaecology are in favour of lifting the ban on RU486 and the AMA is, then surely that is enough. Some like Harrison, appear to be wanting to reopen the whole debate on abortion yet it has been legal in Australia for a number of years now. RU486 simply is another alternative that has been tried and found effective in numerous other countries. It is unfortunate that 4 or 5 women in California died of septic infection after taking the drug but perhaps that can be compared with the half million women who die every year in childbirth or other pregnancy-related conditions. I can probably count four or five women or girls I knew of when I was growing up who died from unsafe abortions when abortion was illegal. Get this matter out of the hands of politicians and with the Therapeutic Goods Administration where it belongs!