Oh dear, Leslie, no comments yet. And this is some 8 hours after publication. I guess people aren't much interested in the subject. Never mind.

But while I'm here, of course politics DO belong in medicine. Of course they do - just like every other facet of Australian life that the Australian taxpayer has to dig deep into their pockets to pay for.

RU486, abortion, family law, single mothers, any of these socialised miseries that everybody pays for are political issues. It's not okay to simply say, "Ooooh, these are private matters and must remain personal". That's rubbish. That's femo-babble. All of these things are highly expensive and very costly to the community as a whole. They are political issues and rightly so.

You can't have it both ways. If taxpayers pay for them, then they ARE political issues. If people don't want them to be political, then make people pay for them like buying a new car or an air-conditioner.

I agree that politicians should get out of medicine. That would save the taxpayers $35.5 billion per annum.

However it's not going to happen is it.

Leslie you say: "It asserts that the vote is about the moral or legal legitimacy of abortion. Yet this could not be further from the truth.... RU486 is used in the treatment of life-threatening conditions like Cushings Syndrome, inoperable brain tumours, HIV-AIDS, ovarian and some breast cancers. Yet, by and large, Australians with such life-threatening conditions miss out or are forced to cope with intolerable delays."

Please don't pretend that you're only intested in RU486 for the above reasons. You are interested in RU486 so that women can have non-surgical abortions. Admit it and proceed to argue any proper reasons why. It's like my theories of law feminism lecturer at uni who said that women are denied access to contraception. Now I thought to myself - hey I can go down to the supermarket [not even the chemist!] and get condoms any time I like. When I challenged her on this she had the goodness to admit that yes, she meant that women were denied access to abortion.

If women came out and said "I should be allowed to kill another person because I have more rights than them" I would have more respect because then it could be dealt with properly rather than hiding behind evasive terminology. Goodness knows some men have been saying similar things in respect of women for thousands of years - eg saying a man has the right to beat his wife and kill her if she leaves him [they're still wrong though IMHO!].

Leslie Cannold argues that RU486 should be available to Australlians.
i would presume that Leslie's mother is Australian.
Have you Leslie thought that if RU486 was available when you were born there is a chance that you would not be born but aborted.
In the name of freedom they freed up divorce and suddenly marriages broke down and now nearly 50 percent of marraiges end in divorce.
Marriage is the backbone of moral society and we ourselves have let marraiges be aborted.
Do the same on abortion and it is inevitable that unborn babies will be aborted at the same rate that marriages are today, nearing 50 percent.
In the US I have heard that divorce is 57 percent and rising.

Any unwanted pregnancy should be aborted.
Ru486 is a means of performing an abortion which is preferable to Surgical abortion for many women, particularly in the early stages of pregnancy.
Of course there is another way of terminating a pregnancy as a young student couple in China found , They held hands and jumped from a 17th floor building. I guess the pro-life crackpots would feel warm and fuzzy about that.

This article from feminist, health activist, pro-choice Renate Klein is interesting. I like that she doesn’t hide her views and comes straight out and says women should have unfettered access to surgical abortions (I don’t agree with her but I like the honesty – having said that probably now I’ll find she works as a consultant for an abortion clinic or something so has a vested financial interest against RU486 being introduced but I shall remain hopeful).

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17506669%255E7583,00.html

Maracas, one would have thought China would be one of the easiest countries in the world in which to obtain an abortion, given that the State often forces women to have abortions under its “one-child” policy. Death is tragic and for you to suggest that people would feel “warm and fuzzy” about it is pretty rude and if you are going to call pro-lifers “crackpots” that says more about you than it does about the pro-lifers.