Craig

Thank you. What a balanced post!

Cheers mate
I am female
Kay

I was rather disgusted that so many men voted against the bill in the Senate today. As a male I have to admit to being ashamed of my gender on this issue.

Helen, if we are talking of semantics, you should brush up your semantics skills. An organism is not a person. Most women have the ability to create about 400 organisms in their lifetimes, reality prevails, they cannot all survive.

A woman's uterus is her uterus, its her business, not the business of the pope, the govt, or anyone else. Come on guys, leave women and their decisions to women! Keep out of it, its none of your business!

The Catholic dogma on all this goes back to Onan and the so called holy sperms, in the old testament. Yet we have heard from Christians time and time again on OLO, that the old testament should not be taken literally. So why should this particular bit be taken literally?

The reality is that the church is in a corner. One pope has claimed the evils of condoms, pills, abortion, early withdrawel etc and he is meant to be be infallible. If the church changes its mind, there will be eggs on too many catholic faces to deal with. Oh my...
So they plod on relentlessly.

Having a Catholic health minister in charge of RU 486, IMHO is like having dracula looking after the blood bank. If he believes in the infallibility of the pope etc, then he must believe that abortion is evil, as the old papa claims. So how is he able to be objective about his views on abortion?

We want freedom of religion, but also freedom from religion !

I am not qualified to ascertain the safety of RU486 so I'll leave that to those who are, but if the drug is shown to have minimal side-effects and no long-term problems for the user, then I am all for its approval.

Abortion is a very personal choice, made by a woman when for whatever reason, she cannot or does not want to carry a pregnancy for its full term.We can make as many assumptions as we like but this decision is hers and hers alone.Although I have never been in this position myself, I can only imagine that it would be a difficult and agonising choice to make. I cannot understand for the life of me, why women would want to take this choice out of their own hands when feminists fought tooth and nail for many years for us to have this right.I'm sure that if Helen had a friend considering abortion, that she would prefer them to have access to the safe procedure, performed by a doctor (or RU846) then to risk their own lives as well in a dodgy, backyard job.

We can argue as much as we like about when life begins, when the baby develops cognitive abilities and so on but what people forget to realise is that abortion is ultimately about the MOTHER.The mother is a fully-grown adult with the ability to make the best choices for herself and her life. We have no right to limit these choices, in regards to her body or anything else. To give an unborn fetus' rights preference over the rights of its adult mother is nothing but a display of utterly skewed priorities.

If politicians want to debate the sanctity of life then feel free to justify the current war in Iraq where hundreds of lives are being lost daily. Feel free to justify your disgraceful military spending when billions are dying of starvation, going hungry and are without access to clean water.Then get back to me about abortion.

RIP Betty Friedan (1921-2006), leading feminist and advocate for the right of women to a safe abortion

I’m with Craig Blanch on this one but accept that RU486 is destined for every woman’s toolbox or make up case.

If you don't like Abortion then don't have one. This in just another example of god bothers trying to control the rest of us.

Touche Kenny. Again, for everyone, abortion is LEGAL. We are not debating its merits, but rather whether an expert should decide on the safety of a drug over a ill-informed minister.....