Good ol’ Tony Abbott (who incidentally started priestly dude training as a youth) hasn’t given up the fight yet, his newest [URL=http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,18194845%5E662,00.html]tactic[/URL] is forcing church-based counselling on women seeking abortion. He believes ‘abortion clinics’ (strange term as most procedures here are done in hospitals) don’t give unbiased advice, and that counselling should be at arms length from ‘abortion providers’ (AKA doctors).

I’m amazed he believes these doctors have a vested interest in performing more abortions, it’s not like they neem to drum up business in the medical marketplace. And I’m gobsmacked he thinks the church will offer unbiased advice, after all they don’t really have a long history of tolerence and understanding.

As an aside, if I’m not mistaken, the ones who coined “saquen los rosarios / de nuestros ovarios” were Argentinian feminists. Whichever the original language, the phrase certainly deserves translation.

If it needs repeating, obtaining or inducing an abortion is not legally uncertain in Australia if you are a registered medical practitioner. It’s your decision and one that you carry out using the tools that you decide are best for each abortion.
It is covered under our universal Medicare health system, to which every citizen both contributes through taxes and from which every citizen is entitled to a percentage of funds for the range of accepted medical procedures.

All that the Bill has done is to correct an indefensible anomaly where a politician took control of approval for registration of a drug that - among some few other therapeutic uses - is of limited use in some abortions, and which needs thorough investigation and approval by those with medical and pharmacist qualifications. There is a federal body that already does this and the Health Minister has been running an agenda that has had him promising yearly examinations of the drug for over 4 years and at each examination finding specious reasons for refusing its registration. At none of these yearly reviews has he allowed the federal body, the TGA, to examine the drug’s suitability.

The Roman Catholic Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, is a pugnacious idealogue who is running a reactionary agenda on behalf of the more woman-hating sections of the Roman Catholic Church of Australia, which is endorsed and given spin by the Archbishop of Australia, Cardinal Pell.

Preventing the TGA from registering the drug, and that’s all that Tony Abbott has been doing, hasn’t much impeded the abortion work of Australian medicos and it’s getting argued by some medicos that it’s value in treating Cushing’s Syndrome alone is greater that as an abortifacient. There are a wide set of other disease states that the drug is useful in treating:
breast and prostate cancer, glaucoma, depression, endometriosis and uterine fibroids, inoperable meningioma, all due to its hormone blocking effects.

So Tony Abbott, Australian Minister for Health, has, through his deceitful - some kindly call his way of working ” byzantine” - dodging on behalf of uterine landlords, reduced the health of many Australians for no good reason.

I think it’s a bit of a shame that not more in the “debate” went for his throat.

That was Greens senator Kerry Nettle. I didn’t know much about her prior to this whole RU-486 brouhaha, but she is now on my ‘would so make out with her’ list.

“One woman senator actually said we were “aborting ourselves out of existence” and we’ll all end up muslim if we don’t stop.”

THAT was Danna Vale; staunch pro-lifer, formerly closeted bigot, and Liberal MP (of course). I detailed and dissected her idiotic pronouncements on my blog, though unfortunately didn’t address the racist angle.

“It’s been an incredible time - one in which discussion of women’s rights was all over the front page of the papers, and everyone was having their say over coffee or dinner, all across the country.”

I hate to be a pessimistic pain in the arse, but I don’t expect this trend to continue. Now that the TGA has control of the drug, Aussie men will push it to the back of their minds and Australian women will be regarded as they’ve always been regarded: As either Bolshie Biddies or Sexy Sheilas–take your pick.

If I may digress (just briefly), I’ve always found it odd that so many Aussie feminists are more than willing to take on arsehole godbags when defending their rights, but seem to have a blind spot when it comes to the sexism from yer average beer-swilling ocker imbeciles (and their lewd larrikin sons). Remember, sexism in the Great South (Waste)Land takes many forms–Women in Australia don’t matter unless they’re good-looking Minogue-clones with no personality, and blokes of all ideological stripes won’t let you forget it.