RU486

Every­one else has already said it, I guess, but I would­n’t be me if I didn’t com­ment. I’m very glad this bill has passed, even if it ‘wasn’t about abor­tion’ but rather about get­ting access to a method that will make abor­tion easier for women in tricky situ­ations. Part of me is con­cerned about soci­etal rami­fic­a­tions (con­cen­tra­tion on cure rather than pre­ven­tion) but I’ve heard that stat­ist­ics in the US show that abor­tions have actu­ally gone down since RU486 was avail­able. If there is more inform­a­tion avail­able, that’s a good thing, no matter what, I think. I cer­tainly think that med­ical decisions should be in med­ical hands not arbit­rary whims of par­lia­ment­ari­ans. I liked one of the com­par­is­ons: that interest rates are in the hands of the Reserve Bank, not the Treasurer.

I’m a little sur­prised that it passed, but at the same time not. It does encour­age me that any chal­lenges to the 1971 ruling on abor­tion might fail. As Judge Aaron Levine, who made that decision, is one of my rel­at­ives and my mother always taught me to be proud of him, this one has a per­sonal aspect to me. I’m very glad I’ve never needed to make that decision in my life. But I’m even more glad that the decision will not be impossible or pro­hib­it­ive to me if I find myself in the awful situ­ation where I am preg­nant with a child I cannot bring to term for whatever reason.