Teresa Gambaro (Petrie, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased today to be speaking to the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486) Bill 2005. Before I commence with my thoughts—and I have listened intently to many of the speakers that have appeared before the House—I would like to thank my constituents and the many people who have written to me and emailed and telephoned me. I thank them for their considered views. As an elected representative I value their input greatly. I also want to thank my colleagues for the manner in which they have conducted themselves. This is the third time that I have had a vote of conscience in this House. I have respected the views that others have held, even though I have not agreed with them on some occasions. The Minister for Health and Ageing is sitting here at the moment. I value and respect his enormous capacity as the minister for health, but on this occasion I will differ with him.

There are very fierce emotions as this abortion debate rages. Whenever we talk about access to abortion it elicits emotional responses around the world. We have already had that debate. Abortion has been legal in this country for over 30 years, and it has been used by millions of people all around the world. An estimated one in three women have had an abortion, so it is not an unusual procedure and it is not uncommon. It is a decision for a woman and her doctor—not men, not other women and not the law-makers. Nor is it about morals or laws; it is about safety. This is what this issue is about today: safety. It is about what the research of the medical and scientific experts says—the scientific evidence that is there before us. I am prepared to accept it and base my decision on just that.

I will do that with any issue placed before me in this parliament as an elected representative of the people of Petrie. I base every decision that I make on behalf of my constituents on the facts that are presented to me. Emotion will certainly come into it. How could emotion not come into any argument that comes into this place, or any bill? That is always inevitable. But it is our job, and it is our responsibility as elected leaders from our electorates and our country, to divorce emotion from fact.

Under various state laws a woman’s physical and mental condition, as well as her economic status, are factors which doctors may consider in deciding whether to perform an abortion. There are roughly 80,000 abortions a year in Australia, making abortion the most common operation in this country of 21 million. The government’s medical plan covers the cost, at a huge financial cost to the community. Many forget the risks associated with undergoing any surgical procedure under anaesthetic. Anyone who has had the misfortune of going to an abortion website knows abortion is quite a traumatic experience and often causes physical trauma. And we are talking about an emotional experience here, whether we are talking about RU486 or an abortion.

Simplistically, RU486 is technically just an accelerated form of the morning-after pill. It is administered orally, but the monitoring and the follow-up by the prescribing medical practitioner involved is far more intense. It is less invasive. Anyone who has been admitted to hospital for any type of surgical procedure knows that it is far less confronting and a far less traumatic experience to front up at your local family doctor to be administered the pill than to be told to strip, to be sedated, to be wheeled into an operating theatre, to be confronted with a team of strangers in surgical gowns and masks and to have a drip inserted into your arm before being knocked out. Any adverse reaction to RU486 can be dealt with by a medical procedure.

The number of abortions undertaken in this country has been gradually declining, largely because of better sex education in schools and greater availability and access to contraceptives. They are the answers to cutting the abortion rate. But more work needs to be done regarding educational opportunities in schools and educating young people about better sex practices—not to deny access to the procedure of abortion, whether it be surgical or non-invasive, such as RU486.

RU486 is much safer and much more accessible than other abortion procedures. Women in rural and country areas are far more likely to have access to a doctor in a medical practice than to an abortion clinic. It is more likely that the patient will be known to their local doctor, who will have the patient’s full gynaecological and medical history. The patient is more likely to be open to discussion about the procedure and its consequences if they are in a comfortable environment with their family doctor, who is experienced in handling any complications.

What is the difference between interfering with the development of a mass of cells, a foetus, and the use of the contraceptive pill, which interrupts the fertility cycle of a woman, or the morning-after pill, which tricks the body into thinking it is not pregnant, through the use of hormones? Similarly, RU486 is a steroid that blocks the hormone progesterone, which enables the egg to remain lodged in the wall of the uterus. Women who take it must also take another drug two days later, which prompts contractions in the uterus. This procedure requires care and follow-up attention by their doctor, but it is non-invasive and effective in 92 to 98 per cent of cases.

Many here have argued against the therapeutic goods amendment bill removing a minister’s right to veto and they say that 11 women overseas died after being administered RU486. What about other drugs? What about Viagra, which researchers in the US have found causes five fatalities per 100,000 prescriptions? In addition, how many people around the world have died taking aspirin? All drugs have risks. Even though far fewer women are thought to have died from complications arising from taking the medical abortion pill RU486, we seem to be inundated with alarmist warnings about the dangers of this particular drug. This is despite the fact that the Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Rural Doctors Association of Australia have given evidence to a Senate inquiry that the properly administered and supervised use of RU486 is no more dangerous than taking aspirin or Viagra, which has been approved in this country since 1998. There are risks with every medication, just as there are extreme risks every time we go under anaesthetic for a surgical procedure, whether it be a knee reconstruction, an adenoid operation or getting your appendix out—or, in this case, termination.

I cannot accept the Laming and Kelly amendments that have been put forward to the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486) Bill 2005, which I am speaking about today. Both these amendments defeat the purpose of the bill, which is to remove ministerial and parliamentary oversight of these scientific and medical decisions. As politicians, we have to base our deliberations on information and facts from medical and scientific experts and evaluate that evidence. With these amendments, we would need to continue to pass judgment on the safety and efficacy of RU486. The amendments would ensure that every application for RU486 and other such drugs would be evaluated by the TGA and debated in parliament. We would then have this endless parliamentary process with divisive debates about abortion, which would go on for weeks. These amendments will be much more restrictive than the current arrangements, which have seen RU486 effectively banned in Australia. Under these amendments, not just the health minister but any member of parliament could object to the approval of RU486 and force the parliament into a long and protracted debate about abortion. That is why I will not be voting for the amendments.

Millions of sensible, educated women have been seeking surgical abortions for years. They will still seek these terminations, whether by surgical termination, which carries risks and has been legal in this country for 30 years, or by ingesting a pill—in this case RU486. This drug will make a large number of surgical terminations redundant in terms of convenience, cost and accessibility.

We pride ourselves on being a nation with the ability to embrace technological developments and changes—the latest in IT and the latest in biotech breakthroughs. So why bury our heads in the sand when it comes to medical advances and developments that can improve the lives of millions of women—and millions of Australian women—who are faced with this situation? It will happen anyway. Why not make it less intrusive, as safe and accessible as possible and as inexpensive as possible so that it can be of benefit to all Australian women?

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