Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the amendments moved by the member for Bowman, though I believe he has moved them in extreme good faith and has argued very well for them in this place. The amendments before the chamber, and indeed this bill, are not, in my view, about the legality of abortion. That has been decided elsewhere in this country in the parliaments of our states and territories. It has been inevitable that in the course of dealing with this bill in the chamber people have made comments about their attitude toward abortion, and I understand that. Many members, including the minister for health, have adopted the Bill Clinton terminology that they would like to see a circumstance where abortion was safe, legal and rare.

I agree with those comments. We would all like to see a circumstance where abortion was safe, legal and rare. But we need to be honest enough to say that that is not about parliamentary oversight and disallowance motions. If we were to truly live in a world where abortion was safe, legal and rare then we would need to live in a world where there was no sexual violence against women. We would need to live in a world where no woman was ever bullied or pressured into having sex. We would need to live in a world where the mass media did not continuously say to women that the sum of their self-worth was defined by their sexual desirability to men. We would need to live in a world where contraception never failed. We would need to live in a world where people understood how to use contraception. We would need to live in a world where medical science had defeated some of the most profound and disabling birth defects.

I wish we lived in that world, and we should all be striving to attain it, but the stark reality is that we do not. When we do not live in that world it is inevitable that women from time to time—many with the heaviest of hearts—will exercise the decision to have an abortion. What we are debating today is no more than this: when they make that choice within the legal frameworks of the states and territories in which they live, should they have an option other than surgical abortion, provided that medical experts say that is safe and effective? I say that they should.

I am pro-choice—I strenuously object to the terminology ‘pro-abortion’; I have never met anybody who is pro-abortion and I am not. I understand that those who have a different view about abortion to mine—those who are not pro-choice—might be concerned if there was evidence that the availability of RU486 increased the abortion rate. There is no such evidence. If you look around the world, there is no such evidence that RU486 increases the abortion rate. Whilst I respect the moral compass of those who do not believe in choice, I do not understand a circumstance where people say ‘morality lies in the method’. That is what I think we are looking at today. I do not see why people should say there is a moral difference between surgical abortions or medical abortions. I do not see how that can be put.

The amendments moved by the member for Bowman would cause, if the TGA decided that RU486 was safe and effective, a disallowance debate on that. It would be inevitable that one member of this House and one member of the Senate, if not more, would move for disallowance. Let us just imagine that we were having that disallowance debate. Is anybody seriously suggesting that people would be coming up to the dispatch box and putting more expert views on the question of safety and effectiveness than the TGA had? No. People would be coming up to this dispatch box and putting their views on abortion. I do not think a disallowance procedure should be set in law which would mean that we refight the abortion debate inappropriately in this parliament time after time. I do not think that is right.

I also think if these amendments were passed we would have an effective ban because no manufacturer would seek to put RU486 to the TGA for a safety and effectiveness assessment and spend all the money to get that done if they were then going to face the political vagaries of this place. It is on those grounds that I ask people to reject these amendments. I respect the fact that they were moved—I think it is good that we have canvassed the issue—but, ultimately, they are not acceptable, they should be rejected and we should vote for the bill.

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