Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will speak briefly on the Therapeutic Goods Amendment (Repeal of Ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486) Bill 2005. At the outset I thank the members of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee and the staff of that committee who conducted the inquiry into this matter under very difficult circumstances. I also wish to record my appreciation for the work of the four women senators from the major parties who jointly sponsored this bill.

I support the proposed amendments to the Therapeutic Goods Act that, if passed by this Senate, will have the effect of giving the Therapeutic Goods Administration the ability to determine whether Australian doctors should be able to prescribe RU486 for Australian women. That is, I am of the view that the TGA, the organisation that the parliament has charged with the responsibility to make determinations about all other medicines that are available in Australia, should also make a determination about medicines such as RU486 that are able to be used to bring about the termination of a woman’s pregnancy.

I support this bill for a number of reasons which I shall briefly outline. Before I do that I acknowledge that some people, including members of this parliament, are vehemently opposed to the concept that a woman should have the right to terminate her pregnancy whether by surgical or medical intervention, whether legally or illegally procured and regardless of any of the many reasons that women may seek to procure a termination. I respect the right of those people to hold that view; I know that for many it is based on strongly held religious or personal beliefs. I appreciate that persons who hold those beliefs will use every opportunity to state their objections to abortion and will do what they can to sway the rest of us to their view.

I have been around long enough to know that the opponents of a woman’s right to choose to legally terminate a pregnancy will not go away and that from time to time we will again have to revisit the issue of whether women should have access to legal abortion. The evidence is clear that most Australians believe a woman should have that right and, as evidence to the Senate Community Affairs Committee has shown, women will continue to seek to terminate their pregnancies regardless of the legal or medical regime in place because, for some women, there is no alternative than to have to make that awful decision.

I note that many opponents of this bill in their communications to me consistently failed to address the reasons why women find themselves in a position to have to even contemplate terminating their pregnancies. Conveniently ignored are the circumstances of rape, incest, paedophilia, ignorance, domestic violence, poverty, lack of education, lack of access to contraception and the numerous other reasons why women and girls find themselves pregnant when they do not want to be pregnant. Also too often ignored are the implications for a woman and her family, including other children, if an unwanted pregnancy continues.

However, this is not a bill about whether a woman should have the right to terminate her pregnancy, and at this time in all states of Australia abortion is legally available to women who want it and who meet certain criteria. Opponents of a woman’s right to choose may not like it but that is the fact of the matter.

This is a bill about whether a minister of the Crown should have the power of veto over availability of a medicine that could, if it is approved by the TGA for use, provide women and their doctors with an alternative method of achieving an outcome that they are going to anyway be seeking to achieve by other means. The reason the minister currently has the power of veto is that 10 years ago a former senator who was vehemently opposed to abortion was able to exploit his privileged position as a member of parliament to gain parliamentary prohibition on giving Australian women an alternative method of managing their reproductive health.

This bill is an opportunity for the parliament to overturn that decision of a decade ago and to restore the decision about the availability of medical treatment for women to where it should rightly always have been—with the TGA. The TGA is the appropriate body to make the decision about whether RU486 is available for prescription by doctors for their patients. Nothing in the submissions to the Senate inquiry demonstrates other than competence by the TGA in its role in evaluating the safety of the many drugs that it assesses, and continually monitors, for use in Australia. As we know, RU486 is approved for use in many other countries and has been in use in some of those countries for many years. The TGA will be able to benefit from the experience of those other countries if and when it makes an assessment about making this drug available for use in Australia.

Much has been said by opponents of this bill about the alleged potential complications and ill effects that may follow the use of RU486. This debate is so full of contradictory evidence that it is even more essential that the independent TGA make the decision about availability. It should not be up to us in this parliament to decide whether or not women should have access to this drug. It should not be up to us to do a risk evaluation of this drug; we are not competent to do so. That is the role of the TGA, and there is no shortage of information about this drug and its effects that the TGA will be able to take into account if and when it makes that determination.

The TGA is the appropriate body to make the determination about the availability of RU486. However, whether or not a woman is prescribed this medical method of termination, should it become available in Australia, will be up to a woman’s doctor and the woman concerned. I have great faith in the ability of Australia’s medical practitioners to take into account the whole circumstances of a woman’s situation when prescribing this drug—just as they take into account the circumstances of their patients when prescribing any other drug.

The occasionally hysterical scaremongering that has accompanied this debate has done a disservice not only to the medical profession but to their patients who find themselves in the regrettable situation of having to contemplate termination of pregnancy. The parliament is not the place to arbitrate on what decision a woman in those circumstances should make. Let us pass this bill and then allow the processes of the TGA to determine whether or not medical abortion via the use of prescribed drugs should be available. And let us leave it to the woman, the people who support her and her doctor to determine the best method of achieving the outcome that the woman determines she wants.