RU486 Passed: Rationality Prevails
Bet this is the last time Howard allows a conscience vote :) "No, no, no!" you can hear him shout in the big house under the hill. "You're supposed to vote according to MY conscience, not yours!"
He must be wondering what's happened to the country he thought he was leading, and maybe finally realising it only ever existed in his imagination.
Huh. Too much to hope for.
Next impossible thing: convincing Abbott that it's him we have no confidence in, rather than Parliament. Parliament just proved it works fine. The fact that he feels Parliament is wrong shows his complete failure to understand the requirements of his job: he's there to serve the interests of his country, not those of his church.
4 comments:
Shorter RU486 vote analysis:
A (legitimate) appeal to authority prevailed over an argumentum ad populum.
Give Howard more credit than that! This is a vote he can't win. If he votes on partizan lines, either for or against, he will isolate large swathes of the electorate. So he allows a conscience vote, gets to look good for his conservative constituency, and gets to deflect the heat onto parliament from the conservative lobbysits.
On your Abbott front - maybe he was considering both. From what I've read, I can't imagine why anyone would want to use this pill. Surgical abortion seems safer, medically and psychologically. Why would any woman want to put up with the crap that pill can cause?
Anaesthetics are bad news, and the risk of uterine infections post-op are particularly high.
Also RU486 has substantial applications in non-abortificient treatments such as in late-stage cancer therapy and also for mental illness.
I think it is a great move to give doctors the say in its use and not politicize its potential to save lives, through cancer treatment and for those who cannot have surgical terminations.
Abbott wanted the debate to be about him and his religion so he could pander to his catholic conservatives: a martyr to the cause. He knew he was going to lose any conscience vote, he was just playing politics.
As I understand it, RU486 is likely to be administered only where a surgical procedure is unavailable. One of the examples I heard was for women on remote pastoral stations.
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