ADJOURNMENT SPEECH

Abortion

Speech

Senator JOYCE (Queensland) (11.28 p.m.)—I rise tonight to speak about an action—not about a person and not about any flaws of a character but an action that will be dealt with if we come to pass the bill relating to RU486. The fundamental question that must be posed over the abortion pill RU486 is whether it deals with one person or two. If you believe that a human life which is killed by this medication is not a human life then what is it? It is not horse life, bird life or the formative stage of a tree; it is indisputably human life. If you do not have any rights over your life at the stage of nine weeks, the apparent limit of this process, at what juncture do you get the right to your own life? What is the occurrence when and why does killing a person goes from being the right of a third party to being a crime? There is never a cognisant argument as to where, and why, this point is. It cannot be an honourable house and at the same time sanction, sanitise and excuse the killing of innocent human life.

I have heard Senator Stott Despoja speaking on state-sanctioned killing and being lost for words at 4.13 pm on Tuesday, 29 November. Well, this is abhorrent state-sanctioned killing. We are definitely dealing with human life. The killing is definitely sanctioned by the state. The people being killed are definitely innocent of any crime, yet we justify our right to kill them. For those who are killed, the form in which they are killed is abhorrent and barbaric.

Senator Nettle said at 4.27 pm on 29 November that we have to have a ‘consistent principle’ when it comes to the death penalty. ‘The death penalty is final’, she said; it ‘is the end of their life.’ And, she said, ‘we support justice.’ What justice do those who have committed no crime get when we terminate their life?

Apparently rights are not diminished by age through our life except when we cannot see the person because they are in utero. That is philosophically and scientifically illogical. Rights should not be diminished by the person’s cognisance of those rights. Your rights are not diminished because you are asleep, though you are not aware of them. If you are inebriated, your right to life should remain unaffected. The day after you are born you are not aware of your rights, but the state says your killing by a third party is murder. Why is it that the person unborn can be destroyed and it is not only sanctioned by the state but also paid for by the state?

We allow the sanctioning of killing of those persons not born but certainly alive because we believe our rights are superior to theirs. Why is this so? Why do we hold this conceit that we have the right of life or death over innocent third parties? What did they do wrong to deserve this? What crime did they commit? When do they have their day in court?

If rights are determined by nurture then what is the principle that justifies that, and why does it not apply to the baby in the bassinette? We are responsible for a baby’s nurture long after it is born and that responsibility is widely accepted as unambiguous. If a baby is in a person’s body, it is no more that person’s property than if it is in that person’s house or in that person’s bassinette. I have a responsibility for the person’s welfare but I do not have a right over their life.

Putting aside all these arguments by saying this is a women’s health issue or this is an issue for the Therapeutic Goods Administration is a very convenient avoidance of the key issue—that we are dealing with a separate person’s life. We are not dealing with a drug that assists with an ailment such as tuberculosis or tetanus; we are dealing with one that terminates a human life.

Even though I feel it is an affront, let us deal with the health issue for the other party this drug affects—the mother. This drug, mifepristone—RU486—and misoprostol make up a two-course treatment. The first, mifepristone, is an artificial steroid that blocks progesterone—a hormone needed to continue the pregnancy. The effect if it is taken is to starve the unborn child of nutrients. As a result, the foetus—a Latin term meaning offspring—or the foetus’s precursor dies. The mother is then living with a dead human life inside of her and, as such, the foetus starts to mummify. However, if there is any chance of infection you will get putrefaction, which leads to a clostridial infection that can quickly cause death. The side effects of this drug enhance the likelihood of this occurrence.

The second stage of the abortion process utilises misoprostol, a prostaglandin analogue which induces contractions, expelling the embryo and the uterine lining. This is associated with heavy bleeding and, if the foetus is not expelled, can lead to very serious consequences.

The issue in remote areas of our country is, of course, an instance where the mother takes the first course of the treatment but not the second. The first person in one of our remote communities who dies from this process is definitely our responsibility and undoubtedly the responsibility of this house.

Because RU486 works by blocking the effects of progesterone, the anti-progesterone effects also cause a change in the cervix which may allow Clostridium sordellii, a common vaginal bacterium, to enter the cervical canal. The bacteria derive nutrition from the decaying foetal tissue. Alongside this, other hormonal effects of RU486 include antiglucocorticoid actions which are taking place throughout the body. This disruption impairs the body’s ability to fight off Clostridium sordellii and so may spread the bacteria’s toxic by-products, a combination that can lead to septic shock.

In July this year, US Senator DeMint called on Congress to pass the RU-486 Suspension and Review Act. This call followed further deaths of American women after taking the abortion pill. There have been at least 600 additional women who have experienced adverse events from RU486, including 200 adverse events that were either life-threatening or extremely serious. From Americans’ experience with this drug, it is clear we must consider the health of the mother.

Ultimately this is an argument of how we justify our belief that our rights surpass another’s over the essence of their existence—their life. We conjure up a plethora of euphemisms to avoid calling a human life a constant experience from conception through birth and our ultimate demise at death. We hope to live under the protection of law, yet this house is about to—or could be about to—further enunciate that the law of the protection of life—the most precious of our rights—is seriously flawed, and subjective, varying according to age and development.

I would like to leave you with one experience—that of Rachel. It has come from a US report.

[Rachel] still remembers most vividly the last moment of the whole ordeal; when she woke up for the millionth time and went to the bathroom the morning after taking the second part of the dangerous abortion drug, feeling crampy and achy. She looked down and saw the unborn baby. She looked at the baby for a long time because the baby was bigger than she expected. She stared for what seemed like an hour—frozen, tired.

It seemed rude to flush it, she thought to herself. ‘I should be having a burial or something.’ But then she heard her daughter awaken and thought: ‘Well, you have to get on with your day.’