RU486
Over the last decade the ability of women to access abortion services in Australia has become increasingly difficult due to government funding cutbacks and protests by the religious right outside abortion clinics.
In this context the invention of the abortion pill, also known as RU486, has the potential to undermine these restrictions. RU486 could be dispensed by general practitioners, allowing far easier access to abortion than currently exists. It would also be far cheaper than abortions carried out by the current surgical method and thus make abortion far more accessible to women on low incomes.
However, RU486 is one of the most strictly controlled drugs in Australia.
Under the Therapeutic Goods Act, RU486 along with all abortifacients and anti-pregnancy drugs can only be approved for sale by the federal health minister. This politicising of RU486 and similar drugs has been condemned by the Family Planning Association and the Australian Medical Association.
At the National Union of Students conference in December, a motion was moved calling on the federal government to lift its restrictions on the availability of RU486. Some conference delegates from the National Broad Left (NBL) caucus argued against the motion, claiming that the safety of RU486 was in doubt because the drug used in the pill is produced by a "multinational corporation", Roussel-Uclaf.
Of course Roussel-Uclaf and the other handful of other multinational companies that control the pharmaceuticals market seek to profit from the drugs they make and sell. But this is hardly a very logical argument for not opposing the government's ban on RU486.
In capitalist countries just about everything people need — from food to medicines — is produced by multinational companies, since this is the dominant form of capitalist business organisation.
Those members of the NBL who argued against supporting the legalisation of RU486 were also concerned about the manner in which other reproductive drugs have been used. Depo provera, for example, is a long-lasting injected contraceptive which has been used to forcibly sterilise women in Third World countries like Indonesia. In the United States, black women have been pressured to use Depo provera and norplant in order to gain eligibility for welfare payments.
However, these examples illustrate the need to ensure that women have greater choice in access to reproductive technology, not that any demonstrably safe reproductive technology should be outlawed.
While RU486 is not a suitable fertility control treatment for all women, the rate of death and side effects from its use is similar to that for surgical abortion and minute compared to childbirth.
RU486 is an alternative to surgical abortion procedures. It does not substitute for them, nor can it remove the need for a concerted nationwide campaign to repeal all anti-abortion laws because of its limited application in terminating a pregnancy. Surgical methods are still a vital service for women and feminists need to demand that this service is made more readily accessible for those women who choose it.
Similarly, expanding women's freedom from forced pregnancy and childbirth requires expanding women's choices regarding fertility control technologies. Ending the government's ban on the importation and sale of RU486 would be a further advance in the struggle against the oppression of women.
BY KEARA COURTNEY