It’s gloves off in the RU486 inquiry – and the wider abortion debate.

Barnaby Joyce certainly pulls no punches in an interview with in the latest edition of The Catholic Weekly, the Sydney based church newspaper:

Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce has two distinct lives, and he likes it that way.

He is a member of the senate committee looking into the private
member’s bill which seeks to lift the restriction on the importation
and prescription of the abortion drug RU486.

He was not surprised at reports of a recent New Zealand study that
links abortion with mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety.

“I’ve got friends who have had abortions and if you think it doesn’t
have a psychological effect you’re fooling yourself; it does have a
psychological effect,” he says.

Of RU486 Barnaby says: “If you want an abortion, this is the most dangerous way to go about it”.

And he is concerned that the people promoting the drug are “willing to put women’s health at risk to make a point”.

“RU486 is 10 times more deadly than a surgical abortion,” he says.

Without a shadow of doubt people will be killed by this drug, most
likely in the case where a woman, after going to the doctor and taking
the first pill, the Mifepristone, doesn’t come back for the second one.

“Then there is the psychological side of it, where after taking the
Mifepristone you pass what they call an identifiable foetus, i.e. it
looks like a person, which it does at eight to 10 weeks.

“You would come face to face, in your home, with what was formerly a
human life inside you and will carry that possibly for the rest of your
life.

“Also there’s nothing very therapeutic about terminating a human life.

“Therapeutic means to deal with disease or take a remedial course of action, and I don’t believe pregnancy is a disease.

“So terminating a human life shouldn’t be dealt with through the Therapeutic Goods Administration.”

“The first woman who is killed or maimed by this will be the responsibility of the people passing this bill.”

Joyce is entitled to his beliefs. He is entitled to make emotive
arguments. But surely abortion is a matter of individual conscience –
and Joyce might like to examine his conscience about the impact of
making disingenuous arguments based on government nomenclature.