The Australian parliament yesterday approved a bill to strip regulatory control of an abortion pill from the country's anti-abortion health minister -- a move expected to make the drug available for use in Australia.
The House of Representatives approved the measure after a show of voices indicated overwhelming support for the bill. No official vote count was taken.
The measure gives regulatory authority over the abortion pill mifepristone -- also known as RU-486 -- to the country's main drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration [TGA].
In 1996, parliament voted to place control of RU-486 with the federal health minister. Since 2003, that position has been held by Tony Abbott, a staunch Roman Catholic who opposes abortion and once warned of an "epidemic" of abortions in Australia.
Last week, the Senate voted 45-28 to give regulatory control over RU-486 back to the TGA, a government body of scientists and doctors that regulates all other drugs in Australia.
Yesterday's vote from the lower house was expected to clear the way for approval of the drug in Australia.
"It is a winner for Australian women and their families and also a winner for the House of Representatives," Senator Lyn Allison, one of the bill's co-authors, said in a statement.
"I'm glad reason has triumphed over spin," she said. "The Therapeutic Goods Administration is clearly best placed to determine the safety of RU-486," she added.
Abortion in Australia is regulated by the states, and has been legal for 30 years. The procedure is funded by the country's public health system and there is little debate among lawmakers over whether it should remain legal.
Nevertheless, the debate over RU-486 generated highly emotional arguments across the political spectrum, with many lawmakers telling of their own personal experiences with abortion.
Last week, Allison made headlines by revealing in a Senate speech that she had once had an abortion.
"An estimated one in three women have had an abortion -- and I am one of those," Allison told parliament.
In a poignant speech late on Wednesday, one of Howard's most senior ministers, Treasurer Peter Costello, described how 18 years ago he faced the choice of whether to allow doctors to abort his unborn child as his pregnant wife lay unconscious in hospital.
Although deciding against abortion, he stressed it was important he had been given the choice.
"By the grace of God, both survived," Costello told parliament. "But I have no doubt that the law should not have prevented such a choice."
In yet another parliamentary confession, Australia's conservative Finance Minister Nick Minchin last week explained in personal detail why he chose to oppose the bill.
"I bring to this debate personal experience in that a former girlfriend of mine had an abortion when we were in a monogamous relationship," the senator told parliament.
"I cannot divorce that experience in my life from this consideration," he said.
The issue has also drawn the attention of activists in the US and Europe.
Allison said both the abortion rights and anti-abortion camps had been swamped with overseas research about the drug, much of it from the US.
"We've had an international element to this inquiry," said Allison, a senator with the center-left Democrats party.
A Senate inquiry into RU-486 before the bill was introduced received more than 1,000 submissions from advocacy groups and private individuals on both sides of the debate -- including two from the US.
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