• Sara Dowse

23 December 2009When women MPs came together to force approval of RU486, a new cross-party grouping seemed to be in the making. In Inside Story, Sara Dowse looks at what happened next

BACK IN OCTOBER 2005, Tony Abbott, the Howard government’s health minister, introduced two bills to amend the Therapeutic Goods Administration Act. It seemed like a routine, innocuous piece of parliamentary business, but the outcome was something quite remarkable. Minor adjustments to the functions of a statutory body resulted in the medical abortifacient RU486 becoming available to Australian women, and this after a decade’s denial. The vote on RU486, applauded at the time, has been the one outstanding example of women in parliament making a difference, as women, for women. Four years later it gives rise to the obvious question: why just this once?...

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