NOT YOUR CALL - SIR

Let’s be blunt. Where does this guy get off? The Governor General of Australia made headlines yesterday and again today by entering the recently fostered debate about abortion.

The Governor General. For a hundred bucks many of you could not tell me his name. He has never been elected by anybody to any public office.

He is a tail-wagging John Howard puppy. His only claim to fame is that he spent a life saying “yes sir, no sir” in the Army.

And yet here we have Michael Jeffery diving into a Tony Abbott- contrived debate about abortion. The Governor General of supposedly ALL Australians – and I understand that that includes a large number of females -- wants to see the number of pregnancy terminations reduced to zero.

Forget the victims of rape and incest. But what is a Governor General doing in this debate anyway?

If a woman or a girl gets pregnant and decides to terminate that pregnancy or commit herself to a nine month physical and mental change of life that must be between her and her doctor. And her love and her family and her friends. If that is where she looks for support and advice and guidance.

It has nothing to do with Tony Abbott or John Howard or Derryn Hinch or Michael Jeffery. The Sunday Age headline is a travesty fort the man at Yarralumla: “G-G Fuels Abortion Row. Jeffery Urges Target of “Zero Terminations”.

This is getting dangerously out of control. As I said in my column in yesterday’s Sunday Herald Sun: “There are some cold, harsh winds of change howling down the so-called “hallowed halls” in Washington and Canberra this week after the thumping victory of George Bush and the confirmation John Howard will have control of the Senate for the first time in more than 20 years”.

I wrote that days before the Govern-General bought into the argument.

We all now know that the abortion issue, fuelled by Health Minister and religious zealot, Tony Abbott, is back on the federal agenda. The god botherers are on the move. Here and abroad.

You are entitled, on religious or moral or ethical grounds, to be opposed to abortion but you do not have the right to enforce those views on troubled women who see a pregnancy termination as their only out.

There are physical, emotional, financial decisions that a suddenly pregnant woman has to make. That decision MUST be between her and her doctor.

There must not be in there pompous, selfish, insensitive, self-serving comments from people like Hinch or Abbott or the Governor-General. It is manifestly wrong.

Monday, November 8, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004