What is Human Autonomy?
Nurturing Justice 5 (2008) October 8th Back in 1994, I followed a debate in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper. You can access my letter to the Editor here. It concerned the abortion pill mifepristone which, it was baldly stated, should be made available to Australian women because in clinical trials it had registered a 65% “success rate”. At the time we were told (The Age editorial “New pill on trial” Thursday 18 August 1994) that tests were being carried out on groups of women in Sydney and Melbourne. It turns out that there were then 40 Victorian women, in the early stages of their pregnancies, who had chosen to take part in trials of the drug. You may want to explore this by reading the October 8, 2005 article from The Age here. You will notice that in this 2005 article there is only an oblique reference to the earlier (1994) “success rate” and as a consequence the writer of the article does not seem alert to the fact that this was exposing the prima facie possibility that pregnancy had
