Yesterday agreement was reached between two usually antagonistic sides in the abortion debate. Mrs Neva Wrong President of the Australian League for the Prevention of Abortion and Ms Letus Speak spokesperson for Women’s Right to Choose declared that both their organisations were in total concurrence about the need to collect more statistics about one aspect of pregnancy termination.
In a joint statement both groups called on the Prime Minister to set up a new national research institute to collect and publish the statistics. Ms Speak said the Australian Bureau of Statistics and CSIRO would be involved in determining the methodology involved in survey design because “We want the public to have absolute confidence in the accuracy of the information”.
Mrs Wrong said “It is only right that ASIO assist in extracting answers from recalcitrant respondents. We don’t believe there will be many selected for interview who will refuse to comply but if they do then a short stay in a mothballed refugee concentration camp should prise the answers from them”.
Ms Speak and Mrs Wrong said that they had been brought together by the realisation that sexually transmitted diseases, like Chlamydia, could induce spontaneous abortion; and it was for that reason they felt that setting up the proposed database was so vital to the health of the nation. Ms Speak said this was all the more so since Treasurer Costello has warned about Australians growing older.
Both organisations considered the new research centre should be called the Abbott-Pel Centre for Moral Purity. Mrs Wrong said “The hope is that we can eventually gather information on all Australians but in the first instance we want to trial our data gathering on a special group of men, namely: Federal politicians, priests and other members of the clergy. We feel that they will provide the datum study so that other respondents can then be compared with them”.
Ms Speak said that, although all the information provided would normally be considered of a confidential nature, the national interest demanded that it be made available to any member of the public who requested it. “All we want to know in the first instance is the names of any person they have had sexual contact with and what diseases they have experienced” said Mrs Wrong.
“We will need doctors to carry out a series of tests on each respondent and have full access to their Medicare and any Private Health Insurance records to help verify their answers. Given the seriousness of this issue we feel it is incumbent upon our leading citizens to be co-operative” Mrs Wrong added. Ms Speak said “The survey and medical tests will eat into the respondents’ valuable time and so we intend providing each of them with an enlarged laminated ultrasound of their prostate”.
circa 2005
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