Possibly the brief that Tony Abbot was given....

WELL, that's fine then. Excuse me while I go and have an abortion … Gulp. There we go - much better. Just sit and forget now that I can get RU486 by the handful. You know what we women are like, brainless, uncaring creatures who get pregnant at the drop of a hat and seek to get rid of it just as quickly so we can go to another party tonight.

We never think about the results of our actions because we can't, being so dim as we are. We love washing machines, running water and frozen food because they make our lives so much easier - therefore it follows that we will all be racing to the doctor the minute we know we are pregnant, and taking a pill to cure the problem.

Hell, why not get pregnant now just so you can try it out? Be the first on your block to have a new, simple abortion before the latest winter fashions. We gals all want to be first because we are flighty and can't think beyond the next pair of shoes, so we will knock people down to get our hands on this easy new whiz-bang miracle.

Better than cheese in a can, better than vegemite snack-packs and better than lip gloss in a tube, lunchtime will never be the same waste of a hospital visit that it used to be.
We used to head off in the mornings to our girly, waiting-to-get-married jobs - as business managers, lawyers, doctors, airline pilots - work out we were pregnant, file our nails until lunch, and then pop into casualty to have an abortion. And we got back to work in time to have a cup of tea and a biscuit before going home.

Now those days are gone with the magic of medicine. There will be no more wasting ours and the boss's time with silly things like babies, which women only have to annoy public service budget makers anyway.

Time-saving should also be a plus with industrial relations negotiations, although we girls don't understand difficult concepts like that either.

You know we women are also so dim that we don't actually mind getting pregnant, which is why we really don't care about abortions. Of course, we don't like sex either. We only do it to oblige our brutish demanding husbands, because we are all "nice girls".

We'll be even nicer now we can have abortions to order because we won't have to worry about the unsavoury side of sex - all that bothersome contraception that we've been carrying on about for years, spoiling the mood and making men wait when they just want to get on with things.

We will immediately give up the irritation of remembering, with our feather-brained heads, to take the pill, and forget forever the slippery nuisance of the diaphragm and the unpleasant latex of condoms.

No more squirting foam, no more frantic washing with lemon juice. No more fearfully counting days off the calendar in that unladylike way we used to. We can just swallow a pill and not even blink as we go off smiling broadly to play tennis or ride bikes and all the other things women do in ads for tampons.

While we are on the subject, a word about men. Men, as we know, are completely innocent here. They never had uncontrolled, unprotected sex unless they are lured into it by scheming, idiotic women who will get pregnant just to disoblige them. Or, indeed, they are just so stupid that they fail to take the proper "precautions" and, through their own negligence, get pregnant.

And of course, a single woman slatternly enough to lure a man into sex deserves to get pregnant, wear a scarlet letter of some sort for nine months and then bring forth the baby in pain.
Men never make mistakes. They are never silly enough to get pregnant, so obviously they are removed enough from the problem to make impartial judgements. They have every right and reason to tell us how to manage our bodies, just as we are allowed to tell them whether they should risk having heart attacks by taking Viagra.

For years we've had politicians saving us from the consequences of our stupidity, but now it's lovely for a change to be free to have an abortion whenever we like, and probably two on Sunday, just to make sure.

(Harriet Veitch, Herald journalist)