In May last year, Sarah Biles, a 28-year-old city worker, decided to terminate her pregnancy. She'd been on the contraceptive pill, but it failed, and although she was in a relationship, she felt it was not solid enough to support a child. "Whoever says choosing to have an abortion is an easy decision, obviously hasn't been there," she says. "I was pulled between feeling enormously guilty, knowing that I was physically capable of raising a child, but I also knew that my life would change in ways I wasn't ready for.

I had no savings and lived away from my family. "it was incredibly upsetting but was made manageable by the dignity the clinic let me hold on to. To terminate a pregnancy is a very personal decision and while I can understand why it isn't tor anyone, I am glad I had a choice." There are currently around 80,000 abortions carried out in Australia ever, year.

Although the procedure was made legal in New South Wales in1971, it is still a taboo subject that evokes powerfully emotive opinions. Some say it's one step short of 'child murder', while others say it is the disposal of simple cluster cells. Last week, Parliament decided that the controversial abortion pill (known as RU-486, or mifepristone) would be taken out of the control of the Health Minister Tony Abbott and placed under the authority of the independent Therapeutic Goods Administration, which regulates all legal drugs used in Australia. RU-486 induces miscarriage if taken in the first three months of pregnancy, by blocking the hormone progesterone, which is needed for a successful pregnancy.

(It is taken two days before another drug called prostaglandin.) It works in a similar way to the morning after pill, in that it creates a condition which the embryo can't survive in. The morning after pill deals with an egg before it has embedded in the womb lining, whereas RU-486 aborts a growing foetus. "It basically pulls the plug on the life support system of an early pregnancy," says Dr Geoff Brody, Medical Director of Australian Birth Control Services.

In countries including the UK, North America, New Zealand, much of Western Europe, Russia, China, Israel, Turkey and Tunisia, RU-486 has been used for many years as an alternative method of termination alongside the standard surgical abortion, which involves an operation in a clinic or hospital (the procedure which is used in Australia).

While it is still possible that the TGA could decide RU-486 is not beneficial for Australian women and may not approve the drug, the debate has shown once again how controversial and incendiary the issue of abortion can be. During the build-up to the decision, the press became an explosive platform for MPs, pro-life groups and pro-choice organisations to engage in a feverish debate. A can of worms that had been tightly closed and left on the political shelf for 35 years was reopened.

Advocates of the drug say RU-486 provides a choice for women who live in rural areas and can't get to a community clinic, as well as women who don't want to sit through six weeks of pregnancy before they have a termination.

They also say 'that the drug has fewer side effects. Jill Michelson, action CEO of reproductive healthcare provider Marie Stopes International Australia, says: "Four million women around the world have had medical abortions [using RU-486], and 25 per cent of abortions carried out by Marie Stopes centres in the UK are medical. It is a well-practised procedure, which has seen no increase in overall abortion rates in those countries.

Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, the National President of the Australian Medical Association is a supporter of the new availability of the drug and says: "[It] is a safer method for some women because surgical abortions have problems not only of the procedure itself, but also of anaesthetic, it's not going to make the decision for women any easier, it's just going to give another way of conducting what is already a surgical process.”

On the other hand, some say the drug may not be used responsibly by some and that abortion impinges on the sanctity of humanity.

“Mankind comes unstuck when it fails to respect human life," says Nationals member Barnaby Joyce. Pro-life supporters say the drug is an easy way out for women with unwanted pregnancies and is a "significant step towards abortion on demand", says MP Warren Truss, It's a fine line, and one that the politicians are taking advantage of.

Abbott's intention to keep the control of RU-486 under the government's jurisdiction was because, he believed, "politicians are accountable for their actions in a way that officials are not". Writing in The Australian, before the decision was made, he said: "I would want to know how medical abortion would not be misrepresented as an easy option and what safeguards were in place against an internet-based black market." While that point is valid, it could also relate to any medicines, including drugs such as Viagra, which passed through Parliament without a hitch. What politicians seem to be forgetting is, in legal terms at least, the morality of abortion was settled years ago.

Senior obstetrician, Professor Caroline de Costa wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia, "People have to remember that abortion is legal in Australia, which means that this emotive discussion is all about the scientific evidence for medical abortion, not the legality of it" Jo Wainer finds alt the fuss bemusing. The Director at Monash University's Centre for Gender and Medicine set up one of the first openly operating abortion clinics in Australia in 1972 with her husband Bert, a well-respected doctor. She is the author of the soon-to-be published collection of real-life stories told by women who experienced abortion before it was made legal. Lost -Illegal Abortion Stories (Melbourne University Press) "I thought we'd moved on from the debate to whether women are fully-functioning human beings, who are capable of making sound moral judgements, years ago, she says.

It's difficult for pro-choice supporters not to see the recent inflammatory debate as a witch hunt on women, who are labelled Irresponsible1 if they fall pregnant. The idea that an abortion (which is, remember, legal in Australia) should have to be complex and difficult to make a woman fully conscious of her decision, stinks of the rotten tomatoes that were thrown at single mothers as they were ejected from society several decades ago. "The decision to mother is always made with enormous attention and sobriety," says Wainer. "And that has always been the case.”