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The Forum > Article Comments > The politics of abortion > Comments

The politics of abortion : Comments

By Bernard Gaynor, published 23/5/2014

This week's report that Family First will now look at withholding preferences from the Victorian Liberal Party makes perfect sense and is one that I applaud.

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Justice requires that elective abortions be recognized and treated not as idiosyncratic, personal ‘choices’ but as abusive practices, as human rights violations perpetrated by individuals and involving the complicity of politicians and others.

It's a cruel injustice that unborn children are routinely aborted, utterly defenceless victims of current ideological battles between political parties.

Procured abortion is lethal human rights abuse. The legality of child abuse is never to be decided legitimately by opinion polls or by government majority votes.

There is no poll, no democratic vote, no government 'numbers' and no domestic Court decision that can take away the child's right, under international human rights law, to 'special safeguards and care including appropriate legal protection before as well as after birth'. (See UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child and UN Convention on the Rights of the Child )
Posted by RitaJ, Friday, 23 May 2014 10:12:39 PM
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RitaJ considers 'elective' abortions as human rights abuse against the unborn.
Non-elective abortions (miscarriages) result in the same ending....the death of the foetus.
Will you consider miscarriage as an 'abuse' by a god or nature?
If not, why not?

Where do you stand on forcing women to stay pregnant and give birth against their will?
This is not a human rights abuse to you?

Sorry, but the current law of allowing women the right to safe abortion choice in this country is right.
Posted by Suseonline, Saturday, 24 May 2014 1:49:42 AM
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This whole article is based on dishonesty: if the terms anti-abortion and pro-choice has been used instead of pro-life and pro-abortion it might have had some credibility. Anti-abortioners would force women to continue with unwanted pregnancies. Pro-choice advocates give women the freedom to control what happens to their own body.

It really is time we ditched preference deals, how to vote cards (why anyone allows a political party to tell them how to vote has always amazed me) and above all lobby for a return to optional preferential voting. Many people are do not fill in all the numbers on the ballot paper but clearly show their preferred candidate. Their vote is invalid because Labor and Liberal have agreed that we must be forced to comply with full preferential voting - for their benefit, not ours. Consequently our election results do not reflect the will of the electorate. Last year there were 800,000 informal votes nation-wide, over 4000 in Clive Palmer's electorate alone - which he won by a handful of votes.
Posted by Candide, Saturday, 24 May 2014 7:36:14 AM
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Bernard,

The reason that the liberals do so little to stop abortion is that most Liberal supporters are actually libertarians who feel that people should have freedom of choice over their lives.

If you feel that the government should have more control over what you do and think, then perhaps the Labor or Greens parties are more for you.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Saturday, 24 May 2014 2:02:13 PM
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It is manipulative to use terms such as ‘human rights violation’ when talking about abortion. It automatically presumes that a foetus is a human being. Why do we have the word foetus at all if it is indeed a human being? Unless you have absolute proof that it is a human being then it is dishonest to attribute such qualities to it as you would to beings for which there is no doubt. A belief is not proof or certainty. You have to base your arguments on what you know to be true not on what you believe.

Human rights are given to human beings. There is no argument that a being independent of the womb is a human being but there is a great deal of argument about whether a being dependent on the womb can be considered human. If it is at what point does it become a human being? Is a two celled organism a human being? The truth is that no one can make such a definitive call. You cannot say for certain that a foetus has rights but you can say for certain that a pregnant woman has the right to choose what happens to her own body unless it impinges on the rights of a another human being. Unless you can say with certainty at what point humanness becomes operative then the one who has the rights should have preference over the one who does not.

Attributing human rights to something that is not universally accepted as being human is emotionally manipulative and aims to create guilt where none should exist. The burden of proof lies with those who reject abortion and so far they have been unable show any proof that a foetus is the same as a human being.
Posted by phanto, Saturday, 24 May 2014 9:00:09 PM
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Great article Bernard. Pro lifers in both Labour and Liberal parties are usually shoved to the back bench. Sickening to see the 'moral outrage 'against federal budget while most involved in this 'outrage' support the murder of unborn babies. God won't be mocked.
Posted by runner, Saturday, 24 May 2014 9:40:44 PM
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