Shockadelic,

<<…you overlook that the reasons the woman wants the abortion are "personal and not medical" in most cases.>>

No, I don’t. That aspect of the debate was simply never relevant to what I was saying.

<<Pregnancy is not an illness.>>

No, it certainly isn’t, is it. But the potential results of withholding information on how an abortion can be accessed certainly can be.

<<Should doctors be forced to refer clients in other cases, where there is no actual disease, but simply the personal desire of the client?>>

If there is the potential of harm to the patient, or the chance that they will harm themselves due to the denial of the service, then yes. No one has the right to withhold information from a distressed person asking for help. That’s negligence.

<<Nose jobs? Sex change? Skin lightening? Fetish amputation?>>

There is no time limit on any of these, so they're irrelevant to my argument. When I mentioned “inadequate services” and “the right of access to such information without being forced to experiment with doctors until they find the right one”, I was purposefully setting abortion aside from the ridiculous comparisons above.

<<How is referral to technically unnecessary procedures part of a "doctor’s duty of care"?>>

Well, whether or not they’re unnecessary is highly debateable now, isn’t it. How are you gauging necessity? Does a reluctant, suicidal mother, who takes her resentment out on a defenceless child, do nothing to render abortion as 'necessary' to you?

You clearly don’t understand the fact that liberating women and giving them control over their own reproductive organs - so that they’re not chained by their husbands or by village custom to animal-like treatment of continuous pregnancies, early death and disease - is the reason we have such wealthy and socially content societies as we do now. Nor does it sound like you understand the concept of secondary and tertiary victimology.

<<Is that why every government in the world at one time banned abortion?
Isn't an lifeform being *destroyed* being "harmed"?>>

Yes, but we now know better. We learn from our mistakes. See above.

'runner, until the baby is able to live outside of the womb it is not a person

with such ignorance Carz its no wonder you condone murder. Just bury your head in the sand to condone your abhorrent view.

I agree with the new laws in Tasmania, and I hope it spreads to the mainland.

There is something so medieval about chanting religious slogans etc at women who attend abortion clinics.

We should be concentrating on dealing with more effective, and maybe free?, contraceptives for couples who want to have sex, but not make babies.

But somehow I don't think that is what the protesters would want either.

If you don't believe in abortion, Chelsea Pietch, then don't have one. But our democracy is not going to tolerate you and your religious nutcase friends intimidating women who are distressed and who wish to enter an abortion clinic unmolested.

Democratic countries do have wide powers for peaceful protest, but we as a democracy can still say where you may do it and when. Stay 150 yards away and protest all you like. The only reason why you are complaining is because you and your friends do want to intimidate women who want abortions.

Dear AJ Philips,

<<This is why we only legislate according to that which is demonstrable.>>

Whoever those 'we' are which you claim to be among, are brutes, imposing themselves and their values on others by sheer coercion.

You happen to value demonstrability while I happen to value other things, among them non-violence, which seems to not be part of your value-system. It is by-the-way easily demonstrable that myself and other religious people hold certain values dear while you hold others.

<<Just imagine a country being governed by millions of different religious beliefs>>

You know very well that I'm not seeking such nightmare. Religion and coercion are mutually exclusive. I don't for example consider those who try to coerce pregnant women into not having an abortion as truly religious. At the moment, however, it seems that Australia is governed by the 'religion' of demonstrability.

<<(or not governed at all - as you seem to prefer sometimes)>>

Not 'sometimes' - always!

Governing over others without their consent, just because they happen to live in a particular geographical area, is nothing but violence.

It can be forgiven if made in self-defence. But you have not demonstrated that the law in question, forcing doctors to act contrary to their value-systems, is such a case.

(OTOH, the other law, preventing people from demonstrating 150 metres away from an abortion-clinic, can be construed as self-defence, protecting the peace of those who work in the clinic and their clients, hence I do not oppose it)

<<Is it any wonder that secularism has delivered us so much wealth and knowledge?>>

I dispute this, but this thread is about a particularly cruel Tasmanian law, not about wealth and knowledge.

<<Well, you should.>>

My religious beliefs are well-supported, but unlike what you think religion is, I am not proselytising and your point-of-view is no business of mine so long as you don't attempt to impose yourself on me or my religious friends.

<<then don’t be a doctor>>

What's next? wearing a yellow star-of-David patch?

If I'm a doctor and you don't like my practices - simply don't visit my clinic!

I am reminded in this case of an old lawyers’ adage:
If the facts are on your side, pound the facts.
If the law is on your side, pound the law.
If neither, pound the table.

Fact: you can’t murder, pro-abortionists are at the stage of admitting abortion is murder but that they should just be able to do it anyway.

Law: you can’t excise bits of Australian sovereign territory as “No government criticism zone” or “No free speech zone”. No matter how much the ambitious and powerful chafe, no matter how convinced they are of their perspicuity and sparkly “good conscience”. Which segues wonderfully into the punitive fines for having the wrong conscience according to Ms O’Byrne and her abortion industry financed EMILYS List political action group..

Obviously the law is totalitarian in essence and will be ruled unconstitutional by the High Court. Attorneys General will have their time wasted, Senior Counsel looking to be QC’s will jump on board and become famous and Tasmanian taxpayers will be gouged again by the ALPGreens defending this feminist madness.

No one can have any illusions now about what ALPGreens/EMILYS List/NewRulingClass carbon taxing, baby killing, plutocratic regime means for the majority of Australians.

Abortion has no future in a civilised country, the children who survived the womb miss their siblings, can see through 4-D imaging the child killed and are much more pro-human child than Baby Boomers and their silly scions.

Abortion has no future demographically, morally or in any other dimension, and the radicals know it, which is why their response can't be live and let live because their numbers decrease quite quickly - the only thing they know is the same thing their totalitarian relatives knew in C20th.

Poor lost women who think they have to denature themselves and kill their daughters and sons in order to live like men and have meaningful lives. Hatred of normal women is what is left to them, and criminalising the presence of mentally healthy women in public life has now become second nature to them