"What a disgusting, sickening article. To try to use your own children as fodder in your dogmatic war on womens rights. Pure evil."
Extraordinary Mikk. Disgusting and evil to be advocating not to kill unborn babies?
if that is so then what does it make those who advocate the right to kill unborn babies?
Abortion isn't just about woman’s rights. There are least two other individuals involved here. The father for starters, and most importantly the human who is about to have their life ended almost before it has even begun.
But those advocating for the rights of this helpless, voiceless individual are the evil ones? Truly remarkable.

Rhys Jones, it may be disgusting and evil to you, and I doubt if I could ever have had an abortion myself, but it has been made legal in many countries around the world.

Why is that do you think? Are all those governments and the people who voted for them for all these years evil and disgusting? Do you not think that the mother's wellbeing and decisions about what happens to her body are perhaps more important at her stage of life than her pregnancy?

Can you answer my questions above that I put to the author about HOW you would force all these women with unwanted pregnancies (which many fathers often request abortions for them as well) to stay pregnant and go through labour against their will?

One of the truly strange things to me about Catholic Church doctrine as I hear it from the church leaders is that life is sacrosanct - that is until it is born. After that, the child becomes a target for the pedophile priests while the church hierarchy looks the other way or moves the offending priests from location to location so they can go on offending.

And Bernard Toutounji claims that his article has nothing to do with religion.

Yet Bernard himself has been part of the hierarchy that has consistently lied about the activities of pedophile priests. http://www.sydneycatholic.org/news/latest_news/2014/201425_652.shtml So without further evidence, I am not inclined to believe Bernard when he claims this has nothing to do with religion.

One has to wonder what the true agenda of the Vatican is in all this. They campaign in all sorts of ways against abortion, but where they can get away with it, they also campaign against modern family planning, which in fact reduces abortion rates.

I remember watching a documentary from the Philippines, where a married woman with 8 children, living on the Manilla rubbish tip, pleaded with the hospital authorities to have her tubes tied, as she simply could not feed any more children. As the hospital was Catholic controlled, her request was of course denied. Even in Perth, at the newly Catholic managed hospital, tubal litigation or the snip for men, cannot be performed by doctors, even if these things assist in lowering the abortion rate. Luckily Western women have a choice, unlike many third world women.

I can only conclude that perhaps the agenda in Rome is far more sinister, that it is perhaps more about demographics in their fight for more members with the Muslims, or they would not campaign so strongly against family planning, which does lower abortion rates.

Dear Suseonline,
You misread my comment. the words "Disgusting and evil" were not mine. They were used by Yabby to describe people who disagree with abortion.
You assert that the mothers right to "decide what to do with her own body" trumps the right of the unborn child not to be killed. I disagree.
What to do with unwanted pregnancies? I don't necessarily believe the criminal law is the answer to abortion. Maybe as a society we have to start valuing human life more rather than killing it when its inconvenient.
I understand there was a time when an unwanted pregnancy could be devastating for woman. She would be ostracised by her community and shamed and left to a life of destitution. That is no longer the case. The vast majority of abortions in Australia are carried out because the pregnancy is inconvenient. Not dangerous to the mothers physical or mental health. Likewise, it is no longer considered shameful to have a child outside of marriage. We have social welfare to support mothers who lack other sources of income.
Most of all we have access to effective means of contraception. I believe that we as a society need to change our attitudes towards the unborn. we should value all human life, and support those who are carrying these children and raring them. Of course there is adoption for those who really don't want to raise their own child. There are plenty of people out there who would love to raise another persons child, but there are no children available for adoption. Mainly because they were killed prior to birth.
I believe that a change in the attitude towards abortion would stimulate a change in the attitude toward contraception. If people did not feel abortion was an option, they would be more careful with contraception. Maybe we have a problem with the availability of contraception in Australia? If so, lets increase access and education.

Dear Rhys,

First, I agree with your last post.

Earlier you wrote:

<<In that case we should be able to kill children up to the age of at least four or five years old.>>

Well, we already are able to kill children. We might be thrown in jail if we are caught, but we can.

Some children develop their individuality earlier than others, as well as their fear of death. For myself, I can tell that by the age of one I already developed a strong sense of individuality and morality; half a year later I remember knowing exactly who I am and as around that time my grandmother died, I already had serious concerns about her death and death in general.

While killing is wrong, the degree of harm varies along a gradient.
The more conscious and educated an individual human or animal is, the more harm they would experience if killed.

Whether and in what circumstances to kill, should be left to the individual, according to their own moral capacity, as the incurred sin, small or big, will weigh on them alone.

How possibly can politicians who themselves prey on grown-up and well-developed animals for dinner dare to legislate that others may not kill their own babies who are likely yet less developed? Either newly-born or not-yet-born, it makes only a slight difference along a longer slope.