Dear NNS,

The problem with my cousin was not the unavailability of adoption. The problem was having a baby. Adoption is a solution for you. It wasn't for her. She couldn't even tell her mother she was pregnant. She might have killed herself even if her boyfriend hadn't been killed and was willing to come back and marry her. Poison was available. Legal, medically approved abortion wasn't. She lived in a sick society. I think we have a healthier society now.

Adoption is not a solution when pregnancy is the problem. Lack of money was not the problem. I think I would have been willing to marry her if I had known of her situation before she killed herself. I think society is sick in some ways but not in allowing a woman a choice.

I think it is a sickness of society when Turnbull states that he would like to see Australia one of the top ten arms producers, and there is relative silence. That is money for blood. Arms kill people of all ages including foetuses, but apparently that is ok. All hail the foetus!

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Dear Peter,

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In my previous post on page 3 of this thread, I surmised that perhaps the “Church” might not be human. Here are some indications from the Catholic Encyclopedia and the OED :
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Catholic Encyclopedia definition of the word “Church” :

« The definition of the Church given by Saint Robert Bellarmine is that usually adopted by Catholic theologians : "A body of men united together by the profession of the same Christian Faith , and by participation in the same sacraments, under the governance of lawful pastors, more especially of the Roman Pontiff, the sole vicar of Christ on earth"

Note :

Saint Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) was canonized and named a Doctor of the Church. He was inquisitor at three infamous inquisitions :

• The inquisition of Giordano Bruno, a Dominican Friar, philosopher, mathematician, and cosmologist, who was condemned for heresy and burnt at the stake

• The inquisition of Galileo who managed to have his sentence limited to “indefinite imprisonment” by abandoning Copernic’s theory which he had upheld : that the earth revolved around the sun and not the inverse

• The inquisition of Friar Fulgenzio Manfredi who was charged with the possession of forbidden books, contacts with heretics and autographed attacks on Catholic doctrine, the de-legitimisation of the Pope and the Council of Trent, and accusations of heresy. He was condemned as a “relapsed heretic” and burnt at the stake.
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OED (Oxford English Dictionary) definition of the word “Church” :

1. A building used for public Christian worship.

2. A particular Christian organization with its own clergy, buildings, and distinctive doctrines.

3. The hierarchy of clergy within a particular Christian Church.

4. Institutionalized religion as a political or social force.
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Conclusion :

The “human” aspect of the “Church” does not appear to be particularly evident in either of these two definitions.

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//With this in mind, I say it again. If other solutions such as adoption were readily available//

It is. I don't think the impediments to giving a child up for adoption are as vast as you imagine. Some countries even have baby hatches, which definitely takes the hassle away... people in those countries still have abortions rather than anonymously dropping their kid in the baby hatch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_hatch

You might want to have proper think about why that might be the case. And somehow, I don't think it's because a significant proportion of the female population are sick or wicked. Just from a statistical point of view, they can't possibly all be pyschopaths. If women who abort their kids are all evil monsters, we're missing an awful lot of evil monsters.

//might just be the change in culture needed to step away from loose and casual sex.//

What's wrong with casual sex, dude? Casual sex is awesome. If two (or more, if you're into that sort of thing) consenting adults wish to engage in the congress of the wombat, what is wrong with that? Why get so hung up about it? And why do you feel that it's anybody's business except the parties involved?

Just remember: if it's not on it's not on.

//Who chooses death over responsibility?//

A lot of women. A lot of normal, everyday, next-door neighbour type women who work and pay taxes and obey the law and are generally good, nice people. That you would so readily condemn says far more about your narrow-minded judgemental attitudes then it does about their supposed lack of morals.

//May the next generation be better then our own.//

Women have been having abortions for a very long time, across a borad range of cultures, NNS. I can't see it changing in a hurry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion

The difference is that these days we have safe, medically supervised abortions. I think that's a lot better than women having to go to backyard butchers like they used to.

//Let's start by making adoption affordable.//

Sure, great idea. If parents want to adopt, I think the Government could do more to make it less onerous and more affordable.

But I don't see how that's going to address the problem of women not wanting to give their kids up for adoption in the first place. I'm not sure you've really thought this through. You seem to have concluded that if it's easier for people to adopt children, that will spontaneously cause women to want to give their children up for adoption, as if by magic.

After all, if women can have children and then anonymously drop them in a baby hatch - no cost, no responsibility - but they choose to have an abortion instead, doesn't that suggest to you that this matter is little more nuanced than your simplistic solution suggests?

Maybe some women would simply prefer to have an abortion to having a child and then relinquishing it? Maybe they're actually rational, intelligent beings who make a carefully considered decision where they weigh up the distress having an abortion will cause them vs. the distress having a child and reliquishing it will cause them, and then make a decision based on what they feel is best for them.

And maybe they when they're making that very important and personal decision they really don't give a rat's arse what distress them choosing an abortion will cause to you personally... and why the bloody hell should they?

Hi Toni,

Why are we talking about here ? A man and a woman have sex and the woman gets pregnant. If abortion was illegal, that leaves her in a far more difficult position than the bloke who might have pissed off and gone onto his next partner, perhaps to repeat the process. So how to either keep abortion legal or, as NSS may prefer, share the responsibilities ?

The woman, not the man, carries the baby to term, with all the inconveniences that brings, plus the chance of birth complications. If the bloke is still around, he is merely a spectator at that stage. Having gone to all that trouble, should a woman then have to look after the child until it's an adult while the bloke goes scot-free ?

So why not give her the option of passing the baby over to the bloke until it's eighteen, or looking after it herself with a living wage provided by the bloke - all under strict government regulation ? I recall that that used to be the legal situation, I knew quite a few blokes who had their pay 'garnisheed'. Of course, it may be difficult if the woman is unwilling to dob her partner in, but she may change her mind if the only other options are spelt out clearly: have the child adopted out, or look after it herself, on god-knows-what income.

But let's get back to the underlying issue: is an embryo a human being ? Most of us these days would say, not yet. At three months ? Okay, it's forming into a human being, but up until then, no. So abortion up until then is not really the ending of a human life.

And of course there may be complications for the mother-to-be after that, so abortion may be necessary later in the pregnancy to save her life, which many of us forget is, after all, the life of a living, viable human being.

So those may be the options: keep abortion legal, or pass the responsiblities onto the spectator.

Cheers,

Joe

Yep murder the unborn, leave the adoption list a mile long and import those who are happy to take multiple wives and have welfare pay. What a civilised mob we are.