ruby I think you need your head read if you believe that Hardly anyone is calling for abortions to stop on religious grounds.

I can't think of a single org that is not religiously based that is calling for reform in abortion can you.

Also can you tell me which country you were visiting when the issue of late term abortions came up a few months ago. There is a push to banned these for a start and I don't think to many religious groups would defend abortions if the government tried to stop it.
If it walks like a...

Kenny, I'm sorry you have such an angry irrational hatred of Christians. It seems that anything coming from the mouth of a Christian, or from a Christian organisation, or from an organisation that has some Christians in it, must be wrong, and is to be dismissed. Therefore it is you who is approaching the issue of abortion on grounds of religion.

You ought to listen to people's arguments and assess them on their merits, rather than running on blind prejudice.

I agree that there was some discussion about late-term abortions, but I don't believe it concerned banning them, and no-one ever proposed to make abortion illegal. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Remember, our community feels very uneasy about late term abortions and they have every right to discuss this. Even an athiest is likely to be filled with horror at the thought of a live baby having her skull caved in and brains sucked out during a late term abortion. Maybe you are so postmodern and enlightened that this doesn't bother you. Anyway, the alternative to a late-term abortion is a late-term live delivery. A woman can end her pregnancy during late term without actually having the baby killed.

Audrey,

I agree with you. I had a look back through a number of on-line news sites and I could find very little that would equate to what the author has stated. I think the author has made most of it up.

The author only considers a few aspects of abortion, and she seems to want to slam politicians while asking for more government funding. The first may be somewhat acceptable, but the second comes out of the tax-payers pocket (and the average tax-payer also has to afford to pay their bills, as well as pay the expenses of raising their own children).

Pouring more and more money into the problem of unwanted pregnancy may not solve the problem at all, as there can be many factors involved which can't be solved by money alone. The author wanting more government funding is simply a knee-jerk reaction to the problem.

More research and information is necessary on the reasons why there is so much abortion and unwanted pregnancy, but this won’t come about if the whole issue is silenced, which the author seems intent on trying to do.

Hopefully the article is never printed on paper, as it will waste more trees.

I have just read Anne O’Rourke’s article and comments up to last Friday.

Anne wishes to be offended by the many men she claims who desire to determine what women should and should not do with their bodies. This is OK in general but is not OK when we talk about sexual activity between men and women resulting in conception.

I am 100% with Ros when she stated last Fri, "The life choices you are talking about concerns the life of a little one. A life is a continuum from conception to death. This is not a religious belief but a biological fact."

This has got to be correct and 4D ultrasounds and other technologies in the pipeline are only going to reinforce the point in coming years. The issue of abortion is simply not going away; "thank's for having me" resonates deeply.

At this stage pro life people are clearly in a minority and have no way of getting a change in the law, but with the impact of 4D ultrasounds coupled with declining birth-rates for people of Anne’s opinion and conversely the significantly higher birth-rates amongst religious people, in time the balance will change.

The question has to be asked, why the high level of abortion? Answer: people are into casual sex without any commitment to one another. This is the out working of disastrous 960’s sexual revolution.

My wife and I went into marriage as virgins – no sex before marriage. Two things result from this: early marriage and the desire for children. According to their own testimony our parents were virgins on their wedding days. We all remain married, blessed by our respective children. I know not all achieved this ideal but for a large proportion of the population it was an ideal with consequent much lower rates of abortion/adoption.

I would like Anne O’Rourke and everyone else who thinks like her to know that my Christian beliefs do influence what I think and do. So long as Australia remains a democracy I for one intend to give voice to my christian convictions and vote accordingly.

In terms of abortion, I don't think David should have cause for optimism. The concept of individual rights, including reproductive rights, emerged with the onset of capitalism. This is why feminism and gay liberation arose when they did rather than centuries before. The results have included a massive increase in the choices and status of women in the most democratic countries. Whether you agree with unfettered capitalism or not, the tendency is in countries which are the most developed (loaded value-ridden term) to allow women greater freedom as consumers and greater freedom regarding bodily and reproductive autonomy.

This hasn't happened evenly. Post-Stalinist Poland has restricted access to abortion. However, what happens is that women travel to other countries in the EU to have the operation. Like it or not, capitalist markets are amoral. Like it or not, capitalist democracies give women greater freedoms. This combination points to a trend which in all likelihood will ensure the situation re: abortion will not return to the pre-1960s.

Speaking of the 1960s, I wonder how long it will be before people will stop talking about that decade as the major cause of all our woes? Personally, I think the 1940s was much worse but that's just me.

DavidJs
It is true that feminism and abortion are much related, and most ardent feminists also strongly support abortion (even with contraception available etc).

Feminism has been around for a couple of hundred years, but it came more to the fore during the early 1900’s. Feminism is tied to Marxism (and even Nazism has elements of feminism in it), and many early feminists declared themselves Marxist. Eg:-

“The Women's Movement played a major role in the Russian Revolution, the February Revolution being triggered by an International Women's Day demonstration, and there were a number of women revolutionaries on the Bolshevik Central Committee that made the Russian Revolution” at http://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/w/o.htm

Now latter on people such as Greer began to write about women’s “liberation”, and also women’s “sexual liberation”. This meant that a woman should not be tied to a single man or husband, but could have many sexual partners. Unfortunately women become pregnant, so to remedy this, they also advocated wide scale abortion. People like Greer lived what they advocated, and she had countless sexual partners, became a groupie, indulged in many orgies, and had several abortions which some believe left her unable to have children. She now has no family, releases books on nude boys, and appears on Big Brother for money. For an account of all this see… http://www.beverlylahayeinstitute.org/articledisplay.asp?id=5435&department=BLI&categoryid=commentary (I personally have read much that verifies what is in that article.)

Now considering early feminists belief in abortion. They rejected marriage, husbands and fathers, and most still do. If the woman wanted to have frequent sex but becomes pregnant, then she had an abortion. This is totally sick and immoral, but that was their philosophy. Read all about it in early feminist literature.

Some things have changed, and now feminist reasons for abortion appear mainly to do with money and politics, as can be seem by this article.

Most still don’t believe in marriage, believe women are “more equal” than men, and they infer that women are so powerful that they can have children, and also abortions, while men can’t (even with much improved contraception now available etc).