Since when should decisions about family planning by a woman be the subject of "public opinion" expressed through the institutions of church, academia and government? Are we now supposed to undertake a public opinion survey before deciding on the size and timing of our families?

Family planning is about private choice, Ms Woolf. How is it that the "freedom" we're supposed to be investing in all over the world (hence we start wars in its name, right?!) - is essential for everyone else..... so long as you're not a woman or family who just want to manage our own lives, without interference from people who insist on inserting themselves into others' lives.

Secondly, the idea that a person who respects that right of choice axiomatically opposes the provision of more support for women who have children, is preposterous in any case. That kind of thinking is pitifully naive and plainly untrue. If you really are concerned about supporting women with children, join with the organisations that are defending the protections currently provided in law for parents in the workforce, that the Howard government is intending to pare down to bare minima.

When requested. When requested. Not even about requiring information on abortion be given out, just that when requested, a referral must me made.

I'd be suprised if there were any pro-abortion counselling agencies. Nobody wants high rates of abortion, but we can't magically put everyone in a position where they will want to give birth; try promoting responsible contraceptive use instead. Or does the Australian Federation of Right to Life Associations oppose contraception too Kathy?

Do you really think that the Senator is doing this to increase profits for abortion clinics? I suppose that shows how much your position has control over your perceptions.

Kathy Woolf ends her article with the challenge to "think beyond the polarised public debate" while her article consistently characterises family planning and other pro-choice organisations as "pro-abortion" and implies some sinister agenda to prop up commercial abortion services, consistent with constant demonising of any person or organisation with a pro-choice approach from this side of the debate. It's pro-choice, not pro-abortion. If we are to move beyond the polarised debate as she suggests, then recognition of the right to hold a pro-choice opinion has to be extended by those individuals and organisations who hold a right to life opinion. In my experience, pro-choice pregnancy counselling and support services are invariably focused on the wants, needs and interests of the women they support, and to suggest otherwise is an unhelpful, inflammatory diversion from the issue of reducing the need for abortions in the first place.

Oh, good, let's have public opinion guide everything. We can have the death penalty. How pro-life is that? We can have castration of rapists and paedophiles, no doubt leading to an increased murder rate to prevent witness identification. How pro-life is that? And please, when quoting "research" from the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute, wouldn't it be fair to mention that SCBI is a Catholic Church institute? You can always find exactly what you intend to find - you just have to ask the question in the right way.

Timbo, to describe oneself as 'prochoice' is either meaningless at best or crazy at worst. To say you are 'prochoice' literally means that you are in favour of people having the freedom to choose. That's all very well, but does it mean that we should be free to choose about absolutely anything?

Would you accept the rapist saying that his actions should be excused because he was 'prochoice' and that he had simply made the choice to rape someone? I don't expect so.

When you think about it, none of us accepts that freedom of choice is something that can be accepted without any qualification. So merely to say that one is 'prochoice' is stupid.

Pro-abortionists try to hide behind the seemingly positive term 'prochoice' but it is just a cheap trick. If you are infavour of allowing abortion, have the guts to come out and say you are pro-abortion (just like people who are in favour of allowing the death-penalty are rightly called 'pro-death penalty').

For 1500 years, until 30 years ago, abortion was officially regarded by doctors -- and society -- as a heinous crime ; hence the Hippocratic Oath never to do an abortion or enable a woman to get an abortion. I guess we in the prolife movement have taken up the Hippocratic Oath which has been abandoned by so many in the medical profession who have swallowed the fashionable lie that somehow killing is not killing, wrong is right, evil is good, unborn babies are not really unborn babies but something else entirely (just what has never been defined).
All we need do is look at history and see that slavery was once fashionable, as was killing Jews, homosexuals and Christians in the Holocaust. Now it's the turn of unborn children ...
I cannot call you "pro-choice" because I have no concrete evidence that this means what is says. The hundreds of shattered post-aborted women I have tried to help (they got no help from anyone who helped them abort) all say they were conned by the abortion industry - told abortion would have no bad effects or not warned of how bad they would feel or of the myriad physical risks which can ruin a woman's health.
It would be amusing if it was not so tragic that the likes of Stott-Despoja are so fiercely determined to snuff out any attempts to offer pregnant women in crisis any choice whatsoever that does not involve killing their unborn children.