enaj

I respecfully request that you check the thread before making a post. I placed a hyperlink on 25th July to the article you referred to in your last post. I fully concur with your sentiments, however. It was a moving article and prompted me to ask where are the men who support their women during such difficult choices.

Di - yes you are right, you sure can determine the male posters from the females on this thread. Suspect it all gets back to "keep 'em barefoot & pregnant".

For the record I am not depressed, don't have breast cancer and at age 52 still have to use contraception - ergot not infertile. That applies to the majority of women have undergone abortions. Sure there will always be those who get depressed. I guess it would be better if women with a propensity towards depression refrain from abortions and become mothers instead. Thats just what the world needs more depressed parents.

Kathy Woolf suggest you read some Naomi Woolf and get in step with being a woman.

Trinity,
Fair cop, I did read your post and suspected your hyperlink was to the same article, but, as a technotwit, I just zip past such complicated stuff.
Dalma,
I didn't understand your post at all. The attempt to make people like Tracey and I feel bad is surely not a particularly admirable tactic? I always wonder about how such emotional blackmail and guilt-tripping marries with the oft-claimed motive of pro-lifers that they want to "protect" women from the misery of abortion.
Such misery, of course, exists, but I think it is relatively rare. Apart from my own experience, my belief that most women aproach abortion relatively pragmatically was confirmed when I appeared on 2BL's political forum a year or so ago at the height of Tony Abbott's abortion debate, with John Brogden and the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen. Our topics included the international situation, the abortion debate and our favourite recipes from the 70s. Both men spoke about abortion and women theoretically and philosophically. I decided, somewhat reluctantly, that I could not be a hypocrit and spoke about my own actual experiences, as outlined in previous posts. When I left the studio, I was terrified, I expected, at the very least to be abused and villified. Nothing like that happened. In fact, a friend rang to comment on what I'd said about Iraq, when I asked her response to my remarks on abortion, she (a mother of one) was very nonchalant, saying I was absolutely right and she'd had an abortion too and hardly knew a woman who hadn't but it was no big deal. Then I went to the P&C meeting at my daughter's school. The President said; "Oh, I heard you on Richard Glover, loved the bit about the apricot chicken."
As I keep pointing out, abortion or, at least the possibility of it, is part of the everyday warp and weft of every sexually active woman's life.

Having been banished for citing Gough Whitlam in my last comment on this thread, I'll endeavour to choose my words more carefully in this one. The following figures are derived from successive Australian Election Studies (AES) since 1987:

"On the issue of abortion, respondents are asked which of the following options they support: “Women should be able to obtain an abortion readily when they want one”; “Abortion should be allowed only in special circumstances”; “Abortion should not be allowed under any circumstances”; “Don't know”. The results over time have been:

OBTAIN ABORTION READILY: 38.6% in 1987; 50.3% in 1990; 56.1% in 1993; 53.5% in 1996; 50.3% in 1998; 57.6% in 2001; 54.2% in 2004.

ONLY IN SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES: 65.0%; 39.5%; 34.7%; 37.0%; 39.8%; 32.5%; 34.7%.

NOT ALLOWED: 6.4%; 6.0%; 4.8%; 5.5%; 4.6%; 4.1%. 4.0%

DON’T KNOW: NA; 4.2%; 4.4%; 4.1%; 5.3%; 5.8%; 7.3%."

It appears that Kathy Woolf and her supporters are out of step with public opinion on abortion.

For the record, Di, Trinity, enaj and others: not all men wish to control women's bodies - indeed, some of us are more inclined to the "warp and weft" approach so succinctly put by enaj :)

Garra, agree with you that not all men are out to control women's bodies, as put, but they are hardly the majority of ones posting on this site. Women get upset a bit when the body is used as the "politic". Agree with the post that says women are a bit more pragmatic about it. As we have learnt to be.

Hey Garra I know not all men are into the control thing - I just wanted to hear from you guys - the silence had become somewhat deafening. I thank you for your statistics, can only hope that Kathy had a good read of them.

Besides many women are anti-abortion also and, as a result, are controlling the lives of other women by attempting to impose their belief system on women who want to choose. One anti-choice poster actually wrote that she wasn't into controlling women because she was a women too (duh?!) and then proceeded to state that if she was into control she would be protesting plastic surgery - her logic lost me completely.

Anyway I hope Kathy has learnt alot from this forum and is having a reflective moment or too.

Grey – the hippocratic Oath – a pledge undertaken by some members of the medical fraternity – not by pregnant women

Law – rules to govern individual conduct – been around forever and was not until second quarter to the 19th century that any laws were enacted to control abortion and then repealed about 100 - 150 years or so later.

Just as the rule of the church has diminished over the past 1500 years, we have moved to greater individual autonomy and recognised the rights of individuals to exercise their personal choice progressively over the same time.

Whilst you might claim 'it is completely consistent with the history of the last 1500 years to argue that all abortions of convenience should be outlawed,'

It is also completely true to say

We do not burn witches
We do allow women and non-landowners to exercise a vote
We do not tip our caps to “our betters”
We do question not only the substance but also the rights of authority figures to impose their will upon us.

Therefore I would suggest that whilst you might claim that “history of the past 1500 years” argues that abortion of convenience should be outlawed”

I am living in today’s world

Women have the vote
Witchcraft is not a capital offence
The unquestionable authority of Church and the Social Order have (rightly) diminished almost to the point of extinction
And
Abortion IS LEGAL