Yabby

I understand where you are coming from and I know that Wibble was challenging Meg1's presumptions with a bit of intellectualising, but after the hell I, and many women, go through it just appeared to be both pretentious and trivialising very difficult circumstances. Not that I didn't find it interesting - I did. (BTW Yabby you make my 'choices' sound like a walk in the park - they didn't feel very much like 'choices' more like survival born of desperation. Not a real choice, Yabby.)

Anyway, I'd like to take this bit of hypothetical play further and ask the righteous anti-abortionists out what they would like to see happen to all the frozen embryos that are no longer needed for in vitro fertilisation.

Should the mother be made to give birth to all? Should these embryos be implanted in other women?

Of course, personally speaking, I see a need for research into stem cells that these foeti could provide.

However, I would like to know from those who hold the foetus as above the rights of the lives of others, just what they believe should be done with all these frozen foeti?

Scout, I've known a few women who had to make a decision about abortion and its quite traumatic. I can empathise with with what you went through, I've had staff and friends in similar kinds of circumstances, domestic violence etc.

Its perhaps because of those things that I am so passionate about this topic, even though its never affected me personally. Having lived for some time in Africa, I saw the other side, where no choice is available. Life is relative so to speak. Some of those women came close to death, all because a few religious nuts are totally judgemental about the world and want to enforce their dogma on everyone.

When I read the figures of women dying in South America, where the Catholic Church has huge influence politically, they just blew me away.
These people are meant to belong to a religion that cares for others, yet here was their dogma, killing people by the tens of thousands every year. We Australians get upset if one Australian is hanged in Singapore, yet here is a huge tragedy, caused by people who claim to care about others. The hypocracy is totally overwhelming.

Thats why I attack the Catholic Church. They are in total denial of the misery they are causing around the world, their view must be right and they will surely get to their heaven. I have a huge problem with that kind of ignorance and stupidity.

Thanks Yabby

I understand where you are coming from. It is all relative. We can only judge our circumstances based upon the culture in which we live.

I know that I would rather be a woman in a western style democracy than any other. However, as you will no doubt decipher from the tenor of many posts here, we still have to remain ever vigilant for there are those whose agenda would have all women with the same appalling lack of choice as those experienced in many other countries - Africa, Middle East and so on.

I have yet to see ANY religion treat women as equals to men - there is always some kind of 'catch 22'.

It was this inequality, along with many other reasons (eg evolution) that turned me away from Christianity when I was 12.

Kind regards

Dianne

Hi all

Yabby (post 9:43:32 AM 13/3/06)

Morality is a conscious, rationalised thought process. Few animals on the face of earth have been blessed with the ability to rationalise. Only homosapien has been granted true comprehension of right from wrong. That doesn't mean that we consciously apply such rationale though.

Without applying "absolutes" we begin to create excuses to justify why something that's immoral, unethical or untruthful is abided by.

With children, we create Santa Claus, the "tooth fair" & the "Easter bunny" & justify those lies & deceits by calling them "'white' lies, which give our children fun".

Is it any wonder that after a lifetime of us lying to our children that they see nothing wrong in lying to us?

I do not oppose sterilisation for medical or family planning reasons. That certainly is preferable to a resultant abortion - the killing of the foetus.
(13/3/06)

Meg 1 (post 1:05:02 PM 13/3/06)

Correct, Meg. For much of the starving 3rd-world countries it isn't a matter of over-population. Rather, it's lack of food, resources & skills. Droughts, government corruption & warfare exacerbate the situation.

We initially should/must freight food to the masses. But until warfare & corruption is halted, & the inhabitants are supplied with machinery & given skills, their lot will hardly improve.

When economies are racked by inflation rates of 100% per day/month/year, even the workers cannot maintain an adequate survival.

If abortion is practised on a large-scale in some of these countries, they will within 20-years possibly suffer a generation loss. However, we are here to discuss Australia - not African or Asian nations' woes. That is for another posting.
(13/3/06)

Martin ibn Warriq (post 4:43:08 PM 13/3/06)

"Abortion is the product of female enslavement."
Often women won't see it as thus. They won't/don't comprehend that if the male isn't made co-responsible, then the woman is likely to be little more than a "r**ting machine". Great for male egos, but not necessarily enduring to mutual respect & long-term love (admiration).

Isn't it another form of the rabbit-mentality which occurs in less-sophisticated countries, too?

Cheers all

Hi all

Martin ibn Warriq (post 4:48:05 PM 13/3/06)

Killing people for religious dissent is abhorrent - as is letting the impoverished starve. But as you rightly infer: it is no less disgusting to destroy a foetus.
(15/3/06)

Yabby (post 9:34:47 PM 13/3/06)

"Having far more kids then they can afford to feed and educate, is one reason why Africa is in the state its in."
Yes, & the reason(s) that much of that has occurred is because of:
(i) Constant killings & dictatorial civil-wars;
(ii) A generation of almost non-productive farming;
(iii) Drought;
(iv) Lack of adequate aid - often supplies diverted or stolen;
(v) Non-implementation of adequate modern technologies;
(vi) Resulting in estroyed economies, etc.

Isn't it interesting that many of the famine-ridden countries were flourishing economies when the British, Dutch, Spanish & others colonised them. Since? Warfare & terror!

With despotic idiots like Robert MUGABI at the helm whole nations have disintegrated. People, such as Australia's Peter DANIELS who was an advisor to the World Bank, were warning of this more than 20-years ago. No one wanted to listen.

But wide-spread abortions practices on these people isn't the answer. If we replicate China, that might mean imprisonment for a pregnant woman with more than 1-child. That's not a solution either - & who'd enforce it? The UN I suppose?
(15/3/06)

Te (post 10:16:52 PM 13/3/06)

".. the reason Africa is in the state it is in is due to .. "
Absolutely!
(15/3/06)

mjpb (post 5:52:29 AM 14/3/06)

"All the (Atheist) ills and shortcomings ... do not excuse the Church of Rome ..".
I never suggested that they did. Kindly read the complete content & context of my words.

"If your club really did requiring ..."
What 'club'? I don't belong to a 'club' - I'm not Catholic (as I keep saying, in almost every post).

Oh, I think you meant "require" NOT "requiring".
(15/3/06)

Cheers all

Yabby, I post regularly on a USA abortion board. This is a world wide issue, just as slavery was once a world wide issue.
The Catholic Church is a world wide organisation and as insidious as any other organisation which sees itself as an omnipotent force with divine right to mess with the lives of individuals.
You are right, the organisation of priest is not interested in the congregational cannon fodder, just in retaining their power base.
AS I have repeatedly stated here and elsewhere, Organised religion is a blight on society. “Humanity” is compassionate and loving by nature, despite the efforts of organised religion, not because of it.

It is only by respecting someone else and loving their right to exercise “freewill” that we come to accept their right of decision, the very right which the religious would demand be denied them.

LAB
RE “If abortion is practised on a large-scale in some of these countries, they will within 20-years possibly suffer a generation loss”

I thought that was what AIDS was doing – today and not in 20 years time.

As for the bit about corruption, wars inflation etc. These social curses have nothing to do with people exercising sovereignty over their own body.

RE “"Abortion is the product of female enslavement."
Often women won't see it as thus.”

It must be a particularly perverse mind which manipulates “respecting someone else’s right of self determination” into “enslavement”.

Again, I see nothing “Egoistic” of the male in respecting a females right of choice, quite the opposite.

As for co-responsibility, our child support laws make the male “co-responsible”. However I do not believe that gives tha male any right of decision over the female. We are talking about the females body and only the female should have right to make the final decision or choice. I guess it is a bit rough on the male but, as a male, I recognise that the world is not always a “level playing field” especially when only one half of a couple is the pregnant one.