(Cont…)

Your anti-life website states Portugese:
‘family planning services are provided free of charge…contraceptives requiring prescription are free…teenage pregnancy in Portugal is one of the highest in Europe (25 of 1000 adolescents).’

A direct contradiction of your contraception argument.

Your anti-life website provides only mischievous and misleading half-truths.

‘20 million of 46 million abortions annually are ‘illegal’ or ‘unsafe’ resulting in ‘80,000 deaths each year due to infection, hemorrhages, uterine injury and the toxic effects of agents taken to induce abortion.’ (no references)

All of the above deaths would include legal and illegal abortions...including RU486 deaths...no available statistics are specific to ‘illegal’ abortions.

Most Australian abortions are illegal under present laws, Scout…so too in most countries.

…availability of abortion…‘can therefore be considered part of the struggle against poverty.’
So Yabby it’s not about women’s choice? Abort all those ‘poor’ babies rather than allow the parents a living wage to support their family.

‘Of the 29,266 abortions performed there (Portugal) in 1997, the complication rate for first trimester treatments was 0,3% with no resulting deaths whatsoever.’

Wrong – there’s at least 29,266 infant deaths overall and no statistics on maternal deaths-or-complications past the first trimester… If you’re amongst the 0.3% who suffered ‘complications’ of first trimester abortion - perhaps septicemia-resulting-in-a-radical-hysterectomy, involuntary-sterilization or subsequent-spontaneous-abortions, you wouldn’t be so statistically dismissive.

The site has at least two webpages no longer available…statistics can’t be substantiated perhaps?

Re: fictitious statistics for ‘empty’ church pews…join the ‘welcome back’ groups in my own parish, the pews are filled at Sunday Masses, including Youth Masses. Most Christian denominations are well represented in our community…regularly combining for community activities.

Your agenda’s clear…not ‘choice’, it’s about ‘anti BABY pills’ …your own admission condemns your hypocrisy.

Yabby, don’t assume your ‘women-friends’ are representative of women, statistical fantasy again…

If religion’s simply an ‘idea’ then why haven’t you a better one…or any rational idea at all?

SCOUT: ‘Simply because you do not believe in a particular religion you subjected to abuse.’

Yes Scout, Yabby has subjected the Catholic Church and Catholics to irrational and unreasoned abuse, it’s good you have admitted it…

Scout (alias dianne?) - re your post to Yabby

"If there were prizes for perseverance in the line of unreasoned and unreasonable fire, you deserve it.

You continue to argue coherently and fairly - without resorting to personal invective.

Simply because you do not believe in a particular religion you subjected to abuse."

I am sure you made a few errors in those statements - didn't you mean...... "If there were prizes for perseverance in unreasoned and unreasonable thinking, you deserve it."

"You continue to argue incoherently and unfairly - resorting to personal invective."

Being simple and because you do not believe in a particular religion you subject those who do to abuse."

:-)) just a thought....

Te, I am going to have to ask Graham to give me some extra daily posts, considering I have all three of you to re-educate about the world :)

Meg, I had hoped that you would at least show some empathy for the fact that another women dies of unsafe abortion practises every six minutes, but clearly religious dogma is more important to you then dying women.

The World Health Oranisation figures are about as close as we can get to accurate figures, but anything illegal is hard to be sure about. Clearly many could be hospitalised and dying, that we are not aware of.

http://www.who.int/docstore/world-health-day/en/pages1998/whd98_10.html

No ru 486 figures in there, as they are practically non existant in places like Europe, where people have Medicare etc.

Portugal has no clear cut figures as yet. They are still in the throws of throwing out the old Catholic dogma and giving women choices. Meantime, many Portugese women have done exactly what Irish women do, ie hop over the border, which in Europe is not far away.
In the the third world, many women don't have that option.

No religion is declining in Aus, as fast as the Catholic faith.

http://www.ncls.org.au/default.aspx?docid=2250

Work out the numbers for yourself, my quote was pretty well correct.

My agenda is choice. Choice about contraception, choice about abortion. I don't "abuse' the Catholic Church, I simply use informed criticism to point out their failings, as I and anyone else does, to those who participate in politics. As the Church is highly political, fair enough if people cricise its many failings, contradictions and point out how the effect of its policies are killing women in the third world. Those women could stop dying almost immediately, if reason, rather then religious dogma prevailed.

Yabby,

"I don't "abuse' the Catholic Church, I simply use informed criticism to point out their failings, as I and anyone else does, to those who participate in politics. As the Church is highly political, fair enough if people cricise ..."

Wow that is the most sincere sounding rationalisation for promoting hatred and public vilification of a group that I ever saw. You really believe your rationalisation that Catholics deserve it and it is okay don't you?

What doesn't sound so sincere is innuendos of Meg not being concerned about dying women and ...

"Those women could stop dying almost immediately, if reason, rather then religious dogma prevailed."

They are dying from abortions (something you not the Catholic Church advocates) in countries where religious dogma is rejected not prevailing.

MJ, sometimes I get the distinct impression that first world catholics like you, have no idea as to the effect that your church, specifically the beliefs of the last pope, have had on the the third world and how many have suffered because of them. The results are truly shocking and sad.

I am not alone in the belief that forcing flawed religious dogma
onto people, even non catholics, is causing misery. When 9 year olds who were raped, are forced to have babies, when church leaders peddle superstition and ignorance in Africa, when your last pope clearly had inadequate knowledge of the plight of women and girls in the third world, then its time that people speak up. In the real world things are pretty different to what he seems to have understood.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/3147672.stm

leads you to a bbc url, that will let you download the trancscript
of the programme. Read it and then tell me if you still think as you do now. Personally I think that the Catholic Church should be ashamed of itself and its sad that the influence of one man has led to so much misery for so many, because of it. No wonder that thinking Catholics have left the church in droves, or openly disgree with some of these weird views.

Religious dogma, enforced under those conditions, is not much better then what the Taliban do.

Yabby - the simple reason these women die from abortion is that the doctors that perform them are bottom of the barrel. Any doctor worth his while protects life - remember the original Hipocratic Oath (now frequently're-written' with each graduating group) has as its opening statement "FIRST DO NO HARM". I certainly want any doctor I see to have taken that first statement seriously.

David Grundeman (abortionist in Australia operating in Brisbane and Melbourne)said at the 1993 Seattle conference of abortion 'providers' that they - the doctors doing abortions - were not the cream of the crop, that most of them had either a death or a malpractice suit behind them and that the abortion industry had trouble attracting 'good' doctors. REALLY?? No surprise. 'Good' doctors want to heal not hurt.

Interesting that even "one of them" recognises the lack of quality in the 'care' given by these "doctors".