kt mcf - "that something we would normally treasure (a pregnancy)" - its wrong to assume that women would normally treasure something like a pregnancy .

If you look at most women in Australia, they are fertile from age of 15 to 45 but really only want to have 1, 2 or 3 children sometime in their 20s or 30s. The exceptions are the members of minority religious sects that expect their women to marry at 16 and have as many children as possible.

Many children of the baby boom grew up in families where the third and subsequent children were financial burdens their parents could ill afford to feed or clothe. Many children grew up with the sentences ringing in their ears like "I kept having babies until I had a son" or "If I hadn't got pregnant . . . . " or "I wanted to . . . . . "

"HALF of all women would lie to their husbands or partners to keep their relationship going if they became pregnant by another man, a survey said today.

Figures showed one woman in two would not tell her man that the baby she was carrying was not his - if she wanted to stay with him.

They also said four out of ten (42%) would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, in spite of the wishes of their partner."
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/139/139613_women_lie_cheat_and_steal.html?ref=emtaf&archive=archive

Dickie Yvonne, please note it says in spite of the wishes of their partner!

There is nothing said about casual sex. It is just that you two are trying to flame.

Yvonne, I understand that the male pill maybe available in the near future, which will broaden the options for men.

Oh by the way there is another study which also supports this one, which I think was published in the NYT.

Dickie, "During the eighties, my research revealed 73% of estranged fathers failed to adequately support their children.

Now, better enforced regulations to ensure more shared monetary responsibility, has propagated an army of whinging Dads, who complain of the cost of supporting the product of their casual or long-term liaisons."

Clearly you have little real knowledge of how C$A works in practice.
There is nothing there about shared monetary responsibility. Nothing there about parents who want a greater role in shared parenting responsibility and who have been robbed of that by the scheming of a former partner. Shift it to a starting place of shared across the board responsibility and privilige and we might get somewhere.

What we have now is a fatally flawed and injust system which perpetuates conflict between parents and does harm to all concerned.

For the record I've got full time care of my son (at my ex's request) and pay all the expenses other than for the occasional night my son has with his mum.

R0bert

yabby,

you are clutching at straws, and are also weird.

You say an unborn child is a 'zygot'; this is some sort of alien term is it not? A semantic dodge that suits the immorality of baby killers and you is it not?

You support a very bleak minority there yabby, and one dare i say, deep in a hole at the moment. For two reasons. 1) because the leader of one of the most populist movements on earth -Christian Catholicism-, the Pope has deemed Abortion as wrong, and has outlawed it from the moment of conception. On this point yabbies, your clutching claws are reaching out to a vastly outnumbered sector of society. 2) You are beaten in national Legislation, which you dont like, because as a supporter of weird outcasts, killers, fascists, and misandrist hate movements, you have lost an argument which you would have aerlier in time, won.

But alas, over time, the piddly arguments put up by the likes of yuo have been proven unfounded and deadly. Both statiscally, and socially.

Indeed, even the scientific evidence which used to support Abortionists, has evolved, and now tells us that monkeys have more genetic variation, than does a human. Just one more nail in the coffin of evolution proving the human species is unique.

yabbies are genetically unique. So are baby killers; take Stalin or Mao for example.

Gadget stop being ridiculous and demonising the actions of over 70% of Australian women who have had an abortion. The simple fact is that if you made abortion illegal or difficult to obtain then you will drive desperate women to backyard abortionists and we would return to the situation where Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney would have a 20 bed ward for botched abortions that sent 1 woman to the mortuary each week. Well actually double that because the population has doubled.

I notice that the anti-abortion posters are predominantly male.

LOL Gadget, if you don't yet know the difference between a zygote,
foetus, baby and a child, I suggest that you buy a dictionary or
use an online one. Clearly there is a gap in your education showing :)

No minority Gadget, but the vast majority is what I support. Abortion
in the first tremester is now just about "standard" in the Western
world. Surveys taken in various countries, including Catholic Italy,
show that over 80%-90% of people agree with me.

Surveys taken amongst US Catholics show that 80% of them, as well
as 50% of their priests, disagree with the Vatican stance on
abortion and birth control, so the old papa and you are in the
very small minority :)

In fact the last survey I saw, showed that when it came to bums
on seats, the Catholic religion was the fastest declining religion
in Australia and I'd hazard a guess to say that abortion and family
planning are one of the main reasons for that. Portugal, Brazil,
Mexico, are all countries finally agreeing that it is pointless for
so many women to die from backyard abortions, its time that it
became a health issue.

I remind you that there is no such thing as objective morality.
You are welcome to go along with the line in the sand that the
church has drawn. Others agree to disagree and their viewpoints
are as valid as those of the pope.

The thing is, nobody is forcing anyone to have an abortion, its a
matter of individuals having the right to make decisions about their
own lives. If the Taliban tried to force you to live by their
beliefs, you might just be majorly pissed off. Well thats how
some of us feel, when the churches here try to enforce their dogma
on the rest of us.

Lastly, every species is unique, Gadget. Humans are just another species that is unique, nothing unique about that!