Almost all abortions in Australia are actually illegal if you take the trouble to read the law. If the numerous methods of contraception were used there wouldn't need to be 100,000 babies aborted each year at tax-payers expense.

Every unwanted pregnancy is failed contraception.

In countries, like the Netherlands, where abortion has not been criminal for years, the numbers are very, very low. Why? Because of good clear sex education.

This would greatly help the rates of sexually transmitted diseases too.

If the anti-abortionists where genuine in their distress because it is about the 'murder' of 'babies' they would be at the forefront advocating sex education for both boys and girls and teaching about the responsibilities towards the other and themselves when engaging in sex.

They are not. Because what they are really distressed about is people having sex without being married. And unfortunately, that is impossible to legislate against, so abortion is the next best thing.

Yvonne- nice to see you again on yet another abortion thread : )

Yvonne is correct- if anti-abortionists were serious about reducing the abortion rate they’d be making a lot of noise about good sex education, promote (free) contraception and do everything they can to help women prevent pregnancies. So they are not ‘really’ pro-life, are they? They are the cause of a retarded sex education program in schools, they are the ones (I include the Popes) telling people not to use condoms despite high incidences of AIDS e.g. in Africa. I think Benedict XVI is changing his mind about condoms now so that they can be used to prevent HIV infection (but not to prevent pregnancies and I think only inside marriages- how generous).

Abortion should be the woman’s prerogative right. Rights pertain only to an actual human being, not a potential one. I wouldn’t want to see a reduction in abortion rates if that means more unwanted children. Indeed, most unwanted kids have crap lives and so have their mothers. Anti-choicers have no regard for the rights of a woman- they want to transfer the rights of the woman to a clump of cells.

Neither do so-called ‘pro-lifers’ loudly support any research or even worry at all about all the many natural abortions taking place. They do not care to find out how to prevent natural abortions from occurring, not even if these pregnancies are very much desired. They might call it “God’s will”.

God gets away with aborting zygotes and embryos but women and doctors are murderers?

Suezy “so the problem of abortion is once again hidden from the public.”

I thought the most important thing about an abortion was it was not a public matter but a private matter which affected one individual beyond all others, the pregnant woman (noting the embryo is not an individual). It might not be a public problem because the burden of choice is not the “public’s” decision.

Francis“To my mind, the anti-life mob (pro-abortion) reveal themselves for what they possibly are: shallow, callow and fallow. “

And the Pro abortion mob might consider your view as demanding, dictatorial and dogmatic. Now we can all express our view of one another and be thankful that we are free to express such views, just as women are free to decide on if they wish to sustain a pregnancy or not.

As for “fallow”, I guess if a woman seeking abortion (one of the pro abortion mob) were fallow she would not have been pregnant in the first place. Ah well, that’s life, you gotta smile.

Indeed, there are no accurate or reliable data on abortion numbers in Australia.
Although on one the hand abortion is a private matter and so there should not be a need for accurate data, on the other hand we do need to improve data collection because accurate numbers enable Australians to have a proper debate about it.

Anti-abortionists who claim that abortion rates are too high may well be exaggerating numbers, while pro-choicers may underestimate them. If there were accurate data on abortion available, both sides could stick to the facts.

We then could also confidentially compare our abortion rates to those of other countries that keep accurate and up-to-date data and possibly use impressive foreign data (e.g. of countries like the Netherlands with its extremely low abortion rate as Yvonne mentioned) as an aspiration for reducing unwanted pregnancies in Australia.

What the anti-abortionists fail to recognise is that countries with the most liberal (including most affordable) abortion laws have the lowest abortion rates; all the more reason for decriminalisation of abortion, making it easily accessible and keeping abortion freely available through our public medical system.

I think, as stated above, that the issue has to come down to the human soul and whether humans in general or in utero humans in particular have one.

Can it be proved that human beings possess a soul?- or is it just a matter of belief.

Another issue is what is the source of a woman's right (to have an abortion in this case) if we have no particular distinction from the animals.

I think otherwise I understand that the issue can be stated as the mother' autonomy verses the legal status of the fetus-is it a human?

And when does it become a human and why?

ANYONE please help if they have any answers to the above --as I have none!