Celivia “I disagreed with you when you were not in favour of statistics because I thought if there are reliable facts and figures,.... Also keeping track of the numbers can show us how we compare with other countries, and how well we are doing in reducing the rates.”

I look upon it this way

Abortions are no one elses business.

Asking for incidence of abortion is as invasive to the privacy of a person as asking the incidence of sexual coupling or "bedroom preferences".

Whilst it might be nice to know the rates and frequencies of couplings, it is really no one elses business but the couple who do the coupling or similarly the woman who seeks the abortion.

Inter-state / international comparisons to frequency of abortion or coupling might be of some use to sociologist but since they are in no position to "influence" such frequencies, it becomes of prurient interest only.

I guess, what is private, is private and best not presented as a matter for public inspection, analysis, critique or concern.

Billie presuming “economic circumstance” as the driver for abortions is deceptive, especially when you use it to simultaneously badger the IR laws (which merely reflect the contractual arrangements which I have practiced for myself over the past 20 years) and which have been enacted by the duly elected government who govern for Australians as a whole and not just for the union bosses.

Whilst I a sure the rate of abortion might decline if every woman seeking one was financially secure, abortions would not be eliminated simply because, the prevailing reason for abortion is a product of individuals exercising their individual right of choice and preference. The wealthy and secure woman might decide she does not want to be pregnant at a particular time or be tied by any bond to an accidental or involuntary sperm source. So it remains her choice, to carry or abort and I only hope she is happy with the result of what she chooses, because she will no recourse to anyone else if she finds herself dissatisfied with the outcome.

"it is really no one elses business but the couple who do the coupling or similarly the woman who seeks the abortion."

Exactly, well said! Its part of the core of this argument.

In a secular democracy, tolerance is the key and I'm becoming
intolerant of the intolerant. Nobody is forcing anyone to
have an abortion. Nobody is denying anyone the right to believe
in whatever God, Yahwee, Jehova, Allah, witchcraft, ghosts,
or whatever other supernatural powers they wish to believe in.

Believe whatever you want, but your rights don't extend to
forcing others to believe the same. Without that kind of
tolerance, we'll land up having the same religious wars as have
gone on for centuries, all in the name of the supposed gods.

Some people will want to have children, some won't. Let people
decide what they want, keep the State out of it.

Celivia,
After my first marriage (3 children) I became married again to a woman who had a 1 year old son. I had him then as my biological son (albeit he now knows I am not-in fact I took him to his biological father-who passed away three months later due to illness- but my son still let me know that for him I am his real father.) My second wife then had out child and thereafter she became pregnant from who knows, but I never even considered an abortion. To him I am his father. I then was going to divorce my second wife but discovered she was pregnant again, With the likelihood that it could be my child I withdrew the divorce application, but after the birth of the daughter divorced my wife and she no longer got herself pregnant.
While I was on my own I happen to get a woman pregnant, who according to the court was neglecting the child as a baby so I ended up bringing up this daughter since she was a baby.
To me all my children are equally to me, regardless if not biological connected to me! I never contemplated any abortion as after all my parents gave the right to live and so who am I to deny any other child to have the same right?
It is nonsense to argue that 50,000 or so a year abortions are all unwanted pregnancies. I take the position that an unwanted pregnancy is where a female is raped, there is a real danger to the mothers life or where despite all kinds of precautions taken there was still a pregnancy. Even in those circumstances I view not all of those unwanted pregnancies should be terminated.
My daughter who kept the baby was in fact raped! And, she made clear about everyone was pressing her to have an abortion but she held I was her rock of Gibraltar!
Too many women are pressured to have an abortion because it is so cheap, rather then for a man having to pay child support

On a moral basis, the person who should decide whether or not is the person who is pregnant. Everyone else should just butt out. And no, don't give me that nonesense about a feotus having rights. They're not persons.

On a functional basis, abortion may be bad, but it is less bad than the individual and social effects unwanted children.

Lev (adopted in my first year)

Just checking in with some responses, though ignoring comments that are abusive or fail to engage with my argument.

Part 1

Desipis

Re my claim abt public perception of late term abortions and sheer numbers of abortions, I’m not quoting particular surveys but remembering reports of such surveys – you are at liberty to quote surveys disproving my assertion – however I think it is correct – though of course survey results do not drive my objection to, indeed abhorrence of abortion.

I think you are all together too sanguine about a woman caught with an unwanted pregnancy “to think or act independently”. There is considerable anecdotal evidence to support my contention re the input of boyfriends, etc.

You speak of emotional torture showing images of the unborn child, but I will assert that we are meant to protect that which cannot protect itself. I thought that is what it means to be human, and not necessarily just a Christian conviction. Furthermore it is a fact that wrongdoing can cause emotional torture for the wrongdoer, for no one is without a conscience, however inconvenient a conscience can be.
I see you are not a tolerant person for I see you advocate 1) pro life people should never become doctors and 2) doctors are not entitled to possessing ethical principles, especially if they run against those of the patient. Ummmm..

Ho Hum

Too self indulgent by half with too many easy straw men to knock down!
You obviously are not familiar with the bible and some of its purple prose.

My wife and I (and we virgins when we married and thank God neither of us have strayed) rather enjoy our sexual life together. However sex is not a commodity like drugs or alcohol – it is a binding together of two lives, in what the Bible calls a one flesh male female relationship, open to children, a most wonderful glorious thing.

Part 2

V Amberlee

We agree!

CJ Morgan

We disagree.

Xoddam

I don’t believe I suggested anyone approaches the killing of “a living foetus” aka an unborn child with eager anticipation. I in fact comment on the widely recognised stress many women suffer as a result of an abortion (and could have commented on that of some men as well (interesting how men are out of the equation, but I will come back to this point shortly)

Celivia

I think you are my main opponent. Greetings.

You have your head in the sand over the abortion numbers. In citing more than one child aborted for 3 live births I was in fact quoting Lachlan J de Crespigny and Julian Savulescu in their MJA 2004; 181 (4):201-203 article.

We have had sex education in schools for years and years and it has proved an abject failure in getting the level of abortions down.
You ask what the anti choice brigade are doing to reduce unwanted pregnancies.

This question lies at the heart of the issue and arises from the breakdown of the taboos that once prevailed in our society not all that long ago - - not always observed to be sure, but nevertheless overwhelmingly observed – no sex outside marriage!

These taboos, moral values grounded in the Judeo Christian tradition and evident in Islam as well, had great consequences, most notably marriages and often but not always early, children desired and loved, children overwhelmingly brought up, nurtured by a father and a mother (war, disease and the occasional divorce permitting. I commend to you Gertrude Himmelfarb’s “The Demoralisation of Society”.

To be continued