"So research into abortion in Australia cannot be adequately undertaken, when so few reliable statistics are being kept."

Or so you wish. While it is true it is currently hard to determine the absolute *number* of abortions, however, that is not the same thing as saying that you can't determine a *trend* based on proportions. A simple mistake of statistics which I forgive you for. Even if you were right (which you're not), you shoot yourself in the foot because you or runner can't now claim that abortions are increasing.

runner, interesting is it not that the very permissive Netherlands has extremely low rates of adolescent pregnancy and lowest rates of abortion in the world (far less than Oz) and yet about 43% have no religious affiliation and 27% say yes to "do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force". Australia is heading that way, but unfortunately we are not "Godless" enough yet. Study the correlation between the levels of religion in the countries of the world and their developmental indices and their crime rates. Get back when you are done.

I note neither of you is willing to take on the embryo versus person debate. This speaks volumes.

rstuart,

You make some good points. You say that I should
'Embracing the person while attacking the sin, whether it be abortion, pornography or whatever, means you have a chance of implementing God's will.'

I have no problem with that advice as long as we stop redefining terms (ie. abortion is now termination and living in sin is now living defacto). Until someone knows they are sick they will never go to a doctor. Calling murder termination or child porn art does not change the fact that these things are repulsive to God. Many posters twist the Scriptures in a pathetic attempt to somehow make our Creator the bad guy and them the good. I hope you would run a mile from the church unless you are prepared to repent and receive forgiveness from our Saviour. Their are to many now in churches who refuse to call sin sin and thus make God out a liar. It is Him that has made a way for all men to be saved from their vileness. Glory be to His name. I pray all contributors to this forum including yourself will find His grace if they have not already.

"I now tend to think of wide scale abortion as being a form of racial genocide, whether intentional or unintentional. This is currently being seen in Europe, where whole races of people will not last much longer, because they have not been able to produce enough live babies. Those races are being overrun by other races that can produce more live babies, and don't kill their babies in abortion clinics.

Survival of the fittest I suppose, and any race or culture that embraces the feminist ideal of wide scale abortion, is eventually doomed to extinction."

This comment by HRS raises a number of questions if it is true:

-What is of greater importance; the status of civilisation of a country or the racial origin of her citizens?

-Who enacts this genocide by procreating hordes by allowing their migration? Is it predominantly determined by conservative aging males or by radical feminists?

-Is "the survival of the fittest" a natural order that dictates that races of people must procreate at a rate greater than other races, least they be diluted or destroyed?

This could be an interesting line of discussion once the fundamental question of the abortion debate is agreed upon. i.e. When is a human embryo a human being?

HRS, this whole discussion is quite subjective, isn't that the problem, and the heart of the pro-choice debate? That women should have a choice, and not be subjugated because of others beliefs. Especially where such beliefs are based on personal faiths or misinterpretation of what constitutes life as we know it.

Even people on the religious right believe that personhood is determined by having a mind and not by the presence of human tissue or DNA. People with brain damage might be given the benefit of the doubt, but none of the anti-abortion people would have problems with shutting off the life support system of a brain-dead accident victim, even if medical technology could keep the heart beating for the next 30 years. They probably have no problem with using the organs to save other lives. They would regard the murder of an identical twin just as seriously as any other murder, even though the victim's DNA lives on in the twin. They would extend human rights to ET or Commander Data if they actually existed.

The vast majority of zygotes never end up as a live baby, even if there is no deliberate interference. A large proportion die, largely due to chromosome abnormalities, before the woman even suspects that conception has occurred. If something were killing half of all puppies or kittens there would be a massive research program to find a cure, but no one cares about these embryos, so long as no one is deliberately killing them. Yet if they passed an injured person in a lonely spot and did not help him or her, they would be condemned as moral lepers and might even be up on criminal charges in some places.

It can be argued that, given the right conditions, an embryo has the potential to grow a mind, but the same is almost certainly true of countless millions of Runner's cells, since cloning has been shown to work in many other mammals.

The real concerns of anti-abortion people probably relate not to concerns about murder, but to religious beliefs about the soul, concerns about demographic competition from other religious and ethnic groups, and a desire to keep women subordinate.

Sams,
I’m still waiting for you to come up with more suggestions on how to reduce the abortion rate (or perhaps you do like abortions after all ).

In fact, I’m still waiting for any university academic to come up with suggestions on how to reduce the abortion rate.

Next pro-abortion lobbyists and university academics will be saying that they believe in risk management and the preservation of human life, and they also believe in diversity, and don’t like to see various races abort themselves into non-existence.

Rojo,
If someone is dealing with a risk, then it is best not to become too submerged in emotive or subjective issues, because it stops the risk from being properly identified, or it stops adequate control measures from being implemented.

Disregarding the issue of whether or not the fetus is human, there are several other risks associated with abortion.

As examples: -

- Abortion is a surgical procedure that does have physical and psychological risks, and unregulated abortion can increase those risks.

- Abortion clinics can start encouraging or compelling women to have abortions, particularly if abortion rates decline, and this begins to affect the profit margins of the abortion clinics.

- Abortion is central to the cult or religion of feminism, and feminists can begin brainwashing women into having more abortions, particularly if the abortion rates do decline.

- Certain religions or cultures have been usingd abortion to kill baby girls, and various gender prejuiced feminists could also use unregulated abortion to kill baby boys.

- There is also a risk that a race can carry out too much abortion, and eventually they cannot maintain their population numbers, and they become extinct, which now appears to be happening to a number of races in Europe.

I’m still waiting on pro-abortion lobbyists and university academics to make more suggestions on how to reduce the rate of abortion, and eliminate the risks attached to abortion.