Col: <<Do you remember where you were when it happened?

I do

Somehow DEMOS statement loses its impact when you see film of people leaping several hundred feet, to their deaths trying to escape the flames caused when

“some middle east ragheads”

hijacked and flew American jets, carrying American passengers and American crew into an American building, in an American City.>>

You've got the wrong ragheads. I'm pretty sure DEMOS was referring to the war in Iraq. The murderers who hijacked and flew American jets into American buildings were not Iraqis, nor were they protected by Iraq, nor were they in any way connected to Iraq. It's disingenuous to connect the war in Iraq with the tragedy of September 11 — the US invaded Iraq because, inter alia, it believed it had weapons of mass destruction.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think DEMOS is trying to draw attention to the hypocrisy some people demonstrate when they call abortion murder but sanction actual murder in war time. It's a valid argument. The allies have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. Some were fetuses.

As for the topic, it's so hard to talk about abortion. I am pro-choice and don't believe it is murder, but I sympathise with those who do. That is, I think they are wrong, but I understand their feelings are genuine and painful. And I actually think we should have an honest conversation about how doctors are able to save very premature babies these days. That does suggest that there's a case for restricting abortions to short term pregnancies.

If only we could hear that case freely, fearlessly and reasonably, rather than it become a shouting match, and a competition about who most deplores murder

DEMOS - I won't bother (and neither should anyone else) dignifying the drivel you posted with any sort of response, other than to suggest that if you actually believe what you wrote then you are a sociopath and need a fleet of psychiatrists.

Well said banjo - I am FAR from religious yet it is INSANE to be aborting fetuses (in the absence of threat to maternal survival/health) at 24 weeks when 24 weekers can do well ex-utero. They often don't of course, the latest research I have seen indicates about 50/50 survival at 24 weeks, for those that aren't stillborn. Nevertheless, as banjo rightly said, it shouldn't be happening - ever. If you want out, get out early. If you changed your mind, frankly, bad luck. At 24 weeks there are obviously competing interests to be considered.

Extraordinary isn't it?

You can be sent to prison for cropping a dog's tail.

You can be sent to prison for tossing a live lobster into boiling water.

Yet:

You can murder a viable 24 week baby - then go out and celebrate.

Yuri

The number of babies murdered in this country is a national disgrace. Politicians are more intent on following their dogmas than caring about the lives of thousands of kids. We have idiots screaming doom and gloom with fanciful weather predictions while many of the same sit by idly and hypothesise whether it is right to murder or not. Bit by bit the dishonest pro deather's with totally calloused hearts have brainwashed women into thinking this is a womans issue. Our nation will one day get what it deserves.

The legislation before Victorian Parliament is to bring the law into line with current abortion practice. This bill is necessary because 8 years ago a National Party member Julian McGauran stood up in Parliament and named a woman who had aborted a 32 week old feotus with dwarfism. He conducted a witch hunt against the hospital and the medical staff involved. After great expense and an anxious time the hospital and the medical staff were exonerated.

Julian McGauran was less than honest when he described the feotus as suffering from dwarfism, there are dwarfs and there are dwarfs and this was a very disabled foetus.

Julian McGauran is not married and lives in an apartment above the old St Kilda Rail terminus - which suggests to me a very "Oxford St" lifestyle. So a man who has never married, perhaps not a had a relationship with a woman is the champion of the "Right to Lifers".

If Australian women have ready access to contraception, RU486 and abortion then late term abortions will only happen when the foetus is deformed.

I have always been pro-choice and, short of undergoing an unlikely born-again fundamentalist Christian awakening, always will be.

However, 24 weeks is WAY too far advanced in pregnancy for an abortion. If a woman has not been able to decide on an abortion by 12 weeks, it's unlikely that she is in the right frame of mind to undergo either the procedure or its emotional aftermath.

I don't know why the 24-week time limit has been put forward - as at least 90% of abortions are conducted before 12 weeks. Also, for medical and legal reasons, many abortion doctors would refuse to perform an abortion after that point.

All I can think of is that the initiators of this Bill are asking for 24 weeks as a negotiating point in order to fall back to about 15 weeks. If so, the strategy is pretty stupid, as it only adds dubious credence to the 'fetal genocide' rhetoric of the anti-abortionist camp.