Abortion – the moral chasm?

This article was bought on by a discussion at university while consuming coffee and cigarettes, which got around to the topic of abortion by a number of contortions of conversation that I am unable to fully backtrack to find a link between where we started  (the start being whether we like short or tall women (and before the Comrade Chalky’s or the Sisterhood scream at the content of my patently sexist conversations, a woman asked that particular question, and yes, I did have an answer as to my preference))  and where we ended up (abortion). Yes, this is a contentious issue, just as Senator Joyce said the other day. It’s a deeply moral and profound issue. And the reason I bring it up and had the though for writing this was the conversation I had.

It was two points raised (by females) that got my attention -

1 – That it is entirely the woman’s choice, and men have absolutely no say in the process

2 – If you don’t want the baby due to various reasons, such as being too young (age 12 was discussed) or being too poor, it is better for some to abort due to the fact that they can’t look after their children properly and those that are adopted out or put in foster families are traumatised through their experience.

Before we go into the issue, a disclaimer. I am not an abortion debate expert, I haven’t talked to 500,000 people about this issue in a clinical study. I do not know how prevalent these views are among the pro choice crowd, nor do I claim that I am covering everything in this article. I would appreciate your input  to the debate, so long as it is both rational and keeping to a general standard of respect for both sides of this debate – including both the people and their views. You can disagree, passionately, or agree vehemently, but civility will be prized, while Ad Hominem will not.

My first issue that the choice to abort or carry the baby to term it put forward as entirely the woman’s prerogative. From a legal perspective this is correct, however from a moral standpoint to me this view seems rather one sided and unjust. The father of a (potential) child should have some sort of ability to inject his views into the decision. Why? Because the situation goes that if the child is carried to term, he or she becomes the fathers to support (even if the relationship is broken), his to guide morally and provide a protective, caring and loving male protector and authority figure, councillor and guide, and yet that essential decision of whether the partners child is to be born or not is not supposed to involve him in any way? I’m not saying that it should be exclusively the fathers choice, because it is the woman’s body, and sometimes she is the only one around to make the decision. But I do think that potential fathers have a moral case to have some say in the decision upon whether to have a child or not, as long as the mothers health is not seriously threatened by pregnancy. It is a woman’s body, but I believe morally, once conceived, the child is the responsibility of both of the partners. If the male abdicates his choice, then let the decision solely rest with the mother, but let fathers have the opportunity to have that input.

And even if the mother is adamant upon not having a child because of reasons such as it impinging upon careers, lifestyles or simply a desire not to have children (as opposed to severe risk of permeant impairment or death from the pregnancy), could there not be a case for those fathers who wish for their potential children to be born to take sole custody? To agree to raise it without financial support or other strings attached to the mother? It would be unusual, but I would believe that there would be numerous men out there who would seriously consider this option if other options did not work out. And in this way it ensures that a human life will live, and grow, add to our society and increase it, rather than being aborted before it gets that opportunity.

And in this way, I believe that a foetus is a child in the womb, for if it were not for the direct actions of the partners - the area surrounding pregnancies resulting from rape I will discuss later - to conceive the child, there would be no possibility of pregnancy (excluding Christ, who as most will admit, is the exception that proves the rule), and if it wasn’t for the direct actions of (at least one of) the partners to stop that life, that child, from growing, from being born and living their life, however long it may be. (I put miscarriages in the category of the random occurrences of life – unable to be predicted, just like the thousands that have heart attacks or get run killed in accidents, unplanned and undesired). Their direct actions (usually but not always by the choice of the female) mean that someone who could have experienced the rest of life no longer does.

And that brings me to the second concept put forward – that if the partners do not want the baby due to various reasons, such as being too young (the age 12 was discussed) or being too poor, it is better for some to abort due to the fact that they can’t look after their children properly and those that are adopted out or put in foster families are traumatised through their experience.

Firstly, this puts a presumption upon those being classed as too young or too poor as being unable to raise a child. It may be true for some cases but it is not valid as a blanket classification. Such generalisations don’t take into account either maturity levels and the sacrifices people are willing to make to have children, nor the fact that for much of man’s history almost everyone was too poor or too young to be able to raise children properly by today’s standards.

Secondly it puts a large presumption upon the idea that death (or the removal of potential independent life, really) is better than growing up having been adopted or put in foster care/orphanages etc. Now this point is morally abhorrent in that it prejudges the life and prospects of a person by cutting it short in the name of ‘caring’ for the would be child, prejudging that life would not be beneficial. Foster care and adoption can be hard, can be traumatic upon those that are raised in those family structures, but even that life is better than death. Ask almost anyone who went through foster care or was adopted whether they would prefer to have never lived at all, and what answer do you expect? Can you really equate these lives with a woman’s ‘right to choose’? Can you end life with the certainty that the potential child’s life is not worth living?

And this is the questions that I would ask those who would push for the abortion of pregnancies related to rape (because this debate always wanders in this direction). While being a man and having never experienced being raped myself, I can give full sympathy but only limited empathy to those who would choose to abort pregnancies as a result of such a physically and emotionally traumatic experience. I can ask whether to punish the child for the sins of the father is the correct course of action, no matter how painful the experience. Even if the child would be a reminder of the experience, there are queues of parents waiting to adopt children because they can’t have any of their own, and foster parent places available to take care of the baby, allowing it to live, to grow.

To give an example of why I don’t support abortions outside medically threatening circumstances - the media story that surrounded Tony Abbott and Daniel O'Connor was an involving and complex story. And in the end, Daniel didn’t actually turn out to be Tony Abbott’s son after all. However, the fact is that the child was born with the consent of both Kathy and Tony, and adopted out. And what was probably the most touching statement during the entire affair was the words ‘Thanks for having me’. No matter the biological parentage involved in the whole matter, those four words spoke powerfully into the hearts of many. For here was a living, breathing result of the decision not to abort – flesh and blood, able to see, feel, experience, learn, able to give and receive love and care, able to choose a path for his life whether for good or ill.  And that is the backbone of my moral stance on the abortion debate – for when a pregnancy is aborted, the potential for a life to exist in the manner that Daniel O'Connor exists today - body, mind, heart and soul – ceases to exist. And we are all the poorer for it.

Again, your views will be respected and treated thoughfully, at least by myself, though again I do ask for civility and respect to be the shining examples of this conversation so it doesn’t degenerate to a point below the level of adults. Your assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

It's the 60th anniversary for the end of WW2 this year, and the usual fools point their attention on AmeriKKKa. Why? Not because they were the decisive factor behind the liberation of France and Southern Gernamy, not because they liberated Japanese held Asia, not because they spent billions to hep reconstruct their former allies and enemies. Rather, they draw attention on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and most importantly, on how it was the greatest act of terrorism of all time, how it was evil to use nuclear weapons, etc. The same old spin, just updated to be useful to score points by calling it terrorism and pointing the finger at America generally and Bush specifically about America being the greatest terrorist of all time.

What they like to forget when they mention that Japan was about to surrender anyway without the atomic bomb attacks was that no surrender was forthcoming while thousands were being killed by air raids, no surrender while Japan was building formidable armardas of kamikaze planes, no surrender after the fall of Okinowa, no surrender even after Japan was unable to properly feed itself and cut off from strategic resources due to the naval blockade.

And if America didn't use atomic weapons to destroy Nagasaki and Hiroshima, how many millions more could and would have died due to an invasion? Army generals in the US, noted for their aggression stated that between 1.7 and 2 million soldiers, going off a scaled up casualty ration from Saipan. And that number doesn't take into account the probable millions more Japanese army and civilian casualties that would have resulted from a land invasion. What government in their right mind would endanger so many of their own troops, and indeed want to kill so many civilians, when they could force a surrender through what seemed (and generally proved to be) a much lest costly (in terms of lives and materials) victory?

Also to be mentioned (which it almost never is in this PC world we live in) the Japanese had murdered and raped their way across the Pacific, killed 15 million Chinese and over 150,000 prisoners of war, attacked just about every country on the western part of the Pacific, and generally made a right nuisance of themselves (to put it lightly). And yet they sit on the G8, they have very good ties with the US and were a bastion of support during the Cold War that helped prevent Communist hegemony from sprawling across all of Asia (which is a good thing, because wherever Communism goes, new mass graves need to be built.) How is this so? How then, if this was an act of terrorism that has never been rivaled, do we stand on such good terms with the Japanese and vice-versa? Minus points to those who instinctively cry 'western multi-nationals' etc.

And how come we haven't seen any Japanese suicide bombers (at least since 1945 anyway) in response to this act of 'terrorism,' - we haven't seen the Japanese clamoring for the 'root causes' to be found or for the violent overthrow of the West. They haven't gone the way of moral equivalency between America's actions comparing to what Japan did to Asia. And good on them. They can count, we can count. They were being lead down the path to national suicide by leaders who initiated an agressive, unprovoked war, and would have been slaughtered in far greater numbers if those bomb's hadn't been dropped. I'm not saying that people from Japan are or were thrilled about the dropping of the atomic bombs, but most realise that the events could have turned far, far worse and that the longer Japan lay under the rule of the military supremists the more abhorent the outcome of the war that they promoted and executed across the Pacific.

That message is something the apologists need to learn, before they trundle out more of the same old  tired arguments against the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Maria Korp is dead, a little under two weeks after her feeding tube was removed after judgement by the public adbvocate that there was little to no grounds that Maria would recover and come out of her coma.

I'm not arguing against allowing people to die, so to speak, when there is little or no chance of a recovery, however, the manner of the death seems obscene. Letting a coma patient starve to death seems, if not unnecessarily cruel, then at least a major cop out on the part of the public advocate. Why? Because in judging that Maria had little to no chance of recovery and therefore allowing her feeding tube to be removed, he imposed a death sentence on her. In the condition she was in, that was probably a mercy, but the fact is that just letting someone starve to death is an act of cowardice on the part of the Public Advocate. If you are going to remove the chance a person has to recover in this way, you could at least have the guts to kill the person quickly and mercifully, rather than this slow, drawn out farce.

Whether it is a bullet or an injection of something lethal, the Public Advocate should take responsibility for the choice he is making - he is ending someone's life, and the manner should both be more humane and reflect the choice he has made - to impose a death sentence. Not this half hearted, half baked action taken.

I had a laugh when I saw this headline in that rag of rags, The Guardian. It said

'EU warns Iran: no more talks if nuclear freeze ends - Issue will be taken to UN security council, Tehran told '

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0 " title="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0 " target="_blank"http://politics.guardian.co.u...,11538,1541443,00.html

Oh no, don't take the dithering and appeasment part of the negotiations from the EU group of three to the biggest power o f them all, that decisive and incisive body, the UN security council! Why, if that happens, action could be taken within 12 years! 12 years! How would Tehran deal with such a rapid pace of discussion and action? Then again, it could just take 12 years to ass around, impose a few sanctions, organise a comission to take some kickbacks from the corrupt government, and generally do stuff all, as the UN Security Council did between 1991 and 2003 on Iraq. And then still refuse to do anything, after there were more than 5 million refugees outside of Iraq, and perhaps 400,000 in mass graves. Why do I think that we will not see anything better occuring out of the situation in Iran? 
 

Those of you living in Sydney have probably already heard of Andrew (Drew) Fraser. He is the academic currently suspended for reasons not entirely clear. One side says that is is because he used his academic credentials in a letter to his local paper (the Paramatta Sun, with the article being reproduced from www.majorityrights.com) regarding an issue outside his area of expertise. Others argue that it is only because Drew went against the leftist intellectual bandwagon regarding multiculturalism that he landed in such a media circus and received such harsh treatment. Having followed the case, conversing with students and staff at Maquarie University (where I study) I get a feeling the real truth  is somewhere around the middle (as is usually the case.)

Here is the article in question :

“The Path to National Suicide

Now that a large number of Sudanese refugees have been settled in the Parramatta-Blacktown area, Anglo-Australians are once again expected to acquiesce in the steady erosion of their distinctive national identity. 

Australia, it seems, can no longer remain the homeland of a particular people.  Instead, it must become a colony of the Third World.

Thirty years ago, no one in the world had any difficulty identifying an Australian.  Today, if the headline in the Sun is to be believed, black Africans and Muslim Afghanis “are Aussies just like” the descendants of the Anglo-Celtic pioneers who settled and built this country.

Community Relations Commissioner Stepan Kerkyasharian declares that “Australians…have a responsibility” to help those on the losing side in Third World civil wars to settle here, wherever and whenever it suits governments and the ever-expanding refugee industry.  He assures us that the ethnic and religious conflicts endemic to every other part of the world will be magically dissolved by the state-enforced “commonality of Australianism.”

That utopian fantasy is particularly likely to unravel as local African tribal groups grow in size and confidence.  Experience practically everywhere in the world tells us that an expanding black population is a sure-fire recipe for increases in crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems.

The fact is that ordinary Australians are being pushed down the path to national suicide by their own political, religious and economic élites.  Shutting our eyes to that fact will not make it go away.”

Regarding what he said, you can have your own opinion. However, a very good article that delves into the assertions made by Drew Fraser is here at http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050731_fraser.htm" title="http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050731_fraser.htm" target="_blank"http://www.vdare.com/sailer/0... . It suprised the hell out of me, and the statements are backed up as well. Something to perhaps forward onto your 'Drew bashing' friends (assuming you know people who bash Drew, or have friends to begin with).

Another issue that I see is that the suspension of Andrew will compromise the education of those currently studying under him. A meeting of students who were enrolled for his class made it quite clear that they all thought that Drew should teach their course (Modern Corporate Governance) as he has specific course knowledge coming from working in the fields in Canada, America and Japan.  Here is the minutes from a meeting of the students determining what their course of action should be regarding their situation.  Names have been withheld for privacy reasons.

' Modern Corporate Governance Informal Students Meeting 1 August 2005

Opened:    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ; 2:10

Attendance:    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   Withheld

Opened the meeting by reading an email that Professor Fraser had sent to him students.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;  Motion: To send two representatives to Professor Fraser’s office for him to come to the classroom and address the class.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;  Seconded: Withheld.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;  Moved Unanimously

Events:    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;  The two representatives proceeded to Professor Fraser’s office. Professor Fraser arrived at 2.30pm at the students request. Professor Fraser proceeded to teach the first lesson of Law 436 Modern Corporate Governance. Professor Fraser outlined the course and went through administrative issues of the course, including assessment details etc. Professor Fraser remarked that he was very ready and willing to teach the course, should the University let him. Approximately 3pm Andrew Fraser left the classroom.    

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;  After a general discussion the students decided that they wished for Andrew Fraser to teach the course. They were adamant that they did not want a substitute to teach the course.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;  The students decided that they would approach the Vice Chancellor and demand that Professor Fraser teach the course.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;  The students then were asked to leave the classroom they were using to hold the meeting by the security.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;  The meeting continued outside the building. The students then proceeded to the Vice Chancellor’s office where they sent to representatives to see the VC.

 The Vice Chancellor informed the representative for Modern Corporate Governance that she would do everything in her power to have Andrew Fraser teach the course for this semester.'

However, I think this is a case of the Vice Chancellor lying through her teeth so she didn't have to deal with the issue.Why? Because from confidential sources I recieved the following statement via e-mail.

'... Word has got out that as of 6pm Tuesday. Christie Slade, Dean of Humanities, has informed Drew Fraser, that Ros Croucher, Dean of Law, has employed two people to take the classes of Drew Fraser. I am certainly unhappy with this arrangement, as I assume most of you are. This is unfair, firstly, to us students because it is unlikely anyone would have the expertise to run Drew Fraser's courses. Secondly, because the Department of Law has appointed someone to take the classes, and the Deaprtment of Public Law has not been consulted...'

It takes time to assess and hire staff, evn if you are trying to wave off frustrated students and media pressure. More than a day, at least. Which means that the Vice Chancellor was actively pursuing staff to take over Drew's job before her meeting with students on Monday afternoon. Then again, I could just be crazy, she could just have a whole lot of well qualified lecturers available at the drop of a hat. But it seems like there is an active lie here from the Vice Chancellor, assuming that the staff are appointed to run Drew's classes.

All in all, its got the makings of a great farce, and that is always enjoyable viewing, except if you are the lead character. More to come.

Edit - I hate formatting. But it has to be done. So say we all.

Edit - Interesting article here from those wonder people at The Australian. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0" title="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0" target="_blank"http://www.theaustralian.news...,5744,16123067%255E2702,0 0.html

Finally found a blog that is within the realms of my technical skills. A warm welcome to anyone joining here. I have posted previously at http://webdiary.smh.com.au" title="http://webdiary.smh.com.au" target="_blank"http://webdiary.smh.com.au . Look up the top, you should see my name, Stuart Lord, up there with a list of the articles I have written.

What to do for my first installment? First, I'll ask you to refer this blog to people you know, so I can feel happy with a growing hit count, so I won't have to kill tell off you all.

Secondly, I'm going to start posting articles regarding politics, education, religion, and anything else contentious enough to draw my ire. If I get this blog working properly I should have things underway very quickly.

And I guess I need a mission statement as well - or something to that effect saying why I am here. I could put the platitudes about getting people to think, or about paying out lefty scum (all of which is admirable, but rather cliche these days) and so rather for the sake of originality I will say my mission is to amuse myself and others at the expense of people foolish enough to let their inane ideas reach print (and if I  am one of them, then at least I can afford to look foolish). Anyway, thats enough from me. Have fun.

Stuart