“I have said it before and I say it again: The number one cause of abuse against women and children is abortion.
Listen to the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Never mind that she was a Catholic nun; her views are held by scores of thousands of New Zealanders, and their logic is inescapable.
“… the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion,” she said, “because it is a war against the child – a direct killing of the innocent child – murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?
“… The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships.
“It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts – a child – as a competitor, an intrusion and an inconvenience. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want … It is a very great poverty to decide that a child must die that you might live as you wish.”
Full article here
For those who are interested, here is Garth’s latest column about the hate mail he has been sent as a result of this opinion piece.
Brendan Malone
Dean Mischewski
John Kennedy
Georgina Priest
Truth Seeker
Bobby Schindler
Chris Pemberton
It’s interesting that Teresa said that “the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion”, since by all accounts the greatest destroyer of peace of late has been religious fundamentalism.
You know, the kind of religious fundamentalism where people who have never had sex presume to tell others how to manage their reproduction.
A load of meaningless rhetoric does not inescapable logic make. Abortion is a social issue, not a religious one. It’s a personal issue, not a public one. A reasonable person doesn’t attempt to solve the problem of abortion by accusing the mothers of infanticide. That’s the kind of thing that right-wing nuts do.
SOT,
I thought that your comment:
was actually quite ironic considering that your comment was riddled with exactly that.
In actual fact, two of the three single greatest deliberate killers of innocent human beings in the last 2000 years were Stalinism and the Khmer Rouge – two atheist regimes.
The third biggest killer of human beings has been abortion, so abortion is a very public social issue, and it is one that requires urgent and open examination by all people.
As I said, “the greatest destroyer of peace OF LATE has been religious fundamentalism”. But it’s also been a pretty effective destroyer of peace in the past.
And then whether or not abortion is a killer of human beings depends on whether or not you view a fetus as a human being. I personally fail to see how, as men, we’d be more qualified than a pregnant woman to make that decision. That’s why it’s a personal issue. It requires only urgent and open examination by the people directly affected by it, i.e. the potential mother and father. You have the arrogance to presume to tell pregnant women what to do with their fetuses, and call them murderers if they disagree – even though it’s absolutely none of your business.
This is a terribly outdated 1970’s, second wave feminism view of the issue, and it is also completely illogical.
Basically it’s like saying that as free white people we are not qualified to speak out against the evil of slavery, and to fight for the rights of black slaves.
Once again, this is a hollow slogan.
If abortion is the murder of an innocent human being, then all of us have an obligation to voice our concerns at the serious loos of rights being foisted upon the unborn victim of this crime.
I’m sorry, but I never have called any woman who has had an abortion a murderer, and I view them just as much a victim in this whole system as their unborn children who are killed by the abortion.
Our organisation works with women in crisis-pregnancy to give them practical support and help to have their babies, and I can tell you for a fact that the current health system does not provide women full and informed consent about abortion.
99% of women have never been told of the well documented physical and psychological risks that abortion presents, or the support options that are open to them, and almost none have any idea about the actual stage of development of the baby growing inside them.
On top of this, the majority of women we see aren’t actually choosing abortion, instead they are being coerced into it by another person or a situation within their own lives.
“Basically it’s like saying that as free white people we are not qualified to speak out against the evil of slavery, and to fight for the rights of black slaves.”
No it isn’t. You can’t compare abortion to slavery. They’re two completely different issues and affect people in radically different ways.
“Once again, this is a hollow slogan. If abortion is the murder of an innocent human being, then all of us have an obligation to voice our concerns at the serious loos of rights being foisted upon the unborn victim of this crime.”
Yeah, but abortion is only “the murder of an innocent human being” in your narrow view. Not in mine, and not in that of women who believe they have the right to choose terminations if they need them. And you don’t appear to be at all concerned about the loss or rights of women over their own bodies.
“I’m sorry, but I never have called any woman who has had an abortion a murderer”
Then what is quoting without caveat or other editorial the views of someone who says “the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is … murder by the mother herself.”?
“On top of this, the majority of women we see aren’t actually choosing abortion, instead they are being coerced into it by another person or a situation within their own lives.”
So instead you use pro-life rhetoric to coerce them into keeping a child they don’t want. Judging by what you’re saying, your organisation works with women in crisis-pregnancy to give them practical support as long as it doesn’t involve having terminations, despite this presumably being a legal option where you are. Maybe 99% of women seeking terminations don’t want to know the risks or support options, because either way they’re not ready to have a child and they don’t wish to be emotionally blackmailed out of their decisions by people such as yourself.
“On top of this, the majority of women we see aren’t actually choosing abortion, instead they are being coerced into it by another person or a situation within their own lives.”
Of course women choose terminations because of a situation within their own lives. If a woman was in a situation where she felt she could raise a child and give it a good life, she wouldn’t seek an abortion. Every single one of the women I know who had a termination chose it herself and feels that it was ultimately the better option. On the other hand many of the women I know who chose to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term are single mothers struggling to make ends meet.
SOT said:
“And then whether or not abortion is a killer of human beings depends on whether or not you view a fetus as a human being. I personally fail to see how, as men, we’d be more qualified than a pregnant woman to make that decision.”
You seem to have a problem with Brendan’s analogy of slavery and abortion. But I think it is a fair analogy in that it is a case of one person controlling the life of another, and that someone outside the circle of affected people is able to comment intelligently on the situation.
And looking at it from another perspective, lots of pregnant women have always thought their unborn child was human. What weight do you give their opinion?
But more fundamentally, your comment was about a pregnant woman being more qualified that a man to make a decision about whether a fetus is a human being. I don’t think that follows at all. Either the fetus is human or she isn’t, and the status of the person trying to decide has no bearing on the facts of the case.
I’d like to hear your rationale for not classing a fetus as a human being. Where do you draw the line? That, after all, is what the debate hinges on. If the fetus is human, all your other objections are smokescreens for something terribly wrong.
I rather think that the debate hinges on what level of control women should have over their bodies. It hinges on the right of individual women to decide what they believe about their own pregnancy.
Whether or not a fetus is a human being is not for me to decide, nor is it for you, nor is it for Brendan, nor for Mother Teresa, nor for any other self-appointed moral authority. It is for the women who are carrying those fetuses.
Since you insist on dragging slavery into it, then if the opposite of slavery is freedom, what does that make people who want to deny women the freedom to choose?
SOT,
I won’t comment on your judgmental allegations that our organisation blackmails women, etc. Such suggestions are ludicrous and they lack any merit in true reality.
If you want view personal testimonies from actual women that we have helped then I encourage you to visit:
http://www.pregnantandworried.org.nz
As Dean has stated, abortion and slavery are actually very similar issues.
In both issues the victim is denied basic and important human rights and they are labeled “non-persons” in order to justify the denial of those rights.
And just as many legal systems today refuse to acknowledge the rights of unborn persons, so courts once refused to recognise the rights of black slaves, even going as far as to class them as non-persons (see the famous Dred Scott Supreme Court Case in the US as just one example).
Except in this case there is another body involved – that of the unborn child who is killed when an abortion takes place.
Then there is also the father of the child who (presuming it is not a situation of sexual assault) was equally involved in the creation of the child, eyt is denied all rights about the decision as to whether that child will live or die.
Actually, this is about more than subjective belief, especially when there is empirical evidence which strongly points to the humanity of the unborn child.
Denying such evidence in favor of personal feelings is not reasoned, and it flies in the face of the very truths which underpin the very system of human rights upon which all humans rely for their protections.
How about science and sound rational human reason?
If that can be employed to show us that the unborn child is a human person then any act which deliberately destroys it is always an act of murder.
This makes it a very grave issue that is far beyond the feelings of individuals – all of us, as the community of humanity, have an obligation to speak out and address this issue.
But if you want to be a skeptic about the best available scientific facts about the humanity of the unborn child, then let’s be skeptics together – because as skeptics we would never allow the killing of an entity when we are uncertain as to whether or not we would be killing an innocent human being.
The basic rule of human ethics is do no harm, and if you are uncertain about whether or not your actions will do harm, then you must always act in such a way as to guarantee that no harm can be done.
If we don’t know what the entity growing in the womb is then we certainly shouldn’t be killing it until we are 100% certain that it is not human – and science simply does not support the claim that the unborn child is not human.
Freedom to choose what?
No one has the the freedom to choose to kill another person they see in the street, or the freedom to choose to own slaves, or the freedom to choose to engage in tribal genocide – and I’m sure that you’d agree that their inability to choose such evil acts is a good thing, rather than an imposition on any freedom.
Elevating the freedom to choose to the most important aspect of any moral decision is irrational as it makes the choice more important that what is actually being chosen, and will result from that choice.
In this case, if the unborn child is a human person, then what you are proposing is that the law should allow certain people the freedom to choose the deliberate killing of an innocent person.
A choice to do evil is a bad choice, and there is no such thing as the right to choose evil.
Had to say it, didn’t you. “Evil” is an abstract concept that has no bearing on practical reality. “Evil” is an unhelpful notion that gives us a blanket explanation for why negative things happen without having to fully understand them. This is why religion is completely unhelpful – and frequently counterproductive – in this debate.
Biologically, a fetus is not a human being. It’s almost a human being. It’s the start of a human being, but it isn’t finished yet. It’s part of the mother’s body, and it needs to remain part of the mother’s body for the majority if the gestation or it won’t survive. The operative being “part of the mother’s body”. That’s the science and sound rational human reason part. I’m not skeptical about it, I’m absolutely 100% certain that a fetus is not a human being. It’s not conscious. It doesn’t have desires. It’s not self-aware. Thalamic brain connections, which deal with sensory input, only form after the sixth month, so up until then it can’t feel anything. But that’s just my opinion, which is why I believe that every mother should have the right to choose according to her opinion.
There is no purpose to giving the power of decision over abortion to anyone by the mother, because up until the end of the second trimester the fetus wouldn’t survive in anyone else’s care. It makes sense that the law should favour the status of a fully-formed, grown, experienced, communicative and aware being such as the mother over that of a fetus.
[...] was participating in a debate with Garth George, who runs a pro-life pregnancy counselling service in New Zealand, and it’s actually turning [...]
SOT
Thanks for expanding on this, you are sounding a bit less irrational as you explain yourself more.
“Evil” is an abstract concept that has no bearing on practical reality.
Sure it does. Abstract concepts have lots of bearing on practical reality (e.g. “love”; “justice”, “human rights”; the number 7). With respect to evil, murder is evil, rape is evil, child abuse is evil, genocide is evil. They all have bearing on reality.
This is why religion is completely unhelpful – and frequently counterproductive – in this debate.
Why are you the only one bringing this up?
Biologically, a fetus is not a human being. It’s almost a human being. It’s the start of a human being, but it isn’t finished yet.
Uh, I’ll defer to the biologists on this one, who say that you are wrong. But think about it — you could equally say that a three-year-old is almost a human being, one that isn’t finished yet. So’s a teenager, for that matter. Born children don’t have less right to life simply because they are less developed than an adult.
The operative being “part of the mother’s body”
I take it that this is the key issue for you. Clearly the fetus is not part of the mother’s body, or the mother would have two different sets of DNA, and potentially two different blood types, and two heads, and four arms, etc. So I assume you don’t mean that, because that is ridiculous. So I take you to mean that because the fetus is inside the mother he or she isn’t a human being with rights. Which means you think that it is *location* which decides whether someone is a person. Doesn’t seem a very robust criteria. Would it follow that a premature baby is not a human being while in the womb, but magically becomes one when in the neonatal intensive care unit?
It’s not conscious. It doesn’t have desires. It’s not self-aware.
Neither is someone who is unconscious (e.g. anesthetized on the operating table for an appendectomy, for example, or in a coma, or even just asleep). Doesn’t mean they aren’t human.
Thalamic brain connections, which deal with sensory input, only form after the sixth month, so up until then it can’t feel anything.
So if someone can’t feel anything, it is OK to kill them because they are not human? You’re saying that a being’s humanity is dependent on what it can do, not on the kind of creature that it is. This functionalist approach implies that someone who has more abilities or, say, a more demanding job, or however you choose to measure capability, is more of person that someone less capable.
Besides, in order to be able to attain these capabilities, all a fetus needs to do is be left alone to grow.
Semper vita recently had a post on a baby born at 26 weeks gestation. That’s six months. Are you saying that a day beforehand it would have been OK to kill her?
There is no purpose to giving the power of decision over abortion to anyone by the mother, because up until the end of the second trimester the fetus wouldn’t survive in anyone else’s care
So if the fetus could survive somewhere else, it would become human? Whether a fetus is human is dependent on the state of neo-natal technology?
It makes sense that the law should favour the status of a fully-formed, grown, experienced, communicative and aware being such as the mother over that of a fetus.
And I would say that the law should treat all humans as equal in dignity, and have a special regard for the weakest among us, like those who are less developed, less experienced, less able to communicate, and less aware, such as people suffering from handicaps and developmental problems, and babies in the womb.
The reason the concept of “Evil” has no bearing on practical reality is that, as I said, it’s unhelpful. It’s a two-dimensional concept which doesn’t explain anything. It doesn’t take into account the personal, psychological, social, financial or political reasons why people do bad things, it merely states that they’re bad, and what’s more implies that there’s some magical force at work behind it.
I’m not the only one bringing up the fact that religion is unhelpful counterproductive in the abortion debate. There merely seems to be an assumption on the pro-life side of things that religion automatically has a bearing on it. Which it doesn’t. Millions upon millions of women are atheists, and as such have no desire to incorporate theology into their reproductive decisions. Do you propose to exclude them from the debate? Or merely force them to follow the imperatives of a religion they don’t subscribe to?
Beyond deliberately misinterpreting my statements, you’ve entirely ignored my point, which is a point that a significant portion of the pro-life crowd systematically ignore: The woman should have the right to decide. Your opinion and my opinion on the viability of a fetus are merely opinions. The woman is the one with this thing growing inside her. But obviously that’s an impossible position to advance when all the rhetoric I’ve seen so far insists on calling women who have abortions murderers and baby killers.
SOT,
You have stated on your blog that you are debating “Garth George”, in actual fact you aren’t.
Garth George is the author of the opinion piece that we posted on our blog and he has nothing to do with our crisis pregnancy centre.
I’m sorry SOT, but this is completely incorrect.
The top embryologists are very clear that every human life begins at the point of conception.
Each human individual existence is a continuum that begins at the moment they are conceived and continues until the moment they die.
At no point on that continuum are they not human, because if you don’t begin as a human being then you can’t grow into human infanthood, or human adulthood (i.e cancer cells don’t become human adults and neither do fish embryos – only that which is human can develop into human adulthood)
This is not correct either.
From the moment of conception, the human person is an independent, self-directed entity who acts in a goal directed manner to continue its own growth.
The mere fact that we can implant embryos conceived with two other people’s gamates into a third person’s womb shows us that the embryo is not actually just part of the mother’s body.
And advances in DNA science and endocrinology have completely refuted the notion that the baby is merely a part of the mother’s body.
Now during its early days it requires the shelter and nourishment that is found only in the mother’s womb, but this need does not make it any less human than the mother who shelters and nourishes it, and it certainly doesn’t diminish its human rights.
Well that means that you believe that the best available science on this matter is 100% wrong.
I prefer to rely on science and sound reason to make my decisions – which is why I am pro-life.
And neither are you when you go to sleep at night, or when you fall into a temporary coma or get knocked unconscious during a sports game.
Humanity is not determined by consciousness or being self aware otherwise a person would cease to be human every night when they went to bed and lost self-awareness during sleep.
Besides, sentience (awareness) isn’t actually the highest level a human person can attain – sapience is (the ability to form abstract thought).
So if you’re going to start proposing that we dish out human rights based on arbitrary things such as level of consciousness then you need to start considering the fact that there are graduations in consciousness, and by implication, the higher you are on the consciousness ladder, the more rights you should get.
1 – This is a red herring.
Injecting someone with a painkiller before you hit them on the head with a shovel and kill them does not make the act of killing that innocent person suddenly okay.
The point is that killing an innocent person takes away their inviolable right to life (something that you and I have no right to do), it is completely irrelevant whether or not they feel any pain during that process.
2 – There is actually huge debate about this issue going on the scientific community right now, and it is far from finalised.
Some specialists are proposing that early unborn babies may actually feel more intense pain because their nervous receptors develop before the control centres in the brain do.
So it is just not scientifically correct to make the statement that babies feel no pain before 6 months – as this is still a hotly disputed point amongst the experts.
Time Magazine actually did a very complex piece on this issue a couple of years back – it’s well worth a read.
No it doesn’t.
Otherwise it would also make sense that the law should favor the rights of fully able people over the rights of disabled people.
The law should respect the rights of every single human person and it is irrelevant what their age, location, level of development or communication abilities are.
I’m sorry SOT, but this is just not what is meant by the use of the word evil – and I certainly don’t think that some magic force is to blame!
Evil acts are those acts which deliberately fail to acknowledge the inviolable rights of others and do deliberate grave harm to them.
I’m sorry SOT, but as Dean has pointed out – neither him or I have raised the issue of religion here once, and we certainly haven’t mention theology, or theological concepts.
Instead we have proposed science and reason to back up our pro-life convictions.
Of course I don’t expect anyone to be subject to someone else’s religious/theological ideas, but I certainly do expect everyone to respect scientific facts and evidences, and to adhere to basic tenants of human reason – such as natural ethics and morality.
All of these things are completely independent of religion or theology – and all people, no matter what their creed or belief are bound by these common and universal truths.
SOT, in this instance of the debate, you’re the only one bringing up religion. The rest of us are trying to appeal to biology, logic etc. As for bringing atheists into the debate, who “have no desire to incorporate theology into their reproductive decisions”, by all means, bring them on. You could start with The Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League at godlessprolifers.org.
Frankly, since this discussion started as a result of Brendan posting the thoughts of a nun as some sort of philosophical authority, I fail to see how I’m the only one bringing up religion.
The Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League webpage was last updated over two and a half years ago. Also if you check their relatively short member list, you’ll find that most people on it are pretty fine with abortion as long as it’s for the mother’s health. Or if the baby’s sick. Or if the doctors says it’s okay. Or if it’s a Wednesday. I suppose that’s a organisation which folded under the weight of its own pointlessness, then.
Brendan – apologies for the error re: Garth George, I shall correct it on my blog.
As for the rest of this, on the matters of interpretation of the available science we’re just going to have to agree to disagree, which I realise presents a problem because I think pregnant women should have the right to choose for themselves, whereas you want to choose for them, so agreeing to disagree would be for you guys kind of like admitting defeat.
Anyway, you guys have a nice day.
Thanks SOT, much appreciated.
I’m not sure how one can try and claim to be arguing from a position of rationality when one talks about “interpreting” objective scientific truths.
The whole idea behind scientific facts is that they aren’t open to debate or subjective interpretation.
If science tells us that the earth is round, then any one who wishes to claim that the earth is actually flat is positing a pointless and irrational argument that simply isn’t grounded in reality.
I encourage you to do some more research, and I think that’ll see for yourself what myself and many other pro-lifers have seen – the evidence is not actually in dispute at all, instead it points to only one reality: the unborn child is an innocent human person, and therefore deliberately killing it is an act of brutality in the highest order.
Firstly, science does not produce incontrovertible fact. Science is nowhere near as simple as that. Science poses more questions that it answers, and even when it does arrive at answers, those remain nothing more than theories which can be more or less verifiable, but which are never assumed by science to constitute absolute truth. For instance, the Earth is not actually round – the overwhelming evidence tells us that it is an oblate spheroid, according to the methods that are available to us to measure it. But any scientist with one iota of integrity will tell you just that: our scientific understanding of any phenomenon is limited by our methods of observation and how we interpret the results of that observation.
Secondly, notions such as killing and innocence have no scientific basis. They are philosphical, social, moral and legal issues, and as such are not bound by merely one reality. The weight of differing cultures and opinions in matters of death and innocence completely exclude the possibility of determining either my scientific means. As such “abortion is the killing of an innocent child” is merely your opinion, which happens to be shared by a lot of people. “Abortion is absolutely a matter of personal choice for the mother” is merely mine, which also happens to be shared by a lot of people. There are no scientific means of determining which of us is right, merely the moral and ethical codes by which sections of the population determine their social environment. The knowledge that a fetus is biologically human has no bearing on the debate, because both sides acknowledge that, but each side has a different opinion on how relevant that information is. Your position is that the life of the fetus is paramount in the consideration, my position is that the rights of the pregnant woman are paramount in the consideration. Again, it’s not a scientific question, just an ethical debate.
Ultimately I would also like for women to not have to make a choice about abortion. I would far prefer that women were properly educated about contraception. I’d like contraception to be free for everyone, for that matter. I think it should be taught in schools, as soon as kids hit puberty. I have good reason to believe that that would also significantly diminish the transmission of STDs. One of the things I find bizarre about the abortion debate is that so many of the people who are anti-abortion are also completely against contraception.
Firstly, science does not produce incontrovertible fact. Science is nowhere near as simple as that. Science poses more questions that it answers, and even when it does arrive at answers, those remain nothing more than theories which can be more or less verifiable, but which are never assumed by science to constitute absolute truth.
You’re missing the point SOT – I never said that science can tell us everything, simply that science provides objective truths about issues related to material things.
Secondly, sure, the earth is not EXACTLY round, but it certainly isn’t flat, square or triangle shaped – and if you tried to argue that it was then you would be wrong, because the objective truth is that the earth is more round than it is any other shape.
Science also tells us a lot of other valuable things about the unborn child, and these things (along with sound reason and logic) must be part of our consideration when evaluating the moral nature of abortion.
What you are suggesting is that we should just ignore the science (and sound reason) in favor of completely subjective and arbitrary personal feelings about a matter of MASSIVE import.
I’m sorry, but this is just plain immoral negligence – it’s like a hunter hearing a sound in the bush and then turning and unloading an entire magazine in the direction of the sound without ever bothering to identify with any certainty what he was shooting at.
Such a gravely irresponsible hunter would be laughed at by a judge if he ended up killing someone, and then tried to justify the killing by saying that he never felt that he had an obligation to weigh the facts and consider the evidence before he fired his gun.
And why is only when it comes to abortion that some people think that they can claim some completely illogical and unreasoned thing called “freedom of choice” ahead of all other considerations?
Would we tolerate it if a rapist told us that he was “pro-choice” about raping women?
Or what if the UN suddenly started telling us that it had become “pro-choice” about genocidal mass murder?
Far too much of the pro-abortion rhetoric is founded on nothing more than slogans that completely deny reason and reality, and they certainly aren’t supported by sound evidence or science.
How can anyone claim that it is okay to destroy any entity without having to ever consider the scientific evidence (as well as sound logic and reason) in regards to what they are destroying?
Ah yes, the old pro-choice cornerstone – moral relativism.
“What’s true for you might not be true for me – but neither of us is right or wrong, we just believe different truths, because at the end of the day their is no subjective truth”
The only problem with this completely irrational moral belief system (and yes, it is a moral belief system) is that it is completely self-refuting.
If there is no such thing as moral absolutes, then how can you state absolutely that there is no such thing as a moral absolute (by doing so you have just created a moral absolute)
And if nothing can ever be known for certain, then how can you know for certain that nothing can ever be know for certain (because that means that something can be known with certainty).
Secondly, I doubt you would support the notion of moral relativism when it comes to murder or car theft – sure, you might not believe that murder or stealing someone’s car is morally acceptable, but the local motorcycle gang believes a different truth; they think that such activities are perfectly fine, so let’s just agree to disagree, because after all, we have no scientific way of deciding who is right and who is wrong.
This is a completely ludicrous statement – the humanity of the unborn child has everything to do with this debate!
Here’s how the logic works:
A. The entity that begins growing in the womb at conception is an innocent unborn human being.
B. Abortion ends the life of that innocent human being
C. Therefore abortion is the murder of an innocent human being
As you can see, the humanity of the unborn child is the very crux of this debate.
If the unborn child isn’t a human being then there is nothing at all wrong with abortion and all pro-lifers have got it completely wrong.
However, if the unborn child is a human being, then abortion is the murder of an innocent human person, and therefore it is gravely immoral.
That’s because contraception doesn’t actually remedy the abortion problem, it simply leads to more abortion.
Contraception creates a social mentality called the ‘contraceptive mentality’ – which sees children as a burden, or a problem to be overcome in the pursuit of sexual happiness.
This cultural attitude naturally softens the cultural conscience to abortion, because abortion becomes the ultimate way to rid sexual relations of those unwanted babies it keeps creating.
Of course not every couple who uses contraception will abort the babies they conceive when their contraceptive of choice suffers it’s inherent standard failure rate, but contraception certainly predisposes a couple towards abortion because it creates a paradigm within them which says that sexual relations and children should be separated from each other, and children are a burden to attaining sexual satisfaction.
And for many such couples abortion simply becomes the ultimate back-up contraceptive device for ridding themselves of the kids that they happen to create when their regular method fails them (as they all do).
Do you seriously believe that? That the use of contraception leads to more abortion?
Because every piece of information I’m finding here indicates that when people use more contraception abortions rates go down, whereas when people stop using it abortion rates go up. The only people I’ve seen reporting the contrary are – surprise surprise – pro-life, anti-contraception groups. Most popular methods of contraception have a 90+% reliability rate when used correctly, you see.
The so-called “contraceptive mentality” you’re talking about looks to be some sort of unsubstantiated Catholic-originated bunk-psychology invented to depict people who use contraception as having an irresponsible attitude to sex. Again, the only people who appear to believe in its existence are pro-life, anti-contraception groups.
And before you suggest abstinence as a suitable alternative, have a read of this article.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6927733.stm
SOT,
All I can say is that you aren’t reading all the beast available data – and yes, this data comes from unbiased sources.
In our country almost half of all abortions last year were performed after women got pregnant after a contraceptive failure.
Secondly, you can track the increased incidence of abortion in most countries with the increased promotion of contraception.
Not only that, but other problems such as STI’s and teenage pregnancy also increase along with the increased promotion of contraception.
SOT,
In case you’re wondering, several comments you made on other posts were deleted because we don’t allow Trolling on this blog.
Please read our comment policy for more details:
http://familylifenz.wordpress.com/comments-policy/
What do people use for contraception in your country? Plastic bags? There’s only 4.3 million people in New Zealand – Are you honestly suggesting that around 9,000 women in your country each year have abortions because of contraceptive failure? Do you know how statistically unlikely that is, a contraceptive failure rate of 1 in 477 of the general population, with a 90+% efficiency rate of current contraceptives? Where do you get your data from?
Studies such as these (there are plenty of others)
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5055/index1.html
say that your claim that contraception makes abortion go up is nothing but rubbish. Other reliable studies indicate that contraceptive use also reduces STI transmission.
As I said, you won’t find a single study that indicates the contrary, that doesn’t originate from some sort of pro-life distortion of available data. If you can, I’d love to see it.
Similarly, the “contraceptive mentality” to which you refer was, judging by the available evidence, an unsubstantiated religious invention with no scientific basis in psychological study whatsoever, devised entirely to claim that contraception is irresponsible.
And I wasn’t trolling. I was pointing out the hypocritical inconsistencies in your discourse. But I can see how you wouldn’t want people publicly questioning your motivations. The God Squad rarely do. I note that you deleted my comment here:
http://familylifenz.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/uk-parents-sue-hospital-for-wrongful-birth-of-disabled-son-born-14-years-ago/
Where I pointed out that there was an entirely logical reason for the parents to sue the hospital, and it actually had nothing to do with your agenda. But I assume you think you know better than me about that case, despite the fact that I live twenty minutes away from Blackpool whereas you’re on the other side of the planet. The case had nothing to do with abortion, the abortion is only a technicality so they can score funds to take better care of their son, and yet you hear one-third of the story, take it at face value, judge the parents and find them wanting.
How very Christian of you.
SOT,
That data is very real and it comes from the NZ Abortion Supervisory Committee – they are the government appointed committee who oversee the abortion industry in NZ, and they keep detailed statistics ever year.
SOT,
The reason you’re other comments were deleted was because they quite clearly constitute Trolling.
Trolling includes spamming and comments that are intended to provoke emotive responses rather than actually advance any sort of genuine and constructive discussion.
From Brendon;
‘This is a completely ludicrous statement – the humanity of the unborn child has everything to do with this debate!
Here’s how the logic works:
A. The entity that begins growing in the womb at conception is an innocent unborn human being.
B. Abortion ends the life of that innocent human being
C. Therefore abortion is the murder of an innocent human being
As you can see, the humanity of the unborn child is the very crux of this debate.’
Yes the fetus may be innocent, an individual life and be human. But why is being human so important?
The fetus is not self-aware, so it does not know of its own existance or know what it is to miss out on if it is killed. They may feel pain but this does not give it a right to life, just a right to not experince pain (by the way if the abortion procedure is done in a painful way to the fetus then I would be against that particular technique).
There are many non-human animals that have superior self-awarness and the ability to suffer, why not include them? Why not be just as concerned for their right to life? I think that apes and dolphins enjoy having their lives and are enjoying them more so than a fetus. They have more to miss out on if they are killed compared to a non-self aware human.
Your argument seems have an undue bias to humans, which is a bit discriminatory. That goes for SOT as well.
If people do not have compassion and kindness towards the most innocent beings of our own species how can we expect anyone to have kindness and compassion towards other species?
So maybe we should include all life forms in an ethic similar to that of deep ecology?
I’m sorry I have no idea what you’re talking about > re deep ecology.
It is an ethical theory that argues that all life forms on Earth hold intrinsic value no matter what species they are. Wikipedia may be a good place to do further research.
Oh yes Wikipedia is the best place to do serious research.
I’ll read up on it sometime.
Meanwhile I think we can all agree that all living things have intrinsic value. But just because two things have value doesn’t mean they should be treated in the same way.