Credit where it’s due
Okay, so I’ve been having fun with the Two Cents crowd, mainly because they’re so silly so often. But on the other hand, they occasionally write something that is meant to be taken seriously. In the interests of fairness and can’t-we-all-just-get-along, here is Miranda’s excellent comment about abortion:
Now I know how the Feminazis and feral left wingers feel: I am getting VERY ANGRY over a political issue.
Tony Abbot, Christopher Pyne, the golf-slogging, mild mannered military Governor General, Rohan D’Souza and Marcel White — what do they all have in common?
They are all men, and none of them will ever carry a child.
It is possible to call my argument simplistic and sexist-in-reverse, but it seems to me that the main players in this debate calling abortion a ‘moral tragedy’ and expounding the evils of women who choose not to have babies are ALL MEN, and all religious.
Since when did religion and the male half of the species start to dominate modern political discourse?
No man has the right to tell me what to do with my body. If I want to abort a half formed, silent fledgling life that cannot speak or reason because I have hopes and dreams and plans for the future, I WILL. In the heat of the moment, I would probably hit any politician who tried to tell me otherwise.
[...]
Abortion is not the immoral, convenient way out that selfish young women ‘opt for’ through sheer laziness and lack of ethics, as the new wave of god-bothering politicians would have you believe. Having an abortion is a difficult, agonising choice (and process) but in the end, it IS a choice — a woman’s choice.
Jayde Lovell has also got a good post about organ donation.
I am unsure it could be ethically correct for a predominantly male senate to make decisions for women under the guise of patriarchal religious values. I am glad the GG has called for an examination of this issue. The current PBS contraceptive pills have not been updated for 30 years and pose a serious risk to any women who choose to use them. This should be the starting point for this blokey examination of women’s rights and lives of which they have no idea about.
The Governor General is NOT a politician, and believe that if he had any sense of the importance of the role he is supposed to be playing on the political stage, he’d stay out of debates of this nature, even if ‘he’ were a woman.
Since when did religion and the male half of the species start to dominate modern political discourse?
Are you kidding me? When hasn’t this been the case?
I was going to comment, but it got a bit long, so my comment’s here:
losmanas.blogspot.com
Sorry – brief advertisement. Haven’t worked out how to trackback yet. Rob is helping me!
Norm, right on the money. And it’s not a matter of my opinions clashing with his. It’s the principle.
Maybe through an open discussion of this issue, which the GG has brought into the public sphere[regardless of his own agenda] women’s healthcare [contraception, d&c's etc]can possibly receive its long overdue consideration which inturn could improve women’s quality of life through lowering rates of cancer and not sentencing them to domesticity.
I appreciate the empathy you all express regarding the consideration of women’s rights being aired in politics and agree with you all, however, I see this as being a long ignored human rights issue rather than a political one & the GG’s call for an inquiry into the issue as being a means of bringing about better care and rights for women in Australia.
Hey – thanks for quoting me (makes me feel important), but why did you gloss over my middle section where I describe the abortion process? Do the mechanations of the female reproductive parts disgust and frighten you?
*feels like a feminist*
Miranda, I left it out because you referred to the woman from NUS, and although you made good points in that section they don’t really stand alone, outside the context of the discussion you were involved in.
Deanne Kelly, anyone?
Two points ;
‘Half formed,silent fledgling life’- firstly we know now that some people do not consider fetus’s in the womb to be living or have any importance. Secondly if someone is silent and therefore cannot speak up for or protect themselves, we should do our utmost to protect them.
Thirdly; ‘Because i have hopes and dreams for the future.’-you, like many women, act indignant that a baby could be some barrier to your ‘easyness’ and ‘happiness’ of life. Oh the parties, jobs, status etc. Now if for some reason God impregnated women like with Mary then these views would be ok. But women play a part in conception, so they should play a part in taking responsibility for its results, and putting the child before themselves. That said, more men should take responsibility for their role as well, and i acknowledge that they dont enough. Now if having a baby will put the mother’s life at risk, or the mother is a rape victim etc, not having a baby is acceptable and undertsandable. But not having a baby because it might impede your goals and lifestyle, is well, just selfish. Many people who have children still have hopes and dreams and fulfil them, and anyone who uses the ‘hopes and dreams’ issue to justify not having a child is just looking for excuses.
While not dismissing the abortion issue as unimportant, I’m far more concerned about the long term consequences of the directions medical science is allowing society to go. There are all sorts of breajthroughs occurring. Many may be clearly good; but others have implications for future generations which are worrying.
Christians used to tell me thaere was no need to worry, because it was all part of God’s plan. Marxists were able to sleep easily, because Karl’s blueprint was leading us to some sort of Heaven on Earth. Neither of these “explanations” struck me as particularly satisfactory at the time, and they attract even less support now; but the current most favoured response of ignoring anything in the “difficult basket”, isn’t any more satisfying.