Over at unrepentant old hippie, JJ reminds us of the zygote zealots' rightwingnutz mob mentality, complete with an eloquent photograph. Hyperbole + overwrought visuals = fanaticism.
In the southern hemisphere, a study from Australia - a country that recently decriminalized abortion services - presents a complex portrait of the reasons why women choose to terminate a pregnancy.
Prior to the law's introduction into Parliament, the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC) carried out an investigation, which presented three options to Parliament. The first was codification of the existing law, which made it a criminal offence to destroy the life of an unborn child "capable of being born alive," which was said to be any time after 28 weeks gestation. The second option was allowing an abortion to be performed at any stage of a pregnancy, if a woman gives her consent and the medical practitioner considers it ethically appropriate. The third option was the two-tier system which was finally accepted, using 24 weeks as the defining point. According to figures from the VLRC investigation, about 94.6% of abortions in Victoria are carried out before 13 weeks of gestation, 4.7% between 13 and 20 weeks, and less than 1% after 20 weeks. Yet, although only a small number of women need late-term abortions, the ones who do are the most vulnerable: teenagers, victims of sexual assault including incest, sufferers of mental illness, women who have experienced a sudden tragic life circumstance or have discovered a fetal abnormality. .... An all-women task force of leaders from central Victoria's Anglican Church diocese submitted their comments during the VLRC investigation: "In our view, public acceptance of the reality of abortion, including acceptance of the practice among women of diverse religious communities, indicates that a change in the law is timely."The study audited data recorded over a 12 month period of phone calls from women facing unintended pregnancies and who wanted an abortion. The 5400 calls were received by the Royal Women's Hospital's Pregnancy Advisory Service from women seeking advice between October 2006 and September 2007.
Of about 3000 women who gave a primary reason for wanting an abortion, 23 per cent said they did not want children now, 11 per cent said they were too young, and .4 per cent said their partner was violent or they had been raped. But 16 per cent of callers mentioned violence as a contributing factor in their decision to seek advice, a statistic Dr Rowe said was disturbing. "It does suggest that 'exposure to violence' needs to be included in all health services for women, because it is a common occurrence in the community and it's only just been acknowledged," she said.Predictably, no-choice abortion recriminalizers gave the findings their own spin, proclaiming that the women were using abortion as a form of birth control. In fact, 29 per cent of the callers in the study had used contraception to prevent pregnancy. Just another day in the no-choice fetus fetishists propaganda factory, cranking out more lies and more shrieeekkks!!!
8 comments:
Maybe I haven't paid as much attention as I should have, but these fetus fetishists get as much attention through the 1990s? Sure, there were the ghoulish protesters outside Morgentaler clinic holding their intimidation vigils but I don't remember them getting much press.
Hmm how about that...nearly identical numbers that we have in Canada. Could it be that the terrifying "abortion minutes before birth" scenario doesn't occur anywhere? Could it be that women the world over will make the "right" decision if left to decide for themselves?
GASP! OMIGODOMIGOD!
Next thing you know people will start thinking for themselves and questioning the authority of church dogma!
Once again, the whole myth of the late term abortion is busted, and the fetus fetishists keep pumping out the lies.
They spin the propaganda in their own media - Lifeshite, etc. - and hope that it will get picked up by serious press.
Over at JJ's, it's mind-boggling to read about the religious fundamentalists and fetus fetishist ideologues who don't understand why their nasty demos are quite justly perceived as security risks and - worse case scenario but appropriate given their history of bombing clinics - domestic terrorism.
The upside of the lunatic fringe still being alive and well is that it compromises their credibility, which is fragile to begin with. Funny thing is, people notice that there are no pro-choice equivalents to the likes of Randall Terry and Bill Wartcott.
So it really cheered me up when I read about that interview with Terry and his insane jabbering -- this isn't old hat stuff from the "abortion wars" in the 80s, it was from last week. Yep, keep talking, guys.
You know, I'd be happy to grant the FFs the point that abortion is, in the broadest sense, a form of birth control, if only they didn't then extrapolate from that that birth control is somehow necessarily frivolous. Birth control at any stage by any method is not an "extra".
SUZANNE posted a bio of Whatcott a week or so ago - it is truly alarming. I knew the guy was off is rocker, but I did not know that he almost became a mass murderer at one point - those are his own words.
Some people might think he's undergone some kind of conversion or repentance, but I think he's just continuing with a more focused hate for human life (i.e. it's only good and innocent when it's unborn...or dead).
Scary.
Of course abortion is birth control. I've never got how that is a bad thing.
There was a time in the 1970's when Germaine Greer argued in favour of the idea that monthly menstrual extractions should be available at birth control clinics. This was at a time when the health risks of specific types of contraceptives were being documented: the Dalkon Shield, IUDs that caused uterine perforations, birth control pills that contained unnecessarily high levels of hormones.
I forget what the counter arguments were, but it became clear that inconvenient and potentially ineffective and dangerous as some contraceptives were, women did not embrace the suggestion of getting their wombs vacuumed on a monthly basis.
The Lizzie May argument against abortion as birth control because of 'frivolous' and 'capricious' decision-making is one more strategy to depict women as inherently evil and needing Jay-zus to save them.
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