It is incomprehensible to me how Abortion is still illegal in this country and the insulting hoops women are forced to jump through to get a medical procedure.
If a woman wants an abortion, she should be legally allowed to access that abortion for free with as little stress as possible with wrap around social services post operation.
End of story.
The fact everyone has to function under this mental health loophole is beneath our collective intelligence.
So how is the debate going in NZ?
Pretty appallingly.
As glacial progress is made in Parliament with a new Government already biting off more than it can chew, anti-abortionists are planning a pretty gross protest in the hopes of blocking the slow progress that has been made.
They have put out the call for 12000 booties so they can parade them in front of Parliament as a grotesque visualisation of the abortion numbers…
…after this grim display, they will donate the booties to new born infants, but does anyone really want anti-abortion death cult booties used for political grand standing?
Really?
Isn’t it difficult enough mentally, emotionally and physically to have an abortion? Why would you want to go out of your way to make those women feel even more shit with these kind of displays for political grand standing purposes?
Anti-abortion defenders will attempt to compare this to the Shoe Project that saw 606 pairs of shoes presented to Parliament as a visual protest against the suicide rate but such a bastardisation of that campaign to legitimise anti-abortion fanatics is an absurd false equivalence.
Preventing suicides under a broken mental health system is light years away from opposing safe and legal abortions.
One is about saving preventable deaths, the other is about demanding legal sovereignty over a woman’s body, they aren’t the same thing in any way shape or form.
Using dead foetuses for political grand standing is pretty fucking ugly and needlessly cruel to those women who have had abortions.
Thats funny Martyn,
We in HB/Gisborne assembled two “save our rail” partitions in 2012 one with 1600 signatures and a larger one totally another 10480 signatures that totalled 12,000 signatures.
This was a worthy petition for saving our rail that was deliberately alllowed to fail after being washed out by a storm because the National Government then as the Minister of Transport Steven Joyce was found to be diverting rail maintainence funds from HB/Gisborne rail to Auckland, so this petition was a worthy public good petition.
Then we had our Gisborne MP Mona Mackey present it to the Parliament Secretary and National Government ministers and it was rejected by the Natiional Government then.
So why do these Tories believe they can be successsful to have another petition of 12,000 stop the labour coalition Gopvernment now?
hypocracy of course it is. How sad these bigots are.
I see it this way:
Pro-Choice – people say that if they want an abortion, they should be free to have one. Nobody is forced to do so: people who believe every ovum is sacred are never forced to abort. Pro-lifers are completely unaffected, and may have as many wanted/unwanted babies as they want. Freedom for all, whatever they believe.
Anti-Abortion (so-called Pro-Life): All human life is so sacred that we have the right to ram our beliefs down all you others’ murderous throats. To hell with what you may believe – you bloody well conform to what we believe, so no choice for you because we are so totally, undeniably superior in our stuck-up, pretentious dogma.
Only one of these two groups has the utter pomposity to impose its behaviour patterns upon the other.
Interesting argument. So you would support the legalization of suicide/euthanasia as well? Decriminalisation of all drugs?
JPO73: “So you would support the legalization of suicide…”
Suicide is already legal here.
To stand by and do nothing or say nothing about a section of society who want to decriminalize murder promoting a culture of death is self evidently evil. Has God said “you shall not murder”? Dear Satan – yes He has.
Ian, are you able to frame an argument without recourse to an invisible supernatural being that many (if not most) people don’t believe in?
I could posit an argument based on what Superman would have us do. But I doubt it would hold much currency in a debate.
One could come up with a moral framework that exists outside religion that claims that killing is wrong.
As for “invisible supernatural beings”, I do recommend Jordan Peterson’s work on Maps of Meaning. It’s not all superstition and mumbo-jumbo. Jung is also worth a read.
FRANK : Are you declaring yourself to be ATHEIST?
i.e You believe That LIFE has NO Sanctity.
PLEASE ANSWER.
The two are not necessarily related, Cassie.
I may be atheist/agnostic – but am thoroughly opposed to war and the the death penalty. I’m not even in favour of firearms being available to the general population.
Can many anti-abortionists (especially in the United States) say the same thing?
That’s good Frank. At least you have some kind of ethics.
I would call you maybe an Agnostic..
Atheists tend to justify anything..
Please scroll down and see what you think of my next submisssion.
Cassie: “FRANK : Are you declaring yourself to be ATHEIST?”
What have Frank’s beliefs to do with anything related to this topic? Whether he’s a theist or an atheist: so what?
Being born an unwanted child is truly terrible. If anti-choice zealots had a genuine concern for babies and for children, then that concern would proactively extend beyond cute little bootie stage. Life isn’t necessarily a great gift for many children.
The anti-choicers’ religious and moral arguments are self-defeating, as they well know.
We are being manipulated. There is another agenda here – and distributing bootees to baby clinics is nauseating look-at-me righteousness which trivialises a complex and often incredibly sad issue.
Your rationale can be extended to ending the life of a living child up to an arbitrary age on the basis that it is unwanted.
If the moral arguments are self-defeating, then your moral position is what, exactly?
I am not to preach to a woman that she shouldn’t have an abortion, though I find the issue very vexed, but I find the moral arguments in favour very tenuous
Andy, as you mention, the issue is indeed vexed. And ongoing open discussion and clarity is needed for as long as it is required for understanding.
Every abortion decision or decision to carry to term, is different. It relates to different life choices, different future prospects, different health outcomes etc.
For that reason, discussion of this issue along purely rational lines, is ultimately irrational. If discussion does not take into account the emotional cost of carrying a child to term, or going through the system to have an abortion, then it is only half a discussion.
We have a society that quite openly abuses single mothers, and ignores the missing fathers. We financially penalise parents who find themselves in situations that require state assistance, and have commentators and world views that denigrate those who have chosen to take on the responsibility of looking after a child/children by themselves.
Unless this state of affairs is included, the discussion regarding the “choices” available to an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy doesn’t even start on a realistic framing.
Until our national conversation about womens rights and body sovereignty become more nuanced and sophisticated, we will keep retreating to black and white corners of the discussion arena. And maybe, this issue, like many others that deal with the human condition is only really captured in shades of grey.
At present, too many woman deserve compassion for making the choice to abort, and just as many deserve the same for choosing to carry to term.
I, like you, would never preach to a woman who finds herself in such a situation.
The discussion about the life and when it begins is one fraught with conflicting views, but one error of omission it often makes is to discard the existing, independent, autonomous life that already exists – that of the woman. And it is always disconcerting, to see the woman in these discussions reduced to a carrying vessel for the sake of argument. As if she has no claim on her existing life, or rights to emotions and desires independently.
Papists should’ve been outlawed years ago.
Why is social policy being decided by witch doctors?
Do you have no civilisation here?
What is a papist? If you mean a Catholic, are you saying Catholics should have been outlawed? If yes, have you heard of the New Zealand Bill of Rights? It protects people against views like yours. Secondly, which witch doctors are deciding social policy? You will need to provide specific examples or retract your comment. Thirdly, what is civilisation? Go on, humour me with your best definition.
“saving preventable deaths”
Every child born today faces the biggest shit storm in human history, resulting in human extinction.
Every avoided birth = a preventable near term premature death.
So, trying to follow the logic here…unwanted children, born to women who are forced to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term, are going to have a lovely jubbly life of pink booties and happy times….though for a while there I couldn’t cycle past the Hawkes Bay Hospital without seeing discarded plastic fetuses nestling in beds of cigarette butts in the gutters, left over from the weekly ‘pro-life’ protesters who would hand them out to school kids – which always struck me as odd…wouldn’t it have made more sense to hand out contraceptive advice?
Not trying to be a dick (although I know I often come across that way), I don’t quite see how you reconcile your staunch anti-euthanasia position with an equally staunch pro-abortion viewpoint. Surely most of the arguments you make with your anti-euthanasia stance (especially that society may coercing some people to take that option) is very similar to society forcing the poor and vulnerable to have a streamlined abortion? In any case, as a humanist I’m very much for both bills (it’s your life to do with as you please, as long as doesn’t impact others), but I’d like to hear some clarification on your particular seemingly contrasting views on euthanasia and abortion.
Who’s really promoting a “death cult” and politically grandstanding here?
When does this “medical procedure” become an ethical issue to you? 3 months before full term? 2? 1? Perhaps it’s 1 day before – why not 1 day after?
It’s really not that simple, and in a democracy every viewpoint has the right to argue their case.
Didn’t think you were so squeamish that a few booties would cause such anguish. Methinks you protest too much?
The much used heavily cliched Pro Abortion slogan ” My Body , My Choice”
is NOT FOUNDED ON TRUTH or FACTS.
Does “My body” have…
2 hearts, 2 brains, 4 legs & arms?
***
YOUR answer is…………….?
For a couple hundred thousand years woman had no choice when they had babies, or who they had babies with.
Now they do have a choice and that freaks the fuck out of normies as they see there well layed out patriarchal structure crumble before there yes and I for one ain’t even mad about it.
Sorry not sorry.
Aren’t you just upset that a group is using a tactic you approve of for a cause you are against?
The science of human embryology reveals the complexity of the unique genetic and DNA makeup inside every foetus. Every foetus at 12 weeks looks the same, but inside is a human person like Martin Bradbury was at that stage. Because his mother chose to continue the pregnancy, he dodged the abortion bullet.
If, as he proposes, abortion should be freely available at any stage, the unique vulnerable human person has no rights or value, much as the slave was regarded in pre-Wilberforce Britain. The other precedent is the Nazi term “undermenchen” meaning subhuman and you only have to look at the medical euphemisms for abortion to recognize the similarity.
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