Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Greens At It Again...

Earlier this month, Greens MP Lee Rhiannon called for New South Wales to follow Victoria’s lead in decriminalizing abortion. The Greens have launched a campaign which calls for abortion to be removed from the criminal code and to be recategorised into health legislation.

We must mobilize NOW so that this hideous campaign does not advance any further.
Write to your MPs NOW and tell them WE DO NOT WANT THIS.

Some points for your letters:

Many recent studies have proven a direct link between abortion and mental health problems. If MPs care about the health of women, they WILL NOT let this campaign advance.

Victoria’s liberal abortion laws allow for the killing of children who survive an abortion – do our MPs want this for NSW?

Victoria’s liberal abortion laws do not require that the abortionist ensure a painless killing for the unborn – surely even pro-abortion MPs could not concede to this.

In Victoria, nurses and pharmacists may dispense abortificient drugs to a woman until the 24th week of pregnancy. Apart from the obvious implications to the unborn child, this in no way protects the health of the mother who in most cases will go home to give birth to a dead child.

Victoria’s new laws allow for abortion right up until birth – WE DO NOT WANT THIS.

Victoria’s abortion laws allow for partial-birth abortion – that is, a child is partially delivered and then killed before he is clear of the birth canal. This hideous method of murder is even illegal in the US; but is legal in Victoria. WE DO NOT WANT THIS IN NSW!

Victoria’s new laws allow for sex-selection abortions. Only a sexist MP could want this campaign to go forward.

It is no longer compulsory in Victoria to offer counseling to a woman who is considering abortion. So much for a woman’s choice. There is nothing ‘informed’ about choosing abortion when one knows of no other option.

Nurses and doctors in Victoria are bound to assist in ‘emergency’ abortions. WE DO NOT WANT THIS IN NSW.

WRITE TODAY – don’t wait until the Greens develop a Bill and put it before Parliament. WRITE – RIGHT NOW!

Here is a list of NSW State MPs

Here is Rhiannon’s campaign overview

Feel free to write to her and tell her what you think. She won’t know how opposed we are unless we tell her.

Monday, March 16, 2009

How Much Can a Child Take?

The Catholic Church - rather than the man who raped a little girl - has been turned into the monster in the latest heart-wrenching case of child abuse.

Brazil is reeling from the recent abortion undergone by a 9 year old mother of twins, but it is difficult to assess what is most heinous to the country. Much media commentary has focused on the excommunication issued against the girl’s mother and the abortionists, rather than on the abortion itself or on the step-father’s crime of rape.

Opinion writers across the globe have successfully averted attention from the man who sexually abused a 9 year old and her 14 year old disabled sister over several years, to the Church’s public condemnation of an act which has always been condemned by the Church.

One ‘Catholic’ feminist pro-choice writer, Mary Hunt, finds the Church’s actions “violent beyond defense.” Hunt is obviously suffering from some form of memory loss. It was not the Church who sexually abused two little girls. Nor was it the Church who forced a nine-year-old to undergo a traumatic and life-altering abortion.

The girl was in her fourth month of pregnancy when she was subjected to an abortion. The abuse had reportedly been occurring since the child was six.

In Brazil, abortion is permitted by law in the case of danger to the life of the mother and in the case of rape. By law, it seems, this little girl had a right to an abortion. But as her mother was unsuccessful in defending her against the awful procedure, the Church certainly tried. The Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife legally tried to stop the abortion from occurring, but was unsuccessful.

There have been a number of estimates of the girl’s weight – between 66 and 80 pounds – that’s between 30 and 36 kilograms. It’s been claimed that her weight alone would have caused serious problems had the girl carried to term. But the child’s ongoing psychological welfare seems to have been of no concern to the abortionists. In recent years, abortion-related mental illness has been heavily substantiated in numerous studies across the globe. To couple years of sexual abuse with the psychological trauma of an abortion is a death warrant for the girl’s mental health.

There has also been some discussion of the child’s future fertility. It is widely recognized that abortion impacts on future fertility even for older women. To subject a nine-year-old to the harrowing surgical procedure of an abortion would surely wreak havoc on her reproductive system.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, commenting from Rome, stated, "It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated.”

When this little girl is still suffering from the consequences of the abortion in 20, 30, 40 years time, she may - it can only be hoped - feel some comfort in the fact that the Church tried to protect her from it, and that those who held her under the abortionist's knife were duly punished by the Church.

At the heart of all this are 4 children. Two have lost their lives in the womb. The other two have lost their innocence and any chance of a normal, psychologically healthy adulthood.

If there is an appropriate maxim for this case, it would have to be that two wrongs don't make a right.

© Eva Whiteley 2009