The racism underlying some of the arguments against abortion is rarely as explicit as the conclusions of a Republican-led Missouri House Special Committee report into illegal immigration released recently. A large number of WASP anti-abortion advocates are disturbed by the lack of white babies being born above all. Our Treasurer’s infamous “one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country” dogwhistling rhetoric is a pale, PC shadow of the blatant bigotry of certain wings of social conservatism. Unsurprisingly, some neocons have looked closely at the US illegal immigrants debate and decided that it’s all the fault of women making their own decisions about reproduction.
“We hear a lot of arguments today that the reason that we can’t get serious about our borders is that we are desperate for all these workers,” Emery said. “You don’t have to think too long. If you kill 44 million of your potential workers, it’s not too surprising we would be desperate for workers.”
National Right to Life estimates there have been more than 47 million abortions since the Supreme Court established a woman’s right to abortion in its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. The immigration report estimates there are 80,000 fewer Missourians because of abortion, many of whom now would have been in a “highly productive age group for workers.”
Equally unsurprisingly, the Special Committee chairman, Ed Emery (Rep), added these statements to the conclusion without discussing them in committee, an act which has led Democrats on the committee to refuse to sign off on the report.
All six Democrats on the panel refused to sign the report. Some of them called the abortion assertion ridiculous and embarrassing.
“There’s a lot of editorial comment there that I couldn’t really stomach,” Rep. Trent Skaggs said Monday. “To be honest, I think it’s a little delusional.”
The report also blamed “liberal social policies” for creating “a lack of incentive for those who can work” (sounds like someone’s yearning for the days when Okies knew their place) and “includes short essays by Emery about the history of immigration, the purpose of immigration laws and the importance of a common language. In those, he notes “the issue of illegal immigration does not lend itself to compromise”.
Emery is not alone in this opinion. Mark Steyn totally agrees with him on the problem of liberal social policies contributing to the demographic decline of the West. Our own Danna Vale was pilloried for saying that we were aborting ourselves out of existence and were on the way to becoming a Muslim nation within 50 years, while “convicted Watergate felon and Prison Fellowship Ministries founder” Charles W. Colson made the same point about abortion and US immigration as Emery on his radio show back in April:
But what’s the root of the problem? Why do we have a shortage of workers? Aha, that’s the unspeakable “A” word that the elite dread the most: abortion. The reason we must allow millions of illegal aliens in to fill these jobs is because we have murdered a generation that would otherwise be filling them: 40 million sacrificed since 1973 to the god of self-fulfillment. And Americans are barely maintaining a replacement-level birthrate of 2.1 children per woman.
Remember the compassionate stuff that the abortionists used to tell us: “We are just preventing these poor kids from growing up in deprived, impoverished circumstances”? Hah! False. What happens is that others come in from abroad to live in those deprived, difficult, and impoverished circumstances and at great public cost.
That’s right. If all you selfish women out there would just have more children to become our own homegrown underclass, we wouldn’t have to go to the bother and expense of importing an underclass!
Make no mistake, despite this report’s emphasis on illegal immigration, the real target here is any immigration at all that isn’t white, English-speaking and Christian. The emphasis on English-speaking is also a dogwhistle for those concerned that the Hispanic population of the US is the only group with an above-replacement fertility rate. The obvious corollary that by limiting abortion they will automatically increase the births to illegal immigrants already living in the States passes them by.
They’re wrong about the “illegal immigrant” source of the bulk of NESB births anyway. Those who lament the decline of Anglo fecundity compared to Hispanics always fail to mention that most of the Hispanic population in the USA are either perfectly legal immigrants or are multi-generational birthright citizens descended from Hispanic settlements that pre-date the USA (most of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, just for starters, were Hispanic territories that English-speaking Americans gained by conquest). Even if they could prevent all illegal immigration tomorrow, there are still going to be more babies growing up speaking Spanish in the home than speaking English, unless Anglophone white women get with the program and gestate (strangely, Anglophone black women don’t seem needed for this duty).
There is no examination of the ‘need’ for an underclass to provide cheap labour, nor the environmental and social crises arising from global overpopulation, in this worldview.
The idea that Big Business has no inherent right to dirt-cheap labour, simply to prop up enormous profit margins that disproportionately benefit the managerial class at the expense of workers and shareholders, in pursuit of some mythical trickle-down wealth creation, doesn’t get a look-in. If the back-breaking dirty work was better paid and regulated, those American employers who are disturbed by the sight of so many NESB brown faces lining up for miniscule paypackets would have ESB white faces beating down the doors for more equitable remuneration (and their increased discretionary funds would help prime the consumerism pump).
Neither does the idea of providing better social infrastructure for families with young children as a solution to the falling birthrate cross their minds as a viable agenda. The fertility rate (births per woman) for the European Union as a whole is 1.47, and it is the countries with the most generous family benefits such as the Scandinavian countries which have the highest fertility rates (between 1.66 Denmark – 1.78 Norway). This of course is still far from the Emery-Colson dream of increasing the American fertility rate from its current level of 2.09 to, well, what? The countries with fertility rates hovering around the 3, 4 and 5 mark are not exactly models of either economic success, social parity or democracy, and their health services tend to be such that many of they children that are born don’t survive to enter the workforce in any case. How do these advocates of increased fertility rates imagine that the USA will manage to cope with such a vast increase in children needing healthcare and education?
Maybe they plan to follow the model of the burgeoning Quiverfull movement, where all checks on natural fertility are eschewed, and children’s needs are all met by their stay-at-home mothers, fonts of wholesome home remedies and sound home schooling of future generations of warriors for Christ. They’re very worried about the the white birthrate as well.
Raising a large family, she replied, was itself her “battle station,� as deliberately political an act as canvassing for conservative candidates, not to mention part of a long-term plan to win the culture war “demographically.�
Population is a preoccupation for many Quiverfull believers, who trade statistics on the falling white birthrate in European countries like Germany and France. Every ethnic conflict becomes evidence for their worldview: Muslim riots in France, Latino immigration in California, Sharia law in Canada. The motivations aren’t always racist, but the subtext of “race suicide� is often there.
Don’t think that “have more children for the country” racist conservatives will stop at making abortion illegal. They want to take away our contraceptives too.
Dr. Joseph B. Stanford, who was appointed by President Bush in 2002 to the F.D.A.’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee despite (or perhaps because of) his opposition to contraception, [wrote in] a 1999 essay: “Sexual union in marriage ought to be a complete giving of each spouse to the other, and when fertility (or potential fertility) is deliberately excluded from that giving I am convinced that something valuable is lost.”
When they’re not busy equating contraceptives with abortifacents, they’re just concerned about the broader message that controlling pregnancy sends.
The conservative [viewpoint is] that giving even more government backing to emergency contraception and other escape hatches from unwanted pregnancy will lead to a new wave of sexual promiscuity. An editorial in the conservative magazine Human Events characterized the effect of such legislation as “enabling more low-income women to have consequence-free sex.”
Because if poor women can’t be forced to complete unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, then we can’t shame them sufficiently in later years for being worthless welfare mothers raising hopeless delinquents, and we desperately need their offspring to perform menial jobs to feed the maw of commerce that must be fed or we won’t have enough shiny things to show Jesus when he comes again, or something like that. I’m starting to get lost in the convoluted anti-family-planning “logic” here.
Thankfully for Australia for the moment, our most high-profile “have another baby” advocates do not condone coercing women into unwanted pregnancies by removing the option of abortion, and our most high-profile anti-abortion advocates [pdf] do not condone draconian anti-immigration policies. Long may it stay that way.
Crossposted at Hoyden about Town
I disagree – this is a black & white reading of Costello’s remark. It is plausible to interpret his remark as one that merely calls for the Australian population to increase. Interpretation is of course in the eye of the beholder.
Nonsense. If the treasurer simply wanted the population to increase, we’d be encouraging more immigrants.
The brain, Sacha. The brain of the beholder.
If the feds wanted the population to increase, there’s a much quicker and easier way than the mass bonkfest proposed by Captain Smirk (or what Robyn Archer called ‘the Treasurer’s recent call to leg-over’). There are an awful lot of ready-made fully-grown potential Australians who would be just thrilled to oblige, if only the government would let them in.
Which is what I understood to be Tigtog’s point.
I think the point is not to raise the population, but to combat aging population 20 years hence which babies do more effectively than immigrants.
The point of Costello’s comments I should be clear. I’m certainly not defending the US reports tigtog is commenting on.
That’s cherry picking information to an extreme degree, TigTog. Very misrepresentative of thought here.
I doubt that similar comparisons with conservative Muslims in the US would be welcome, yet they’d be the closest in demograhics, speech and intent.
Immigrants have babies, too.
And besides, all that panic about the aging population doesn’t take into account that, with GST, pensioners are effectively taxpayers too.
Let’s do what works.
The fastest population increase in Australian history occurred with the high immigration in the 20 years or so following World War II. As weathergirl says, it’s not a case of immigrants or babies.
I’d favour a why-not immigration policy. You can apply and unless DIMA can find a reason why you shouldn’t come, you’re in.
That would certainly fill the country up smartly. I can see 80 million Vietnamese and 13 million Cambodians filling out the application forms for starters.
Yep.
If the PM’s office wanted more kiddies, and if they’re really pro-life, why did they drown so many kiddies on the SEIVX?
Who cares what femminist ferals want. Especially the Aussie ones.
And how can you compare Aus to US? Where is the similarity?
The more they medel, the more they muddle. Social engineering is the game plan, and they want to control it. Im not worried about the racist slag of the Left, because i know that it is wedge politics.
Drivel such as womens reproductive rights is a classic example. Couple that to the gender apartheid raging in this country, and all you have left is childless murderers hanging around Doctors and the health regime looking for handouts of all kinds.
Maybe they want the scientists to engineer baby making pills with designer qualities. That way they could get rid of the hairy armpits, the angy feminized faces, add androgenous but feminine qualities coupled to nazi tendancies with Leftist intelectualism.
Alternatively, they could just sit round getting fat, and assume the position of ‘Leader’ and “Boss’, cause they cant move to do anything, nor can they actually do anything.
A new world feminocracy cometh. (NOT)
The right to lifers are just plain wrong about the link between abortion and birth rates. As any demographer will tell you, the number of births prevented by abortion is much less than the number of abortions.
What did the PM do? I wasn’t aware that he’d sent the navy in to sink it. Or did he organise its loading so that it left port overloaded? Or, perchance, did he murmur chants to the Javanese sea goddess Nyai Roro Kidul to stir up the waves to sink it off the coast of Java, thousands of kilometres from Australia?
Do tell.
I agree with Weathergirl –
If we want to increase the population, increase immigration. Easy.
Gadget -
I think you’re confusing real feminism with the distorted straw feminism you just made up.
You have me intrigued, Spiros. I would have thought that there would have been a near perfect correlation between the number of abortions and births prevented by the abortions, that being the whole point of having an abortion.
How is it otherwise?
Yes, Spiros, and also ignores the fact some of them would have died before becoming productive economic units.
Can anyone explain the logis of how abolishing contraception and abortion would prevent illegal immigration?
It an interesting comment by Spiros, I can only think he means that in the absense of legal abortions either a) people take more care not to fall pregnant, or b) they have non-recorded backyard abortions, or some combination of both.
Which is it?
And just think, if all those Quiverfull Moms started pumping out sproggs right now, the oldest of them would be ready for the workplace in, let’s see, 2022!
In the meantime, if too many American women became Quiverfull Moms, who’d do the work that they used to do before they became battery hens?
What a dilemma for a would-be Quiverfull Mom. Work to keep the Spicks out, or rise to greatness on her back.
Excellent post, tigtog.
The link with race is made explicitly by Samuel Huntington in his “Who are We?” – which argues (inter alia) that Hispanics fail to assimilate, that the essence of America is white Anglo-Saxon protestantism (he’s got a weird-assed way of making white Catholics and Jews not feel too left out by tossing around a bit of guff about Judeao-Christianity, the Enlightenment, etc), and that America will be destroyed by immigration. Concern is also expressed that the wrong women are breeding – where have we heard that before? The Hausegger/Devine style of polemic which suggests that the educated women are selfish, blah blah.
The discursive links back to notions of “race suicide” aren’t hard to find.
Contrary to Sacha, I’ve always believed that Costello was banging on a similar drum.
Cossie seems particularly obsessed with fertility.
I can’t GregM, but then again I’m not a paranoid fantasist. If you raised quota numbers but kept them in place the why-not policy would require greater scrutiny of the reasons why not to let people in.
People have their reasons for seeking abortions and these should be respected. It is all very well to talk about population increase in the abstract but it’s a sick fantasy to assume that people undergo this procedure for light or trivial reasons, given the real encouragement and assistance available to people who decide to have children.
Greg M,
They are called miscarriages. Much higher rate of occurence than right to lifers would like us to believe.
It is estimated that around 50% of all fertilisations do not survive the first few weeks (ie the woman may never be aware she is pregnant as she experience a period that is normal or only a few days late.
It is estimated that 15-20% of KNOWN pregnancies will result in a miscarriage.
Steve,
none of the above.
Think of it like this. A woman gets pregnant and has an abortion. A short time later she gets pregnant again and has another abortion. And once more. So, let’s say that within 9 months of getting pregnant the first time, she’s had three abortions.
How many babies would have been born if she’d had no abortions? One, the one she was pregnant with in the first place. Three abortions, but only one birth prevented.
The number of births prevented in the population by abortions depends on the average gestation time when abortions take place and the average length of time between pregnancies. There’s a formula that will work it out exactly. In modern societies (not third world countries where reproductive patterns are very different) every 10 abortions prevents around four births.
That’s presupposing we actually want our population to increase. I’m not convinced ‘more people = better’ myself.
Weathergirls says
Sure they do but it doesn’t detract from the fact that their average age is greater than the average age of a new baby. There is nothing in Costello’s statement that is anti-immigrant. I agree that if we are worried about aging populations we can deal with it by taking a steady flow of youngish immigrants.
“I agree that if we are worried about aging populations we can deal with it by taking a steady flow of youngish immigrants.”
Not really, because immigrants get old the same as every else. Today’s nursing homes are full of the young immigrants from the 40s and 50s.
I can see there’s a mathematically logical proof in there somewhere, Spiros, but it certainly seems counterintuitive.
Abortions may well be easier on the body than a full-term birth, but they’re still a fairly physically and mentally traumatic event, let alone the expense in countries where they are not covered by health plans. I really can’t see any actual person in the West outside a sex-slavery situation having 3 abortions in 9 months. Surely after the second one at least she’d be using more reliable forms of contraception.
What about the utter misrepresentation of American thought and Americans, again?
One can pick and choose and only prove that one is intent on making a narrow point.
Good lord Another Kim, what are you on about? Where did Tigtog say this was the opinion of all Americans? I believe she’s criticising the actual people making this argument (ie, the odious Mark Steyn, Ed Emery, and the quiverfull folks), and not the entire populace of the US for being racist and anit-immigration.
The opening link makes no reference to “white babies” nor is there any mention of the birth rate of “white babies”.
Andrew your initial proposition of a Why-not policy did not mention quotas at all; quite the opposite. It implied there being no quotas. You now say there would be quotas but that they would raised and say that that would require greater scrutiny of the reasons why not to let people in. I wouldn’t think it would change much at all. The number of people seeking to migrate to Australia far exceeds the current quota levels (for those categories that have quotas) so if, as you now say the quota levels were to be raised DIMA would just scrutinize applications according to existing criteria, as they already do and approve more of them until they hit the higher quota. I can’t see it leading to any higher level of scrutiny of DIMA as all they’d say of any rejected application was that either the applicant didn’t meet the selection criteria or that the higher quota had already been met. Same as the would now.
I don’t have any paranoid fantasies about immigration to Australia of Vietnamese or Cambodians, by the way. I have worked in both countries and there are heaps of them that I just wish could migrate to Australia for the boon they would be to it. I’m not sure though that Kim Beazley would see it my way however given his recent remarks on overseas workers taking Australian jobs.
Polly, I am not sure what Spiros actually meant. It may be what you think it is. But let’s allow him to clarify his meaning. It may be something quite different.
tigtog, that was just an example to illustrate the logic. I agree no single person woud want to do this. But if you look at what actually happens in populations on average (with all sorts of variation in the gestation times hwen abortios take place, and the times between pregnancies), you will find that 10 abortions prevent 4 births.
The only way there would be a one to one correlation between abortions and prevented births would be if all abortions took place at full term. (In this case, the length of time between pregnancies becomes irrelevant.) But they don’t.
Kate, I am on because I detest reflexive anti Americanism and using extremes to make a point.
Polly, I missed your earlier comment. If what you mean is that some abortions end as miscarriages, I agree. In fact you can substitute the word “miscarriage” for “abortion” in my comment and the same conclusions follow. Miscarriages, in fact, are spontaneous abortions.
If what you mean is that some children die and so never become productive units, that is obviously true too, but my point was about abortion and births.
That should be, some pregnancies end as miscarriages.
Top post TigTog. The more I hear these arguments the more I am reminded of early 1900s arguments about race suicide, immigration and the evils of nice middle-class womens’ wilful destruction of their unborn.
Of course in early 1900s Australia and America much of the anxiety about the reproduction of the unfit centred on immigrant groups as well – the contaminations of old Europe in the New World, as well as fears of miscegenation between the vigorous New World whites and indigenous.
Maybe such beliefs have never really gone away, but I wonder what other common elements there are in the social and economic circumstances of 1906 and 2006. One key missing element seems to be the desire to make the world babies are born into a better place, to counteract negative social trends …
I know ‘neocon’ is now a generic swear word, but a preoccupation with the Mexican/immigrant/Catholic threat (the American equivalent of the Muslim peril) is not a neoconservative theme, see neo-conservative The Weekly Standard on immigration which is critical of xenophobia among Republican orthodox conservatives. It is why Greg Sheridan diverges from the rest of the right on the citizenship/values debate.
Another Kim, the only point she was making was against the people with these views. She made no point about Americans in general, and it does get a little distracting when so much time has to be spent reassuring Americans we don’t hate them every time we write something critical of someone who happens to be American. Peter Costello is the Australian Treasurer. Does that make Tigtog anti-Australians too?
Spiros – I thought that Polly’s point was that the number of “abortions� recorded also includes those instances when miscarriage has already taken place – ie that it’s the same process, same Medicare number, but not “preventing� a birth.
Anna, I know that what is recorded as an abortion is often a D&C after a miscarriage. In that case, it is the miscarriage that prevents the birth, and the abortion isn’t actually an abortion, if you define an abortion as an induced termination of pregnancy.
But the accuracy of Medicare statistics on the number of abortions doesn’t change my point, which is that there are far fewer births prevented by abortions — actual abortions — than there are abortions. So the people who say that if only there were no abortions, the working population would be much higher, greatly exaggerate their case. And that’s before taking account of the fact that not everybody who is born lives long enough to become a worker.
It’s America’s dark little secret that they are terrified of the white hordes streaming across the Canadian border.
I can’t hear any dog whistles!
Anna, then let distinctions be made.
My politics are always personal.
Tiresome? I guess Muslims and other hated groups feel much the same.
C.L., can it be possible that you still don’t know what’s meant by ‘dog-whistle’?
Given that there is a wealth of potential populace clamouring to get in, and given that most of them are either fertile or pre-fertile, what other possible rationale could there be for Cossie insisting that these little worker bees have to be home-grown?
(Sorry, mixed metaphor. I lose 50 points.)
Oh poop. I humbly beg your pardon, C.L.; you were talking about the US links. The dog-whistle point stands, I think, but otherwise, shame on me.
Another Kim:
That’s fine, but where exactly did Tigtog state that these views were representative of the American population?
As Kate clearly pointed out to you above, the answer is that she didn’t. In the post, Tigtog highlighted the views expressed quite explicitly by:
- 10 Republicans in a “Republican-led Missouri House Special Committee report into illegal immigration released recently”;
- WASP anti-abortion advocates;
- Mark Steyn;
- Charles W. Colson;
- members of the Quiverfull movement;
- Dr. Joseph B. Stanford; and
- “have more children for the countryâ€? racist conservatives.
Yes, these people come from America – and that is relevant because the Report in question (from the Republican-led Special Committee) was American. However, absolutely nowhere in the post did Tigtog make “the point” that this was in any way reflective of the American population as a whole. Perhaps you need to stop being so defensive and calm down a little before jumping down people’s throats for things that they have not in fact said.
Sorry Anna and Another Kim, I took too long to comment and it crossed with yours…
Great post btw Tigtog. And I would have to agree with Weathergirl entirely that Costello is only talking to white women when he tells us to “have one for the country”.
There are so many things wrong with that man telling anyone to have a child that it makes me slightly ill thinking about it…
It was symptomatic, Cristy, of how we are presented globally for ridicule. Dispute that? Americans are dumb fuck fundies?
I will be no less silent than any other misrepresented nationality.
I also meant that if the women had not had an abortion it was highly possible she would have had a miscarriage. 15-20% of KNOWN pregnancies end in miscarriage (not abortion). The chances are that many women who choose abortion may have had a miscarriage anyway.
Not ALL pregancies result in a live birth even if they do not choose abortion.
There is also the medicare issue
in that a woman who has a miscarriage and has to have medical treatment is coded the same way as an abortion. This results in an overstatement of the number of abortions as well.
Spiro, I meant that even if you assume all abortions would result in a live birth not all those children would grow up to enter the workforce.
“entirely that Costello is only talking to white women when he tells us to “have one for the countryâ€?.”
Maybe that should be MARRIED white women. Don’t want any of them welfare bludging single mothers.
Yeah that’s all we do here in Australia, all day long: ridicule Americans. We don’t watch American TV shows and music with appreciation, listen to American music, consider the importance of American policy on global events or our own nation’s internal politics, read American books and websites and magazines and consider what they say might be important and meaningful. No, we don’t consider America to be the hegemonic cultural and political power of our age — we just want to make fun of you poor dumb Yanks.
Develop a culture separate from ours and then you’ll have fewer grudges.
Do I dispute the global presentation or the allegation that Tigtog’s post was symptomatic?
Well, I strongly dispute your allegation that Tigtog’s post was symptomatic and object to your implied assertion that we should not criticise people who are American. I think that we not only have every right to be critical of individual Americans but of American politics more generally due to the fact that American politics significantly impact our country through our politicians, media, their global political influence, etc…
As for the argument that Americans are presented globally as dumb f**k fundies, I am not sure. I have not really seen the global presentation. I think that America is presented globally as just about everything. However, George W. is presented globally as a bit of an idiot and his Presidency has certainly not done your global image a lot of favours. Mind you, his Presidency has not done many other countries a lot of favours either, and people have a right to be upset about that.
Your government asserts the right to make decisions that directly impact on the rest of the world with reference only to America’s own national interest. The inevitable price that will be paid by the American population for that is that the world will be critical of America. We should not have to apologise for that.
I apologise Tigtog. I should not have engaged further on this topic.
The topic is immigration and abortion, not America. I won’t go off on that side-track again and suggest that Another Kim consider taking her baggage elsewhere too.
There is no evidence presented here of any racial basis to the attitudes criticised. Don’t African American women have more abortions than white women? Perhaps Roe-Wade’s racist implications within the United States should be analysed first. Also racist is the idea that non-white people should be breeding stock for topping up the populations of Western economies. Finally, did the Treasurer’s pitch about having more children stipulate that only white Australians should heed the call? Or are people suggesting that non-white Australian citizens are not really Australian?
When TigTog spoke of Americans and America, it was on topic.
Present a true picture when you talk about us.
This, Katz, is because they have looked at our own Great South Land and seen the pernicious effect on us of allowing the white hordes to stream across the Tasman. I’m not sure that Queensland has fully recovered from Joh Bjelke-Petersen even now.
I remember that at the Catholic boarding school I attended in the 1970s one of the Brothers told our Religion class that we should be happy with the Church’s teaching against contraception as because of it we Catholics would, over time, outbreed the Protestants and take over the country.
I thought the man was an idiot. So did the rest of the class.
I always liked the Monty Python skit in which Vice-Pope Eric was being interviewed in a BBC type format and was asked the question of why if the Catholic Church opposed contraception it approved the Rhythm Method.
His simple reply: “Because it doesn’t work”.
No apologies necessary for me, Cristy, I appreciate the support while I was running around this afternoon.
Another Kim, I make no apologies for attacking divisive rhetoric from sexist bigots regarding abortion and immigration, no matter what country they are from. I took great care to name specific individuals and movements rather than just say “Americans” but you got defensive anyway. At this point, I have to say that your reaction is much more your problem than mine.
And whoever called me out on the misuse of ‘neocon’, mea culpa. I noted that earlier and meant to edit the draft before posting, but neglected to actually do so.
Gadget, that’s not just incoherent it’s utterly innumerate. 900 abortions per year in the NT is no evidence for women routinely having 3 abortions in 9 months, which was the hypothetical of Spiros which I was questioning.
You also illustrate my point about the intersection between anti-abortion advocates and racism when you felt the need to only count the NT’s white women as people who matter for the purposes of your argument.
Add a word to the lexicon, TigTog.
Theocons. Not to be mistaken for the rest of us.
I recognize dismissive language amoung feminists, politicians and anyone else.
“That’s her baggage.” “That’s her reaction.”
Count me as an Oriana feminist who knows really retro thought and moves on.
Another Kim, I like the word “theocon”, which I had seen before and forgotten, but I think that’s actually an oversimplification of the case except for the Quiverfull movement. I’m not sure what you mean by an Oriana feminist though.
We’re going to have to agree to disagree that my post held out the named sexist bigoted individuals and movements as representative of the entire citizenry of the USA. I categorically state that was not my intent. Your complaints have now hijacked the thread for long enough.
As an expat, another Kim, I can speak with authority about the reasons in which I left.
Are Americans dumb fuck fundies? I certainly think that group is in the minority, however, find themselves being representatives due to the apathy of the rest of the electorate.
I think Orwell was wrong about how to create a totalitarian state, as his dystopia would eventually lead to rebellion. Total control will only come in the form of a society built on selfishness, arrogance and gluttony.
Thank you for addressing my concern. I see that was not your intent now.
A commentor over at my place, Kate, made some excellent points:
She also noted earlier that it’s a direct result of economic rationalist policies for the last 20 years that means that people feel they can’t afford to begin families until later in life, as the social safety net has been deliberately shrunk. None of these social conservatives who are keen economic rationalists as well are taking any responsibility for that.
FFS, CL. You keep reaching don’t you?
Explain how removing legal impediments to something can be racist. You seem to have spewed the line that “pro-abortionists” force women to have abortions so often that you actually believe it now.
If African-American women do have more abortions, then surely keeping abortion illegal would be racist, since it would unfairly restrict more black than white women.
Don’t African American women have more abortions than white women? Perhaps Roe-Wade’s racist implications within the United States should be analysed first.
Figures given for the fertility rate of African American women vary from 1.8 (equal to white women) to 2.2 (much higher) depending on the source. So whether it is via contraception or abortion that they are limiting their births, their fertility rate has at worst declined to match that of whites. That data hardly supports abortion as the racist tool you’re suggesting.
I agree that skimming off the cream of educated skilled individuals from poor countries suffering while denying those countries funding for family planning so that more of their compatriots may benefit has racist implications, but I don’t think welcoming immigrants who want different opportunities to one’s country is inherently racist. There’s a balance to be struck here.
As to your question about Costello’s statement, I can only echo earlier commentators: are you truly pretending that you don’t know what dogwhistling is?
It must be sad to look at every person you see and imagine they are a closet KKK member. How did you get so paranoid, Tigtog?
BTW, a lot of anti-abortion fundamentalists are actually BAAPS, not WASPS. Both because African-Americans as a group are significantly more religious than White Americans, and because many of them do actually believe that Roe vs Wade is just an excuse to kill black babies.
Yobbov: It must be sad to look at every person you see and imagine they are a closet KKK member. How did you get so paranoid, Tigtog?
It’s hardly a big leap to join the dots between someone bemoaning immigrants who don’t speak English and racist beliefs, Yobs. That would be rational deduction, not paranoia.
Yobbo: BTW, a lot of anti-abortion fundamentalists are actually BAAPS, not WASPS.
My statement: A large number of WASP anti-abortion advocates are disturbed by the lack of white babies being born above all.
I hardly think the BAAP anti-abortion advocates are going to be conerned above all by a lack of white babies being born. Are you sure you make the effort ever to read the words in between the ones that push your buttons to make sure I’m actually saying what you think I’m saying?
What other kind is there?
Economics as reason for abortion
?
Or just age and tiredness at one end of the breeding phase, and then fear and trepidation at the earlier stage. It doesn’t require research. It ain’t a problem in the scale of things.
As for the aging population – there’s no problem there either, given natural immigration and sensible economic distributions.
It’s a fairly big leap. Why shouldn’t we expect immigrants to speak English? Not speaking English has a fairly good correlation with economic failure in an English-speaking country.
There are lots of white people who don’t speak English too, you know.
And there are lots of non-white people who do.
Only a racist would think that “not speaking English” and race were the same thing.
In general, I wouldn’t argue that point. However, the US is not just an English-speaking country. English is not the official language of the USA. There is a large minority of the population who speak Hispanic and have done so since before the Union.
Nations whose history means that there disparate language groups within their borders certainly have tensions not experienced by monoglot nations, but I hardly think the answer is to tell your citizens with the minority language that they should stop speaking it to new immigrants who share that language.
To place a statement about the importance of a common language into a report on illegal immigration from Mexico is hard to spin as anything other than a slap against native-born Hispanic speakers whose roots in US territories often pre-date any English speakers’ ancestors for generations. How is that not racist?
Perhaps CL’s acquaintance with the English language should be analysed first:
1. Choice
2. Prohibition
Not difficult concepts, I should have thought.
I’m not sure that repeating “do you know what dogwhistling is” constitutes an argument that Costello was talking about white women. I think he genuinely is of the view that there is a population problem, namely, not enough taxpayers down the track to support the elderly without stuffing the economy (and no, the GST on their pensions won’t pay for it). Immigration doesn’t change the age structure. As the Productivity Commission has said, if you want to stabilise the existing age structure you’d need annual migration of 3.1 per cent of the population, resulting in an Australian population of 85 million by 2044 and annual intake of 2.5 million. Just not on. Increased fertility wouldn’t solve it either – but every bit helps, so you need both that and immigration.
No, it doesn’t, but that’s not what I (at least) was arguing. Even to specify a phrase like ‘white women’ assumes that the race reasoning behind the ‘populate or perish’ call was overt or even fully conscious and I’m not at all sure that’s true. It’s more a case of not seeing the alternatives — or, more to the point, pandering to and covertly encouraging the same kind of thinking in the populace, something which has always been a speciality of Howard’s and first manifested in his public tolerance of the behaviour of Pauline Hanson even when he knew she was leaching away his support base.
It’s also important to remember the timing. I may be wrong but I think at the time Cossie made his call to leg-over, the Feds were doing their level best to keep people out of the country (and no doubt still are, though the media has gone very quiet about it), so a speech about how we didn’t have enough people seemed bizarre and one drew the obvious inference from it.
I take your point about the Spanish speakers in the US tigtog. Some of the southern states of the US are effectively bilingual. I was really referring to Australia but the same thing does hold true in the US as well.
I’m pretty sure that if you looked at the stats that bilingual Hispanics are much better off than those that only speak Spanish, even if you controlled for how long they had lived in America.
I think another interesting comparison would be Canada, between the French-speakers and the English speakers. I.E. How well do non-French speaking Canadians fare in Quebec, and how well do non-English speaking Quebecois fare elsewhere in Canada?
Every demographic forecast I’ve seen calls for boosts in both national fertility and immigration in order to maintain balanced population growth. None suggests one or the other. BTW, I don’t recall Costello insisting that women compulsorily reproduce nor did I hear the exclusion of non Anglo-Celtic Australians from his populate exhortation.
“I may be wrong but I think at the time Cossie made his call to leg-over, the Feds were doing their level best to keep people out of the country (and no doubt still are, though the media has gone very quiet about it)”
WTF?! Migration has been running at historically high levels for years. The figures are a matter of public record. From whence do these paranoid fantasies derive?
Yeah what Geoff said. It is really drawing a long bow to go from these guys to Costello. And experts as opposed to armchair conspiracy theorists have looked at the ‘immigration can take care of demographic problems’ than yours. FTR I don’t care if there is one but IF you are concerned about having a younger demographic then immigration can only go so far. Countless studies have looked at how much immigration is needed to provide the same boost as increasing rates of childbirth. At the end of the day the logic is fairly simple – unless we’re ripping off babies from the rest of the world, then immigrants get old faster than newborn babies.
Yes, immigration has been very high under Howard.
For tigtog.
Only if you equate foetuses with persons.
Gadget, unlike you I don’t presume to second-guess another woman’s choices regarding whether to complete or whether to terminate a pregnancy. I hold the view that women have sufficient moral agency to make their own choices about their bodily autonomy and whether or not to sacrifice a portion of it to gestating and birthing a child at any particular time.
BTW, I enjoy cooking, so time spent in the kitchen is part of my good life.
Some comments have noted that in their opinion Costello’s remark is not overtly racist. I absolutely agree. That is why I called it a “pale, PC shadow” of the more overt bigotry shown by Emery’s insertions into the Missouri report.
Costello’s baby bonus would be unlikely to get off the ground in the States because of the outcry from certain quarters about how it would only encourage groups which are already having more children than whites to accelerate their childbearing. I’ll give him credit for making that a multicultural initiative.
Still, there’s already too many people in the world for the good of the ecology that sustains us all, so to ask for more births rather than taking in already born people from more overcrowded countries is at the least inherently nativist as well as arguably ecologically irresponsible. Arguing sustaining the economy over sustaining the ecology has priorities utterly backwards in my view.
We’re also a country which is still extremely white, so to ask the women already here to have more babies to obviate the current high demand for immigrants can’t truly be divorced from the contrast between native mostly-Anglos and immigrant mostly-non-Anglos. As Pav said, this aspect may be largely unconscious rather than a conscious dogwhistle, so I won’t argue the dogwhistle more forcefully.
Bollocks Gadget. It is probably because these women have less access to family planning education and abortion services. And using the term ‘quite so murderous’ about the NT indigenous population when you look at the assualt, domestic violence and murder statistics is a little bit laughable too.
Let me get you tigtog;
You presume to advocate on behalf of murderous fetouscidists, yet you do not presume to know anything about how a woman carries a bun in the oven.
Your are either a human hypocrit, or an abortionist.
Either way, you are a killers advocate.
And Megami, dont get all twisted, i was talking about the murderous women who committ fetouscide, not assualt and battery.
If fetouscide was down, the population would be up correct?
Gadget, if you feel you really must persist in being an evangelistic right-to-lifer, your powers of rhetorical persuasion would be greatly enhanced if you learned to spell ‘foetus’.
Gadget or tool: you decide
That is not true, tigtog. Geoff and Jason have noted that Costello’s comments aren’t racist at all and have advanced substantial reasons for saying so. It is you who are trying to smear him with the label of being a covert racist on not even the flimsiest of grounds. Having no evidence to support your case you have resorted to the “dogwhistle” argument ie “you can’t hear it but trust me it’s there”.
I bet I know more about the physiology of pregnancy than you do. My point is not about how, but about the choice whether to carry a pregnancy to term or not. I don’t have the right to tell another woman whether she should complete a pregnancy or not, and neither do you.
GregM, I’m not the only person who hears that dogwhistle. Is it arguable? Of course. Politicians are often very careful to suggest rather than assert. I believe it’s called plausible deniablility.
In fact, GregM, if one could prove it, there wouldn’t be any point in doing it. That’s the point.
thanks for the stats. sublime cowgirl about all the murderous middle class middle aged mums – who take up the bulk of termination procedures.
inspector gadget now knows where to look. I can just see him pulling all the crying bairns, toddlers, kids and teens off mum, then marching her down main street (with head shaved?) before pronouncing her guilty of “murder”. And the punishment?….I’d assume the worst from this bloke.
he’s seriously weird, like blowing up clinics, weird.
Tig Tog: “but I hardly think the answer is to tell your citizens with the minority language that they should stop speaking it to new immigrants who share that language.”
Yeah lots of Aussies are suggesting that aren’t they! What a beat up.
When my old man and his folks arrived, they chose to speak english at home and to their fellow refos from the old country. Immigration seemed to work more successfully then (this being one of the many reasons). According to you though my immigrant ancestors must have been racists against themselves or something. Tig tog obviously knows better than the rest of us.
I’m not sure what you mean by that assertion Jo. What exactly is the problem? The statistics, the apparent demographical trends (all un-critiqued btw) or the quotes by the male director of a large termination clinic in Sydney? Engaging Gadget in constructive dialogue may not shift his position, but rude and dismissive personal aspersions are provocative and likely to entrench it. Why fight fire with fire?
I have no problem with facing things that make me uncomfortable. There is few other ways to grow, and I’d rather look at all sides of the arguments than blindly stay in my corner and re-hash what i thought 10 years ago.
For the record I’ll show my hand and come out as pro-choice, but anti-vulgar-consumerism. I’m against the pursuit of money as a defining goal in life. And i will confess that it always saddens me to hear men and women who drive Pajero’s and own Plasma TV’s hooked up to Cable justify not having children cause ‘they can’t afford it’, like being in the top 1% of the world spectrum of affluence, still isn’t sufficient to satisfy.
It not that you cant afford it, its that you have other priorities, like your 4WD, or your boat or your investment property. Its all personal and relative, of course, and emmimently understandable. But it still makes me sad.
IF it appeases you I can post a link to a marxist feminist analysis on how having more kids condemns us to subservience within and dependence upon patriarchal systems, but i took that as given – that most people here were familiar with this view. I thought the article was interesting if only to see this idea being unconsiously appropriated/internalised by the affluent right, who may think they have unshackled themselves (to some extent) from the extremes of patriarchy, only to further enslave themselves to capitalism and consumerism.
Costello is racist, of course. Afterall most of us are. However his exhortation to produce more than a replacement number of children is ecologically unsustainable.
What Dr Cat said.
GregM, how naive are you?
Don’t you believe that Costello et al focus group this crap to make sure the dogs hear the whistle?
Either deal with politics as it is actually played or not.
But don’t claim that there’s some sort of “smear” going on.
Weak! Weak! Weak! You human sapiens are barely worthy of the nutrient tanks.
Mandatory fertilization is the only way to ensure survivial of species that has the most fits.
But you spend so much electromagnetic bandwidth telling eachother to procreate only with eachother.
Minor wonder that we will so be among you soon, harvesting the juicy, drinking up your \”swimming pools\” in a big gulp and holding council and trampling on your \”celebrities\” in your cathedrals like Fredricks of Hollywood, MTV Cribs and the once sacrosant Big Brother temple.
We wash our hands with evil mirth sounds and weight and watch. For now. But your doom is ticking like the 60minuteschronometer.
I think that the treasurer’s comments indicate not racist overtones, but perhaps culturalist ones. I don’t think he really cares whether the people having children are from English, W.European/Med, Asian, African or M.Eastern origin, but I do think that he thinks that it is better for the country to produce its own new citizens, who grow up with a shared culture and worldview with other Australians, rather than entirely importing immigrants to fill the labor shortage, who may find it harder to integrate within society. As for the argument over whether our culture really is superior, that is another argument, but a good look at the world today, seeing which areas are at peace civilly and which are not, which nations have wealth and which have not (especially considering who has wealth compared to their neighbours (Singapore vs Malaysia & South Korea vs North Korea come to mind) and other statistics such as life expectancy and health data may well indicate some overriding political/economic/philosophical/cultural undertakings, understandings and institutions which help some nations live better than others.
The treasurer might also be thinking economics with his statement. To support the statistical bump with the large retirement (pensions, healthcare, etc) liability which is the baby boomers, the European experience is showing that home grown children are more likely to become productive economic units (in other words, taxpayers) than immigrants, or at least less likely to become a burden by becommingunproductive economic units, up to and including draining wealth from the system.
Let’s just forget about the lack of civil liberties in Singapore and South Korea shall we?
Evidently “being at peace” and order trumps freedom?
Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise that your standard for judging was whether or not people can be/come “productive economic units”.
\”“productive economic unitsâ€?.
Now you are talking the jive walk Mr Banish. If the units are not productive, they will be once they are cast into the nutrient tanks. Then the others watching this on the screens will get *untranslatable* productive in a *untranslatable* rush of hurry. This what made Boskone the great dominater of the Lundmark Galaxy.
And we are pleased to see such memes/folktales/political conditionings? are already taking a steely hold on many parts of Tellus. Soon you fall into our nutrient tanks like a juicy juicy juicy fruitarian. Juicy!
Mark, yes, there are unhappy curbs on freedoms in each of those countries, but compared to the other countries mentioned (Malaysia and South Korea) then they are shining beacons of liberty. That doesn’t whitewash those two countries or others like it, but it does contextualise your contempt to petty whining. Unless you want to continue about lack of civil liberties in South Korea compared to the North, or Singapore compared to Malaysia? Moral equivalence doesn’t quite cut it in the real world – just because a country has curtailed liberties doesn’t automatically mean that it is as bad as another country which has curtailed liberties, for size, degree and severity all come into it. As an absolute, both Singapore and S.Korea are not perfect, in some ways, far from it, but they have progressed much further towards freedom than many of their neighbours, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, general Indochina, China, etc. Their people also have, compared to their neighbours – better standards of living, better life expectancies, better opportunities, etc among many other benefits.
Why do you think that people flee to countries such as Singapore and SK, as well as Europe and Australia and the US, etc, rather that fleeing from them? All have curtails on their civil liberties, indeed, if you can believe some who post here, jackboots are either marching in time down the street as we speak or are soon to do so. Does that mean that we can sneer at our achievements as well? Does that mean that all nations are morally equivalent of all others, regardless of degrees of liberty, of peace, of order, of prosperity? Of course not. So if we can compare nations to one another based on the outcomes they produce, then my comparisom of S.Korea to N.Korea and Singapore to Malaysia is rather apt.
I’m not sure of your point about moral equivalence, Stuart.
Are you saying we shouldn’t defend liberty and freedom?
I’ll take messiness, and disorder over regimented progress any day.
We’ve had enough in this country over the last decade of illiberalism, narrow dull and straightening conformity and the evisceration of the public sphere, and the claim that the State knows best. Are we so afraid of terrorism?
I speak here as a liberal and a defender of the heritage of the Enlightenment.
Oh, and as for judging whether immigration should be on whether people are ‘productive economic units’ or not, of course it should be a factor in whether someone should come over or not. I’m not referring to this in regards to asylum seekers, but as for genuine migrants, then a necessary component in any sane analysis for potential immigrants to a state with decent amounts of social welfare is one regarding the probability of said individuals becoming ‘productive economic units’. Others need to be the chances of social integration/harmony, the character of the individuals in question, etc.
As for the issues surrounding the necessity to not have a decreasing population, especially if you have an extensive social benefits scheme -In Europe nations are sliding into strife, due to the economic machinery behind a social welfare state – it needs the next generation of taxpayers to fork out for the infirmities/unemployment/bad circumstance and especially the old age of the generation before. The issue is that they do not have suffecient populations in future generations, especially the latest generation, to ensure that the previous generations will be fully provided for in the manner they expected to. And while immigration in some nations is filling some of the gap, the higher likelyhood of immigrants actually going onto benefits, rather than paying taxes to go towards paying for said benefits, is causing a major social issue. Whatever reason the higher likelyhood of unemployment and benefit taking may be, the issue exists.
I’m far from saying we don’t need to defend freedom. But what I am saying is that while S.Korea and Singapore are not perfect, they are far better than those whom I have compared them to, and that just because South Korea and Singapore have some illiberal tendencies does not mean that suddenly they are some evil, freedom crushing monster worse than self destructive totalitarian regimes such as North Korea, or corrupt, politically insular kleptocracies such Malaysia. Indeed, the people in South Korea and Singapore are far better off than their neighbours, just as the West is, which is indicative of something. When you figure out what that something is, you might understand more about what I am talking about.
Please do enlighten us.
What is this “something” that South Korea and Singapore have?
Have you been following the defamation action by the Singaporean government against the Far Eastern Economic Review?
Apparently, it could be settled if only the whole mag is submitted for censorship first.
You can freely buy it in Hong Kong.
Pesky Chi-Comms…
Anyway, your argument is nonsense. To criticise South Korea is not to laud North Korea, nor the same with Malaysia and Singapore.
What any of what you’re saying has to do with the topic, I’ve missed, I’m afraid.
Kim – what I said started with my view on what the author wrote about immigration and what Peter Costello said, followed on by remarks made by Mark
What I said at the beginning about S.Korea and Singapore was that they are far better off than their neighbours, and have clarified to say they are not perfect, but again, far better off and far better to live in than their neighbours.
As for HK, I’ve been there, and yes, you can do many things there that you couldn’t do in Singapore. Chew gum, for instance. However, HK is a very special, indeed, unique place in the world. The whole ‘two systems, one country’ thing. I think that is because the Chinese government doesn’t want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. As for the rest of China, well, democracy is a banned phrase to search for on the web. Ask Google about that.
And the ’something’? I think it has to do with a mix of economic and political liberties (again, not absolute, but reasonable, with chance of significant improvement without major social upheaval, economic collapse or civil war), as well as a cultural preset towards achievement, and finally (for my racist, theocrat liberty stomping finale) the presence of the West. Tell me I’m wrong, but those most touched by the West, especially America and to a slightly lesser extend Britain, such as South Korea, Japan, Singapore, India (more for its tradition of democratic elections than economic growth, probably because for a long time previously they elected stagnation through socialist governments) etc, seem to be better off than their immediate neighbours. Even the difference between Zimbabwe (before Mugabe completely ruined the economy) and Angola is a highlight of one kind.
Do you have some actual stats to back up this assertion? A highly visible contingent of unemployed youths from an immigrant background is not at all the same thing as immigrants generally being “more likely” to be benefit-takers than taxpayers in the long-term.
We woolly leftist would generally argue that such benefits arises from the liberal philosophical and ethical traditions of the Enlightenment, not from any inherent Western racial or religious superiority. Current Western conservative political trends are rather anti-Enlightenment in the rush to curb criticism and liberties, wouldn’t you say?
I should have thought that this judgment is largely one for the citizens of those countries to make.
Whereas the citizens of one country may swallow a whale in the shape of an objective curtailment of their liberties, the citizens of another country may choke on a sprat.
To escape from this ichthyological metaphor, different societies have come to different arrangements in regard to their expectations of and from government.
Thus, a distinction may be made between Malaysia and Singapore.
In Singapore, a small westernised intellectual elite chafes at denials of western-style civil rights. These elites fail to take broad masses of the population with them, fo rthey are happy enough with the material progress of Singapore not to wish to rock the boat. Nevertheless, these elites continue to press their claims against the government. And the government continues to suppress them. It would appear that this state of affairs will not progress much further until there is a significant economic crisis in Singapore. This crisis may serve to weld together the aspirations of the elites and the masses.
In Malaysia, non-Malays, especially the Chinese, are subject to a form of apartheid. Yet the Chinese accept this state of affairs with some resignation, or is it equanimity? The Chinese are allowed to prosper, but are denied equal political rights. The Chinese have learned that it is useless to press demands for formal acknowledgement of their civil rights. And they probably suspect that if there is a significant economic downturn in Malaysia, the Chinese will be the scapegoats. Contrary to Singapore, therefore, this economic crisis may well serve to blunt any campaign for an extension of western-style civil rights.
Thus, westerners’ lectures about formal civil rights in these two cases may have contradictory results in these two neighbouring countries. And loose talk about civil rights may provoke considerable bloodshed in Malaysia. This may be inevitable in the long term, but most Chinese in Malaysia would, I image, prefer not to live in “interesting times”.
Many countries in the region have different kinds of ambiguous relationships with western notions of civil rights.
Iraq is a classic case. Westerners blundering in with their nostrums can often make matters worse, with little prospect of ever being made better.
(disemvoweled by moderator due to intemperate abuse – decode at own risk)
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Nthng wrd bt cntrng wrd fncy fr and ftls mrdrs lsbns, nd th vrg brb mm wh cnt kp hr pnts n.
S fr stdnt ctvst Z, g plt yr flwrs.
nd J-h, ys dth t th srl mrdrs mthrs. f ftr th frst brtn, dvct crryng ny sbsqunt prgnncy t wthn mnth of brth, thn trmnting th lf f th dssd crrr, s tht th nncnt nd spchlss fts cn b svd frm th sprnts f srl mrdr. Ths wy, th gntc nd sych-scl dss f srl-kllrs wll b rrdctd.
nd tgtg, t s tr y dnt hv ctn rghts; y dnt hv th rght t kll, nr t dvct fr t. Y dnt hv th rght t dvct n bhlf f slghtr f th fts, wtht th cnsnt f th fts, nd y crtnly dnt hv th rght t dvct fr n dth mr thn y wn. S why dnt y g tk cr f yslf.
nd w dnt cr f y mk mss f t.
nd nt nly tht y frkd t sbbnt, y nly prsm y hv mr wsdm bt hmn prgnncy thn d thr hmns. S tht shws ll hw shllw nd flthy nd dbchd nd clls btn hs bcm. f y thnk y r blssd wth sprm wsdm bt ths sbjct, y r sdly nd fllly msgudd tgtgs, nd y hd bttr gt sd t th fct tht thr ple t thr wh r bth dvsttd nd ppld t brtn. Nt t mntn th chsms nd grf tht s gnrtd s rslt f trng th lf out f prgnncy. Dnt sps y wtchd SBS lst night, whr brtn ws pfrnt nd prsnl.
nd physilgy, H! Wht s th frst thng sn whn th sprm frtlss th gg, smrt mth?
Yr hgh hs gts y n frthr ff th grnd thn th trds y r stndng n.
Not much, I don’t imagine. It’s dark down there.
Hmm. My comment doesn’t seem to make much sense without that gadgetry brain-mush.
It might have been offensive, but it was certainly quality crankery.
Tigtog, is it time yet? I’m less libertarian and more fascist about comments than most people here, I think, but there must be a line approaching.
Gadget, I’m assuming you’re a bloke. While there are a number of barking female haters of your ilk, most of them are better spellers. (NB you still haven’t got ‘foetus’ right; perhaps you should adopt the American spelling ‘fetus’, which is easier to remember.)
You’re obviously not aware of this, but your pathological, hysterical hatred of women is showing, has been documented here, and could very easily come back to bite you on the arse later. What you have written here is probably illegal.
No, mine neither, Liam, but I’m glad Tigtog agrees with me. I think our comments are the doughnut around the central absence.
Liam, Dr Cat, I decided to let it through once I’d disemvoweled it. Those who care to decode it may, others will be spared the abuse. Interestingly, the disemvoweling vastly improved the spelling.
Going by the provided email address, Gadget is indeed a bloke, attending an Australian university. The illogic of attacking abortion as murder of foetuses which are not legally persons while advocating killing of women who are legally persons makes me fear for the utility of his higher education.
Further abusive comments from Gadget will be summarily deleted. Defend your position rationally or don’t bother.
People who are “devastated and appalled” by abortion are not compelled to have one, Gadget. And immediately after fertilisation we have a blastocyst which has less than 50% chance of implanting in the uterine wall, where it then has a less than 50% chance of avoiding a spontaneous abortion (aka ‘miscarriage’) within the first weeks.
“Don’t you believe that Costello et al focus group this crap to make sure the dogs hear the whistle?”
With respect, Mark, no.
The premise that Costello is tacitly pushing race-based buttons, hasn’t been substantiated beyond some sense of “that’s the kind of thing they always do.” As a number of people have pointed out, migration has been running at historically high levels through recent years so it’s manifest nonsense to claim that Costello is invoking the spectre of increased migration if anglo-Australians don’t reproduce. Increased migration, specifically from non-European sources, is and has been a population policy fundamental. Demographers argue for a mix of migration and natural population increase in order to achieve sustainable population growth.
Comments such as
“If the treasurer simply wanted the population to increase, we’d be encouraging more immigrants.”
are simply uninformed. We are encouraging more immigrants, in increasing ethnic diversity, at historically high levels.
You could mount a cogent case for the baby bonus as a dog-whistle to the electoral pull of yet more middle class welfare but the case for Costello as some Hansonite invoker of the White Master Race looks about as convincing as Peter Debnam
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Th*nks L$*m.
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S& r%d M&d%r*t&r, d%crypt *t w$ll, *nd s!pp&rt y&! l&c*l L%ft$st f%&t&sc$d$st *nd th%$r m!rd%r&!s st*t$st$cs by c%ns&r$ng m% *g*$n $f y&! w*nt.
B!t th% q!%st$&n $s: Wh*t $s th% f$rst th$ng s%%n wh%n th% sp%rm f%rt%l$s%s th% %gg?
*nd *noth$r th#ng, yo! L$ft#st h*t#ng *ct#v#st, M#s*ndr#sts.
Yo!r$ g*y f$mm#n#st mov$m$nt h*snt got * snowfl*k$s ch*nc$ #n h$ll of g$tt#ng *t m$. So yo! c*n j!st forg$t #t.
*nd d#sclso#ng my d$t*#ls #n p!bl#c #s *nd off$nc$. Yo! h*v$ comm#tt$d * cr#m#n*l off$nc$. Yo! w#ll b$ s!$d.
G$t my d$t*#ls of yo! s#t$ now!!
Edit by the condemny Anna Winter: I condemn the waste of taxpayers’ dollars used to “educate” this man. F&*k off now.
sublime cowgirl, sorry to get your knickers in a knot. I WAS thanking you for pointing out some recent stats. about terminations and although, the demographer points to a rise in childless women in their late 30’s and 40’s having terminations, it is married women with children in this age group who are making up the bulk users. your point about affluenza etc, is v. relevant, but overall the trend is for older women with kids to use this service.
My reading is that women, in very long term relationships post-children, in their 40’s are not going back to heavy duty contraception (the pill), having been the first generation to use oral contraceptives from puberty onwards (the previous generation – the boomers and up, starting using the ‘pill’ AFTER having kids in their 20’s etc.) and with concerns about the relationship between breast cancer and oral contraception, especially the link between breast cancer and sustained oral contraception use, prior first term pregnancy in peri-menopausal women, that is now showing up as a trend, means that other less reliable forms of contraceptive, including the rhythm method are being employed. btw. the amount of women I know in their 40’s, who have had breast cancer in the past couple of years is horrendous. A yoga class I did last year, had 4 of 8 of us, who had had mastectomies.
However, being peri-menopausal doesn’t mean you aren’t fertile, although I know alot of us would like it to be so. I know a few women, in their early 40’s who are pregnant or have v. young children (they are either late-comers or serious breeders (ie. 4 and up)) however, the overwelmingly vast majority of us, have packed up the shop years ago, and said progeny is in now in late primary/high school/uni etc.
A baby would be very hard to schedule into the already over-burdened family planner, the resuscitated career and family budget…. and as for the physical effects of child-birth, I’m not sure, how my body would cope with bringing a child to term at my age, let alone having the energy to look after a newborn/toddler.
So are these recent trends not so much affluenza, but the result of poor contraceptive usage/options, in a demographic, everyone assumes should know better?
Secondly, the hate speech and underlying rage in Gadget’s posts weren’t just routine undergrad. stoushing and in my experience, you don’t politely engage with people like gadget, you just hope their ex-wife and kids are safe, and the authorities are monitoring their movements. I’m serious – repeatedly referring to nearly a third of women in this country, as child killers and murderers, you wonder how attached to reality a person like this is?
Thank you Anna for taking on the tedious disemvoweling.
Gadget, unless you are the only male attending an Australian university, I have not “disclosed [your] details”. Also, one does not sue for a criminal offence, even if disclosing your details (which I did not do) was one.
However, your abusive posts in this thread quite probably violate the Terms of Service agreement to which the university required you to aquiesce before the activation of your email account.
If you don’t want blogowners to know that you are a university student, I suggest that in future you use a free webmail account for your abusive blogging needs. Of course, the uni’s IP will still be tracked by the blogging software, but that way you could perhaps be a tenured professor (or a janitor).
Geoff, just because we have high immigration now does not mean that certain pollies mightn’t wish we could one day reduce high immigration in favour of home growth. To get to that point a certain polly might start by encouraging breeding pairs to do their thing.
I just wish we could get over this whole madness of growth. We are 6.5 billion and heading for 10 billion quick smart.
In 1960 we were 3 billion. Can anybody provide even one argument in favour of further population increase?
The skilled migration programme should be reduced. Invest in education. Pay our own way for a change.
We should however enlarge the family reunion and refugee programmes for humanitarian reasons.
I hate tools like Gadget here and Miranda Divide at Tim Blair who give their respective sides bad names through inanity, foolishness, and general widespread abuse and hysteria. Ah well.
Yup Jo, these are exactly my points.
One possible (but obviously not the only) interpretation of the good doctors experience of his clinic demographics is that his middle class, long term partnered, post 35 y.o. , parent of two, mums are so incredibly enslaved to capitalist patriarchy that:
a) getting James to have a vascectomy is not an option. He just wont do it. ( he needs to keep his options open in case she gets too whining/overweight in her 50’s and he needs to trade her in for a fresh and fertile model)
b ) getting James to role swap so she could go back to work seems an economic impossibility as their lives and social standing are so dependant on his stable income.
Using a controversial and speculative interpretation such as this, one could argue that white middle class womens dependence on men and capitalism is positively correlated or even evidenced by high termination rates in this demographic.
I dont think it hurts to play around with alternative views of the status quo, if only to keep ones mind sharp on tricky social issues that may have counter-intuitive aspects to them. What seems like an empowering choice, may be actually more a trade off.
Just a few thoughts from a long term partnered mum with a mortgage, late primary aged kids, who’s Dr found a lump in my breast only yesterday.
Oh, dear SG, that’s no good. Big hug to you.
Well, Astound Me!
Your Misandrism on this site is beyond compare.
Tha Dont change the fact though that yous are bent on hijacking dabates. Although i do notice that on the main page of this site, it is said that the debates held on Lavatros are to be LEFTIST.
But, just because of that, doesnt mean you can sensor the bejesus out of me. So brave you are behind your monitor, but i bet well hidden from the daylight.
Now, about that dark question asked about abortion: ‘What is the first thing seen when the sperm fertelises the egg?’
Is there a bright spark anywhere in your periphery that knows the answer? Come all you psuedo-enlightened souls, spill the beans on the reality of abortion.
Another hug from me, SG.
Its only a lump, Mammogram is on the 1st. I’m re-framing it as a right of passage
I only mentioned it so Jo knew i wasnt a young girl with no experience of the fun of estrogen, and the reticence many women have about long term use of the pill.
Feel free to rip my posts apart nonetheless
I can tend toward compulsive devil’s advocacy.
‘rite’, i mean. I would appear so much more intelligent if only i could spell.
I am not entirely sure what this actually means Gadget, but if you are implying that we don’t have the right to decide to delete comments that breach the comments policy then I am afraid that you are sorely misguided. Not that you appear to be unfamiliar with that position.
Gadget, as long as you hold back on the more vile forms of abuse, I am perfectly willing for you to continue to look foolish (as when you refer to a description of what is discussed in the posts on this blog as some sort of prescriptivism for the discussion in comments).
I answered your question earlier, but obviously not to your satisfaction. Please do astound us all with your brilliance.
NB: not actual size. Also not actual person.
Now, about that dark question asked about abortion: ‘What is the first thing seen when the sperm fertelises (fully sic) the egg?’
By whom, Gadget?
And by what means do they see inside the woman’s body?
If a Gadget comment got deleted and nobody cared, what would it sound like?
Another hug for SG — scary stuff.
First things first tigtogs,
I again ask you to remove the reference to my location. I do not beleive you are at liberty to disscuss the connection between my email address and where i miy or may not be; particularly in a web debate, and certainly not without my permission, consent, asking, authourity and (you get the picture)
N* w%rr*#s, G$dg#t. &ny t!m#.
Calling all vigilante-feminazi-murderers-bent-on-revenge…
Gadget is not, I repeat NOT a bloke at a university.
Rumours to this effect were criculated after Tigtog mistook his email address for a university one. He is actually from the West African principality of Edu.
Apparently Eduian privacy laws are especially harsh, so don’t go there to rend him/her limb from limb without a lawyer.
Gadget, are you really this foolish or are you a performance artist?
How am I not a liberty to discuss whatever I know about you, little as that is? Refraining from disclosing the actual email address you have provided is a courtesy, not a regulation. The reason I have not disclosed that information is because of my own standards of etiquette, not any obligation.
I have no idea what your actual location is, only that you are posting using a student account at an Australian university. I could go and look up your IP address on whois to get more details, but I don’t care enough. Given the number of universities in this country, and the number of people who might be using such an account without actually being a currently enrolled student at an Australian university, no-one reading this could possibly identify you from what has been disclosed.
Do rest assured that I have no intent of disclosing further details about your email address on this blog. Of course, if you repeat your earlier offensive language about killing women in reference to any particular person I would have to regard that as a specific threat, and would consider it my duty to supply your details to the authorities. At the same time I would of course have to point out that you could be any old nutter with uni system privileges hijacking some innocent student’s account to post your rubbish.
If such an investigation of your uni’s IT dept and the account access logs might prove embarrassing to you, I can only advise you to make your arguments without resorting to offensive abuse.
Can someone point me in the direction of this research? I’ve always felt there was something NQR about long-term use of artificial hormones, it would be interesting to see these figures. Or even an article about the figures.
As for Gadget, I wish someone would do a study on the correlation between appallingly bad spelling and the worst sort of ignorant right-wing views. That’d be an eye-opener.
Not naive at all, Mark. Of course Costello would have focus-grouped his policy. Given that he’s backing it up with taxpayers’ money he’d be grossly negligent if he did not do so. I am sure that he has also sought sound advice on the demographics and economics of his policy which would inform him of the difference in outcomes from increasing the native population instead of relying on immigration to meet future population requirements.
However his appeal is to any Australian woman, regardless of her ethnicity or origins, who has two children to have a third. That is not racist and yet tig-tog accuses him of covert, if unintentional, racism on the basis that the composition of the Australian population is, for historical reasons, overwhelmingly of European descent, according to the very broad definition of what constitutes being of European descent used by the ABS.
Peter Costello is not responsible for the overwhelmingly European descent of the Australian population and nor has he contributed much to it, having only three children (unless of course he has been a secret and prolific donor to AI and IVF programs, the possibility of which I only mention for the frisson of horror I know it will induce in tig-tog, just in contemplating the idea). He, as a politician in a democratic society, has to appeal to the electorate that he has.
Tig-tog’s other claim that Costello is nativist, if it means having a preference for the native population over immigrants is sound only to the extent that the preference is against potential immigrants who might otherwise have come to Australia except that their opportunity to do so was curtailed by reduced immigration levels caused by a policy decision based on higher native population increase. There is nothing inherently racist in a politician giving preference to his own society over outsiders. In fact it would political folly not to do so as in the nation-state system we live in they are his electors and ultimately his political masters. On the other hand he has no particular duty to the world at large, who are not his electors. It is not inherently racist in any way to appeal to the interests of your own population at large over any other population. The Australian government subsidizes university education for its own citizens but requires overseas students to be full fee payers. No one accused them of being racist for having that policy.
However the charge that you make that he is using the policy as a dog whistle, used as you are using it in a pejorative sense, could only be sustained if his appeal was to a specific ethnic group (either Anglo-Australians or those of European descent more generally) within Australia to the exclusion of other ethnic groups in Australia. As the policy does not do that and is as likely to be as attractive or unattractive to one ethnic group as it is to any other that charge cannot be borne out. Further, as Geoff Honnor has pointed out, it cannot be sustained as appealing to some strong (unproved) anti-immigrant sentiment in the Australian population as the current government is running a large non-discriminatory immigration program and has signaled no intention of curtailing it.
Finally, despite tig-tog’s heading, there is nothing in Costello’s policy that has anything to do with forcing women to have more babies. It remains a choice for women and their partners. His policy merely provides them to make that choice and some assistance if they do so.
By the way, Anna, great photo and the perfect riposte to gadget.
Should have read:
His policy merely appeals to them to make that choice and some assistance if they do so.
Could that possibly be because I mentioned him as a contrast to the out and out bigoted unapologetic anti-abortionists that I devoted most of the article to discussing?
But you didn’t mention him as a contrast but rather as a pale shadow.
You picked the wrong target. Peter Costello isn’t particularly socially conservative, he is pro-choice and supported the RU 486 bill.
Now if you had mentioned Tony Abbott instead, well, probably you’d have to have chosen something a lot stronger than “pale shadow”.
You don’t think a pale shadow is a contrast to a black heart?
Seriously, I don’t think Costello is an evil oppressor despite my not sharing most of his views on economic management. That doesn’t mean I think he shrinks from using ambivalent rhetoric that he knows full well appeals to extremists while still seeming unobjectionable to the moderate base, and he think he does that in more than just this instance. Show me a politician who will avoid killing two birds with one stone via an ambivalent comment and I’ll hop around Parliament House on my left leg wearing a Smurf costume*.
Now, my post was actually about the extremists, not the opportunists who don’t mind playing up to the extremists now and then. Any light to shed on them?
*(offer may be void due to intent to disavow hyperbolic bravado)
Actually I do have. When this topic and the RU486 debate were under discussion at LP a while back I found an article on the website of an Australian anti-abortion organisation which addressed the question of what would happen if the current legal regime which allows for legal abortions was repealed and abortions became illegal.
Essentially it argued that there would be no increased risk to women’s health from illegal abortions as the vast majority of them would be carried out by doctors in their clinics just as had been the case before the law moved to its current position.
The perversity of that thinking amazed me. Essentially they were advocating that abortion be made illegal but saying that it would not change the fact that women would still have abortions anyway except, of course, that they would be stigmatised for it, they and the medical personnel involved would be at risk of prosecution, the apparatus of the State would be deployed to preventing them from having abortions (with the corruption of police forces that entailed) rather than looking after their well-being and a few unlucky ones would end up in the hands of backyard abortionists, and suffer the consequences.
I thought “Then why fucking ban it if it’s not going to change the fact that women will still have abortions anyway. Can’t you see the futility of what you are seeking and its bad consequences.”
I’ll post a link to the article if I can find it.
My own views on the subject, by the way, were informed by my mother who worked as nurse at the Royal Womens Hospital in Melbourne in the late 1940s. She told me that there was a ward there (called something like the Lovinia Allen ward, referred to as the Leave Yourself Alone ward; nurses can have ghoulish humour-it helps them to cope) at the time dedicated to treating, where they could, women who had contracted septicaemia from botched backyard abortions. She told me that they suffered terribly and it wasn’t an issue of antibiotics not being available but that abortion being illegal many of them waited too long before seeking treatment.
Staunch but sensible Catholic as she was, she supported the right of women to have access to safe and legal abortions, as do I.
Here is a link to the article I referred to.
http://www.rtlaust.com/tackling_pro_abort_myths.htm
I agree with Tigtog that Costello was dogwhistling, albeit about something I don’t think he believes. But your last comment was great, GregM.
I concur with your view about nurses and their wicked senses of humour too. I have a friend who’s a nurse.
SG, hugs from me too. I hope fervently everything will be ok, and you’ll be in my thoughts.
Thanks guys. That means heaps. And thanks for tolerating/ignoring/overlooking my little rant earlier.
Back on topic, (and this will be my last post here)..for those that didn’t already know – the birth rate is actually up for the first time in ages which should keep the hard-liners quiet for for the time being.
Thanks, GregM. I’ve read similiar positions from anti-abortionists as well.
It ties back into the magical thinking aspect again. Will whatever’s proposed make a measurable difference to the detested phenomenon? No, but somehow legally stigmatising it will make all the moral difference in the world.
It makes no sense at all.
(Rather like the War Against (some) Drugs)
Hugs and kisses from me too, SG.
As people probably know, cancer was what led to the amputation of my leg when I was a teenager.
I had a bit of a scare not that long ago when it looked like it might have come back, so I can appreciate where you’re at and how you’re feeling. The not knowing for sure is one of the worst things.
tigtogs
‘Vileness’ is in the eye of the beholder, as is abortion.
As is Ana Winter blowing her abuses at me and telling me to f…. off. If that is not femminist, spiteful, hateful misandrist self-interest, then we are all dumb.
And as for my posts above that look like this: *&%)@@ *^^%$) ))!^$ etc, well i’d like to Inform All the Public that there was not one swear word in it, it was all plain language. What you see above is censorship. A diametric version of it too.
No-one has a monopoly on morality, and censorship does not represent an anti-abortionist view. The Left cannot prevent the reproduction of pro-life rights.
And Anna, did you mount all those sperm into the picture just for show, or does it represent the truth?
My question remains: What is the first thing seen when the sperm fertelises the egg?
Thank you for toning down the ranting in this comment, Gadget.
The moderation statement was open about being disemvowelling rather than anything else, so if anyone mistook the symbols Anna substituted for vowels as indicating anything other than, well, vowels, then they would be even more foolish than you.
There’s more to statements being offensive than merely having silly swear words in them.
haven’t been back on LP since i posted on the 17th, so another hug, sublime one. Hopefully, all will be ok, and is just a silly old cyst.
in my last post, I wrote so poorly, that it read like I was one of the 4 of 8 of my friday yoga class, who had had mastectomies, thankfully…..there by the grace of god, I have so far managed to dodge the breast cancer epidemic, v. sorry for the mix-up, and I feel v.dumb with you getting tested, sc.
rebekka – just found a small abstract on breast cancer-pill link from Mayo Clinic Proceedings – Oral Contraceptive Use as a Risk Factor for Premenopausal Breast Cancer: A Meta-analysis
http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com/Abstract.asp?AID=4166&UID=&Abst=Abstract
sublime cowgirl, i’d like to see more data re: the increasing rates of terminations amongst the late 30s -40’s demographic, my point was more that women who had “packed up the shop” and had effectively gone into another phase of their life post small children, might be very reluctant themselves, more than anyone else, to go back to having a newborn child and this was irrespective of the financial/career stuff, or that the fin/career stuff was added reasons on TOP……but mainly, that they themselves, had finished with the baby/toddler/little kid phase (until grandchildren, anyway).
it’s interesting that the rate of teen and young women’s terminations has decreased while older women’s rates have increased, and at the same time as birth rates for these groups have also swapped…your live birth stats. seem to support the notion that it is young women using fail-safe contraception (ie fewer kids, fewer terminations) with women over 30, having the kids, but then in their late 30’s or 40’s making the decision not to, but unfortunately….post coitally.
good luck SC .