One Wingnut to Rule them All: Australia's less than stellar performance on reproductive rights
February 1st, 2009 by Helen | Published in Developing world, Feminism, Foreign policy, International, Policy, Women | 143 Comments
A couple of weeks ago I hastily banged out a post for Blog for Choice day (January 22). In my hurry to get a post up on the day, and with the US presidential inauguration ceremony just over, I chose to write about the hope (now the reality) that Obama would overturn the Global Gag rule concerning NGOs who provide family planning to poor or developing countries.
For those not familiar with the Global Gag rule (or the “Mexico City rule”), the Bush administration refused to fund any NGO providing medical services to women in other countries if that NGO included abortion in its services, or even gave counselling which mentioned abortion as an alternative. These organisations would typically provide a whole range of reproductive services, from obstetrics and gynaecology to HIV awareness and prevention to condoms and contraceptive advice, and a host of other life-saving and life-enhancing services. So the Global Gag Rule was much more pernicious and far-reaching than simply an abortion ban.
What I failed to mention in that post is the fact that Australia’s policy is no better. Australia adopted its version of US’s Gag Rule with regard to its foreign aid spending, which is titchy anyway, in 1996, and ours hasn’t been overturned. (H/T to Blue Milk for that link.) This policy was adopted in a contra deal with evangelical conservative Catholic senator Brian Harradine.
Hoyden about Town was onto this issue over a year ago.
For those of you not living in Australia, it is a peculiarity of our tiny (as in population) country that for time immemorial, we have been at the mercy of the whim of a solitary wingnut who has lucked onto a disproportionate balance of power in the Federal senate. In 1996 it was Brian Harradine. Now it’s Steven Fielding of Family First.
The push to overturn Australia’s global gag rule is bipartisan (or rather multipartisan). As Lauredhel says in the HAT article linked above, this is an opportunity for cross-party support to achieve something good. She’s hoping Rudd and Gillard will step up to the plate. So am I.
What’s with all the delays? These parliamentarians wouldn’t get away with restricting Australian women’s choices in this way but seem to be full of ‘moral courage’ when it comes to pushing around the world’s poor. It’s a disgrace.
I may be wrong, but I thought this was something wholly at the discretion of the Foreign Affairs minister and doesn’t require a Senate vote to overturn.
I think you’re correct Rachel but if Mr Filding doesn’t like the decision then he will withhold his vote some other time. Dealmaking at its most obscene.
oops – I meant Fielding.
I totally agree with and share your annoyance and frustration at the Australian government’s inhumane policy in this area.
However, it is not correct to label Brian Harradine an “evangelical”. He was (and is) a conservative Catholic. Both may tend to be anti-abortion, but there are major differences. In my view he wasn’t a wingnut either, despite my strong disagreement with him on this issue, (but I accept that’s more a matter of opinion). He was smart, consistent and calculating. I wouldn’t apply any of those descriptions to the Family First person currently in the Senate.
And while Harradine’s influence was obviously crucial in this area, the decision by the former Coaltion government to implement this policy was not just a matter of bowing to Harradine’s pressue. It was also a calculated strategy on the part of the Coalition to openly court the ultra-conservative Christian vote (e.g. Cath the Fire, Hillsong, etc) It was also a policy which matched the views of a number of key figures in the Coalition government – Howard himself, Tony Abbott, the ‘moderate’ Peter Costello, and almost all National Party MPs just to name a few. (although as the vote on the RU486 issue showed, not a majority of the Coalition).
I make all these points by way of emphasising how little excuse the current government has in maintaining the policy. It doesn’t need to be passed by the Senate to be changed, it can be changed by administrative decision (in the same way as it was implemented). And there is no doubt that the vast majority of government Labor MPs support a change, as well as close to a majority MPs. I don’t believe that Labor has delayed moving on this predominatly as a sop to Steve Fielding to get his vot on issues in the Senate – it is far more likely to be as a way of trying to maintain some appeal to the ultra-conservative Christian lobby (as is the decision to continue to oppose same sex marriage).
sorry that should have read “the vast majority of government Labor MPs support a change, as well as close to a majority of Coalition MPs”
(I must start proof-reading my comments before I’ve pressed the submit button)
As you point out Andrew, enough parliamentarians risked the wrath of the Christian lobby groups previously so perhaps if it did require a Senate vote we’d have more luck getting rid of it. As it stands there are people within the Government (not just the coalition) who have no desire to overturn it & apparently no need/desire to explain themselves to the voting public.
Yes, agreed Andrew re pandering to conservative Christian lobby, but I suspect it’s not only a domestic concern. I wonder if there are governments of Australian aid recipient nations who support the ban on aid dollars going to reproductive rights NGOs, and whether we’re just as worried about upsetting them?
Boo – I don’t think the Senate has the power on it’s own to overturn this, but I agree that having a vote on a motion expressing support for overturning it would help build pressure – although it’s probabyl a vote both major parties would rather not have as it would probably result in split votes within both parties. (not that I see anything wrong with split votes within parties – every other country manages it – but in Australia it tends to make our professional political commentators very excitable and generate talk of ‘deep divisions’ and ‘instability’ which always makes parties nervous.)
Fang – I doubt it has much to do with attitudes of recipient countries. If a particular reicipient country doesn’t support or allow abortion, then that would remain the case regardless of our aid criteria. An important point is that the restrictions do not just relate to information about abortion, but can also impact on wider family planning / contraception information and assistance.
Thank you for this post Helen and thanks Andrew for your contribution
As I understood it Bush’s gag rule didn’t just apply to abortion but to any form of contraception that wasn’t abstinence. Given that one of the clearest methods of raising a country out of poverty is to establish a woman’s rights over her own body it’s shamefully backward.
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It was shamefully backward for Howard to hold his little pow-wows with the Bretheren and it’s shamefully backward for people whose ideas come after the Enlightenment not to stand up to those who hate everything that happened after 1600.
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Sometimes compromise is necessary. Most of the time in fact. But sometimes it’s absolutely out of the question it is an either/or proposition. And this is one such time. Forget the administrative decision. Have it out and show these people up for what they are in debate. They are only interested in perpetuating the slavery of women as baby producing machines and either indifferent to, or actually supportive of, the resultant inevitable poverty.
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The fundamentalist back to the Dark Ages mob is real and must be fought.
it is not correct to label Brian Harradine an “evangelical”. He was (and is) a conservative Catholic.
Yes, that was a lazy conflation on my part of “evangelical” and “conservative Christian” generally. I’ll go in and amend it in a few minutes.
Fang – I doubt it has much to do with attitudes of recipient countries. If a particular reicipient country doesn’t support or allow abortion, then that would remain the case regardless of our aid criteria. An important point is that the restrictions do not just relate to information about abortion, but can also impact on wider family planning / contraception information and assistance.
Yes, that’s important to note, the provision or non-provision of abortion would be determined by the host country. We are not foisting anything on any country. Your last sentence is important – I wanted to make that point that in denying certain NGOs funding, the US and Australia was/is denying a whole raft of life-saving and beneficial services.
I love how “reproductive rights” (a made up term that exists only in the mind of some) seems to only mean stopping everyone from reproducing.
So anyway, killing unborn children is “something good” is it? *rolls eyes* If someone killed Exploding Boy, Helen, you’d want his guts for garters. But if you happened to kill Exploding Boy while he was not yet born, that would have been “good”, in your eyes. Is that it?
When a woman gives her body to a man and a man gives his body to a woman, that’s OK, but when as a consequence (like duh, no one in human history has noticed this before), woman falls pregnant, suddenly it’s her body, the father gets no say, and the kid? Pfft. Kill it. And that’s “good”.
Exit question: when does a child get human rights in your view?
“only mean stopping everyone from reproducing”
I fail to see how this law = that. Other stuff too irritating to bother with.
Saint, speaking as a fellow wanker, at what point does your spilled seed become genocide?
“I love how “reproductive rights” (a made up term that exists only in the mind of some) seems to only mean stopping everyone from reproducing.”
Damn, the stupid is strong in this one.
Exit answer..Never if you are born in the wrong place.
Behemoth @ 15
First para is gold!
Sorry to come late to the conversation, but I wouldn’t be holding my breath waiting for Rudd to lead the charge.
Here’s his contribution to the RU486 debate. He supported the bill, but expressed grave concerns about the rate of abortions in Australia, and wanted concerted action to reduce that number.
Assuming that his parliamentary contribution reflects his actual views, changing the global gag rule is probably something he’d have to be persuaded to do, rather than something he’d be inclined to automatically support.
#13:
The choice of whether or not to have the baby should obviously belong to the man, on the condition that the man is the one carrying the fetus for nine months in his own womb. Of course he’ll have to somehow get a womb first, but in the 21st century anything is possible.
Isn’t Saint missing the point?
In East Timor women have 6 or 8 babies, families live in grinding poverty with not enough food to ensure sufficient nutrition for child or maternal health. Carrying a pregnancy to term takes a toll on a poorly nourished woman’s health that is wasted when the baby fails to thrive and dies in infancy or the mother dies leaving her existing children orphaned.
Do not be arrogant enough to apply Australian conditions to realities facing third world women.
Thanks Andrew for your dismal analysis of Parliamentary machinations
Yeti @19,
If men had babies there would certainly be more restrictions on the killing of unborn humans. Didn’t you know only women have “choices”, men have responsibilities.
The feminist demand for “reproductive rights” is really a demand not to take responsibility for one’s sexual activity. I can’t imagine any modern court or parliament allowing men to get away with not having to take responsibility for their sexual activities. But of course for women it’s all about “Choice”. How does that slogan go again, “Free abortions on demand”.
And yet many on this site call for more proportional representation, which makes shabby deals like this one more and more likely. Sheesh.
#16 Or the wrong gender
#21: mmmmm yeah, because a Catholic wife in East Timor or a truckie’s wife in the Horn of Africa has soooo much choice whether to have sex or not.
Still, these women who have teh sex, they must be punished!!
Robert (#18) – what part of his speech irks you the most?
I think he sounds pretty reasonable. Isn’t that virtually Obama’s position also?
“Isn’t Saint missing the point?”
He, she or it is doing more than just that. Rather then attempting to defend the point he, she or it raised here, Saint has has retreated to his, her or it’s website to bitch about what he, she or it would have said if he, she or it had the balls (or breasts) to return to the fray here. However the comfort of nursing ingrained convictions in his, her or its home burrow once again won over any urge to intelligently prostelyze in a free bazaar.
Y’know saint, one of the things I always admired about Jesus Christ was that he never dodged a crunch. He always faced up to his interlocutors even when it mean bloody torture and death. He didn’t duck out of an argument only to have a whinge with a couple of spasmodic echoes in a cave about he could have won it easily if only…
The more I see of you online saint, the more I’m reminded of Proverbs 6:16- 19.
No doubt yer ready to fling Corinthians 1:15-33 back at me.
To no avail. I have my Matthew 7:3 powershield on.
Ah, the Bible. Like Shakespeare, full of apposite quotes for all conditions of the human condition.
Shame it gets so malhandled by those who want everyone else to be in their own condition.
And folks, I just can’t resist poppin’ this one.
“(a made up term that exists only in the mind of some)”
Like some sorta Holy Ghost thing?
Really, saint. Do you want to be discarded blog bubble-wrap? No one ever made a martyr out of used packaging material. Well, aside from St Excelsior.
Sublime cowgirl: perhaps I haven’t made myself clear; the speech doesn’t irk me particularly (though it reeks of political calculation). But I think the implication is that Rudd is going to be innately cautious when it comes to making any policy changes in this area. I doubt he’s going to be an internal advocate for such change; others are going to have to make the running.
No doubt, R.
Though still think he’s pretty close to Obama’s position.
Like all words, yes. That’s what words are.
Robert at #18, Rudd’s (Christian) position on these matters has always been my biggest reservation about him and the only thing that made me really uneasy when he was elected leader and then PM. I’ve seen it manifest itself a few times since, as it also has with Peter Garrett.
Ovaries? You know, the things with the rosaries.
Good comment battles, PC, like ovaries and rosaries, work cyclically. I’m sure we’ll see Saint again.
Helen @ 24,
Yes I see what you mean. Now the rapists of East Timor and Africa can put on a Planned Parenthood supplied condom funded by US tax payers before they rape their wives. And if the wife still gets pregnant all he has to tell her is to get rid of it at the local clinic. But wouldn’t it be better to instruct men to abstain from sex if their wife doesn’t want sex? Ooops, that’s right “abstain” is a dirty word isn’t it.
Also,
A recent Gallup Poll finds 58% of Americans disapprove of Obama’s decision to overturn the Global Gag rule. Only 35% agreed with his decision.
http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=31956
So in your mind the opinions of “wingnuts”, no matter how numerous they may be, are of no importance?
Also why continue with the use of the term “Choice”? I think it was William Donohue from the Catholic League who said, “Choice” has no moral quotient – it is just a process. Morality kicks in when the object of our choice is determined.”
Isn’t it time to free yourself from the shackles of euphemisms? Although I do admit that saying you “hastily banged out a post for Blog for killing human life in the womb day” is a bit of a mouthful. But at least it’s more honest and accurate.
Saint – Alrighty. Shall we discuss this. Can we?
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I love how “reproductive rights” (a made up term that exists only in the mind of some) seems to only mean stopping everyone from reproducing.
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Well I wouldn’t use the term ‘reproductive rights’. I don’t think it necessary. It’s simply a more basic right that invested in one’s own body. One has, this is fundamental to the very concept of rights, the exclusive say over one’s own body, one owns it and its labour. Hence one is able to say whether one gives one’s own permission for others to gestate there.
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To say otherwise is to say that a woman does not have the rights a man does.
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When a woman gives her body to a man and a man gives his body to a woman, that’s OK
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Well I’m not sure bonking entails the gifting of bodies. It’s a metaphor I’ve heard and it’s fine for love songs but in a discussion of sex, its consequences and the ethics that thereby pertain in a democratic society let’s be a little more accurate.
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but when as a consequence (like duh, no one in human history has noticed this before), woman falls pregnant, suddenly it’s her body, the father gets no say, and the kid? Pfft. Kill it. And that’s “good”.
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Interesting.
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First ethically speaking does the man have a say? I’d argue that that depends very much on the nature of the relationship. Fundamentally however as it’s the woman who’ll be carrying the load I reckon the guy’s in an advisory position only. That’s my position.
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Your position is something not entirely clear. For example you seem to be saying that terminating pregnancies, among other things, excludes men. However arch-reactionaries like Ann Coulter say that abortion is actually something most women oppose and that men push it upon them to escape their responsibilities. Comment?
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I don’t think abortion is ‘good’. However I believe that there is a clear correlation between the quality of life n societies that permit citizens to control reproduction and those that don’t. In the latter: poverty, crime, misery are amplified.
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Also considering that the very same forces that now preach the preciousness of life were not so long ago lambasting us for enjoying sex and continue to be enthusiastic supporters of whatever war comes along I wonder…
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Is the problem killing the fetus? Or is it also an objection to the idea of sex for pleasure. Here I’m thinking of Irish Catholic priests who would lambast women who confessed to enjoying sex as being ‘unnatural’ and ‘in the the throes of Satan’. However these self same men would object if wives were to abstain from sexual intercourse because they’d been advised that they would not survive another pregnancy. In other words it was sinful for a woman to enjoy sex and sinful for a woman not to have it even if doing so risked her life.
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Please respond.
Colin @ 24
Now you haven’t as you proceed to wilfully misrepresent Helen’s argument and ignored the harsh realities that woman face in some countries.
Abstinence is one of the most ludicrously naive policy to prevent pregnancy ever devised as it is usually presented as one of only a few options. Uganda is a good example.
Uganda, to combat AIDS, adopted a balanced policy of promoting abstinence as well as responsible usage of condoms. That helped to significantly reduce the incidence of AIDS in the population. But once the aid money from the US came with strings attached, the balanced approach swung to far to promotion of abstinence. The result was an increase in the incidence of AIDS in the population.
It doesn’t much energy to throw in some Christian sloganeering and snark. But at least others are expending the time to understand that harsh realities of life in countries not as lucky as ours.
I can’t hardly improve on that comment, but let me just say AGAIN that excluding NGOs that provide reproductive services on the basis that they might mention abortion means that the women don’t get a lot of other services that might mean the difference between a healthy live birth and a disaster or death. Women who abort and women needing birth services are basically one and the same, not two different species (although the fundies with their Fallen Women probably think so.) And if your truckie uses a condom, maybe some people escape HIV. That sort of thing. You know – the sort of thing you’d approve of if you were genuinely pro-life. For born people.
Even a properly carried-out abortion is just an abortion while a backyard abortion in a developing country could mean two lives lost. “Pro-life” should mean women, not just feti.
Helen @ 35,
I think there was so much more you could have said in reply to my post. For example if Brian Harradine is a wingnut does that make the 58% of Americans who oppose Obama’s lifting of the Gag rule wingnuts too? If so why is it okay to ignore the wishes of 58% of the US population just because they’re wingnuts?
Also, The NGOs you speak of can choose not to promote abortion in the countries they operate and in doing so receive the money they so desire. The promotion of maternal health does not naturally co-exist with the promotion of the idea that it is okay to kill one’s unborn offspring.
With regard to your sex starved truckie. Yes it would be better for him to use a condom if he’s having sex with some truck stop hooker. But it would be even better, particularly if he’s married, for him to abstain from sex with all other people except his wife. This is what the Catholic Church teaches and promotes – only have sex with your spouse. I can’t tell if you and Shaun agree with the Church on that point or not.
Interestingly you say “Pro-life” should mean women, not just feti. Well to some extent you’re right which is probably why historically those organizations that are Pro-Life have helped women cope with undesired/unexpected pregnancies. It also explains why Pro-Life groups also help those women who suffer some kind of psychological damage as a result of killing their unborn offspring. To the best of my knowledge the only help Pro-abortionists offer is to affirm women in their choice to kill their offspring.
Your final sentence is revealing. You say “… a properly carried-out abortion is just an abortion…” Just an abortion? Really? Nothing more, like err the killing of an innocent human life? No, for you it’s just an abortion.
Then you continue, “…while a backyard abortion in a developing country could mean two lives lost.” How odd. I can understand you rightly thinking the death of a pregnant woman during a backyard abortion is sad, but why your change of feelings towards the dead human fetus, which half a sentence earlier you failed to even acknowledge?
Thanks for the heads up Helen, letter to the local member written.
Colin @ 12:41 pm. I’m cool with people abstaining from sex with all other people bar their wife or husband or partner if that is what they want to do, but for them to do so just because the Catholic Church or any other mob tells them to is not cool.
One of the problems with abstaining is that some people just won’t. It’s a pretty big problem and I don’t see the Catholic Church out there physically stopping people from having sex. It’s so much easier to just blame the women.
Also, I’d like to see your 58% stat backed up by someone who isn’t a Catholic organisation. 58% of Americans or 58% of (Catholic?) Americans surveyed?
Here’s a chance to link to one of the better blogs I’ve come across recently.
Short story, Colin: it’s a lot more complicated than you think it is.
Mindy – just googled it and it was a Gallap poll, so prob pretty fair.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/04/barbara-kay-women-deserve-better-than-abortion.aspx
Liam,
That is the gist of what Helen and myself have saying. And Dylwah @ 39. Word.
oops wrong link (though good piece) above.
Here is the actual Gallup poll from their own website.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/114091/Americans-Approve-Obama-Actions-Date.aspx
Of course – there is so much pushing of the OMG abortion = murder idea in the US, and conservative Christians are so much more influential, I wouldn’t expect anything different. It doesn’t make their views right or accurate.
Short story, Colin: it’s a lot more complicated than you think it is.
Yes, but there is really no way of getting it across. For instance, my example of a woman who’s pregnant and dies for lack of medical care; this doesn’t invalidate in the slightest, or it shouldn’t, that it is that woman’s choice whether she makes her body available for 9 months uncomfortable gestation, or not. A choice which the likes of Colin and his parish priest are unlikely to ever have to make.
Andrew Reynolds wrote:
Arguing from one example doesn’t get us very far – one could point to the counter-example of PR getting Lyn Allison into the Senate and thus being able to move her RU486 bill, or the three Greens in the Victorian Upper House possibly making a decisive difference to the vote on abortion law reform in that State.
I posted some time ago on the apparent relationship between voting systems and gender representation in parliament. The weight of evidence points to PR being the electoral system most likely to increase women’s representation in assemblies, and thus increase said assemblies’ responsiveness to reproductive rights issues.
Two other points:
1. Re-read Andrew Bartlett’s post on the history of this issue.
2. Bear in mind that major parties can come to believe it necessary or expedient to strike deals with wingnuts under a range of different voting systems (e.g. preference swaps in preferential elections for single-member constituencies, tactical voting pacts under first past the post, etc.
It also explains why Pro-Life groups also help those women who suffer some kind of psychological damage as a result of killing their unborn offspring.
This is rubbish. Some fundamentalist groups have much-vaunted “programs” where they’ll sling the new teenage mum a box of nappiesand a used stroller, but in the main, conservative policy mkers who oppose abortion also oppose other social programs and public spending that might improve the lives of single parents and their offspring, such as public medicine, education and transfer payments.
To the best of my knowledge the only help Pro-abortionists offer is to affirm women in their choice to kill their offspring.
Also rubbish. Your choice of the term “pro-abortionists” is deliberately framing supporters of the option to abort as proactively pushing it. Feminist organisation such as WIRE and the Council of Single mothers and their Children are the kind of organisations giving help to women, not the anti-abortions groups (who are too busy cooking up scary brochures and throwing fake blood around, as well as the occasional bom, to help anyone much.)
Bomb, that is.
(Although that was only a molotov cocktail. They’re all heart.)
Yes, I’ve never seen a good explanation for the disconnect between “you can’t abort that baby, it’s murder’ and ‘single mother sluuuuuuut!’ Perhaps you could explain it for me Colin?
It’s sweet that Colin is so concerned about the plight of women in the third world. I wonder what he’d actually say to those women who can’t get access to contraception? “Just have have another baby, sweetheart. It’s your duty. If you don’t want children, don’t have sex, you silly thing. Who cares about your health, or the welfare of the kids you already have.” When you tell us what the Catholic teaching is, does it not occur to you that these women may not be Catholic? Such dangerously patronising behaviour disguised as compassion.
I want to know whether Colin’s going to put his hand up to feed, clothe and educate all those ‘unborn children’ (an oxymoron, in my view; if it’s unborn, it’s a foetus, and if it’s a child, it’s been born — and what kind of word is ‘unborn’ anyway? Is it the opposite of ‘undead’?) for the next 18 years, or whether his touching concern for their welfare stops dead at the moment of delivery. It’s much easier to dance up and down like Rumpelstiltskin carrying on indignantly about the unborn than it is to knuckle down and provide the born with practical help.
Mind you, his candour is refreshing. I like a person who comes right out and says that in his opinion a woman is nothing more than a centrally-heated wheelbarrow. He may be expressing detestable opinions, but at least he is not a weasel.
Colin – …if Brian Harradine is a wingnut does that make the 58% of Americans who oppose Obama’s lifting of the Gag rule wingnuts too? If so why is it okay to ignore the wishes of 58% of the US population just because they’re wingnuts?
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Good point. But the term ‘wingnut’ like ‘moonbat’ is, I’m sorry relative. It bears a relation to the political spectra which are specific to the poltiies in which they manifest: the point at which one ceases to be ‘right-wing’ and becomes ‘left-wing’ would’ve been different in Qld under Bjelke-Petersen than in Victoria under Jeff Kennett. Similarly the point at which one ceases to be a member of the ‘mainstream’ Right and enters the wingnut fringe is different in the US than it is here. One of the factors that underpin this is the deep hold religion has on politics there. We simply don’t do things that way (praise be to Apollo).
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That doesn’t mean America is irrelevant or that I approve of labeling people ‘wingnuts’ but Harradine is on the fringe in a way that someone with his views would not be if representing South Carolina. Still he’s won the right to advocate his views without being categorically dismissed.
Harradine’s gone, Adrien. We have the pleasure of Steven “It’s not a magic bullet, but it’s a rubber bullet, and if it bounces back on it, well it might knock me out mercifully for the rest of the parliamentary debate” Fielding.
Similarly the point at which one ceases to be a member of the ‘mainstream’ Right and enters the wingnut fringe is different in the US than it is here. One of the factors that underpin this is the deep hold religion has on politics there. We simply don’t do things that way (praise be to Apollo).
Yes absolutely. And I’m a bit bemused by this “if you call a conservative politician a wingnut then you are calling the entire Republican voting population wingnuts” business. A wingnut is a person of outstanding rightwinginess and denotes someone who is more or less public with it. Colin spends a lot of time making up speech bubbles which he puts in others’ mouths.
Commenter Rachel at Hoyden about Town posts a link to the following:
As Robert and Lauredhel point out, it’s up to the Greens and the more progressive Labor ministers, and even some Liberals like Mal Washer, to put pressure on the footdraggers like Stephen Smith and Rudd.
Sorry – link not added.
And my sentence construction sucks today. I blame the heat.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/05/2483331.htm
The Senate debacle is disgusting. What on earth is the Government thinking? What possible benefit is there politically (we know there’s no other benefit) in keeping this archaic piece of bureaucratic nonsense?
saint: “… how “reproductive rights” (a made up term that exists only in the mind of some)…”
Then we get, as refutation (for example): “Like all words, yes. That’s what words are.”
Okay. Well that’s a perfectly fair objection in a strict and academic sense. But if we had substituted the wording “a made-up *right*” for “a made-up *term*” (which is what I suspect saint actually more closely meant, w/o however going into all the mechanics)… then what we get instead is a question fit for a live-wire debate, one not quite so stacked as before. What sort of ‘right’ is this, that we’re speaking about, anyway? From what premises does it descend, and upon whose other rights might it infringe?
Hey, wait!! –those fish are escaping from their rightfully-appointed barrel, and back into the sea… where it’s a lot harder to shoot them!
What if abortion is less like a “right” (and how did you get there, anyway?), and more like a moral evil, and what if it can be reasonably morally defined as such?
What then?
Why, then we girls will all go back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, and ask for permission to get on with tending to the cakes and children until it’s time for church.
I don’t quite understand the ABC news report where it says the government blocked the Greens’ motion in the Senate. Perhaps there was something in proceedings today that I missed (not especially being keen to listen to every minute of proceedings), but in any case the motion by Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young is currently scheduled for a vote next Monday.
The motion as listed is as follows:
Senator Hanson-Young: To move on the next day of sitting—That the Senate—
(a) notes:
(i) the recent decision by the President of the United States of America,
Barack Obama, to overturn the global gag rule for family planning
guidelines that effectively prohibits the use of aid funding for some
contraceptives, and for abortion advice and services, and
(ii) that Australia is now the only country that continues to enforce these
harsh restrictions on our aid program, limiting its ability to provide an
effective and essential family planning service;
(b) recognises:
(i) the essential role mothers play in developing communities, with both
maternal and child health considered crucial Millennium Development
Goals, and
(ii) that an estimated 34 000 mothers die in our region each year, due to the
lack of maternal health supports available, with more than half of the 29
developing countries not on track to achieve either goal; and
(c) calls on the Rudd Government to stand up for women’s rights and immediately
abolish the family planning guidelines that prevent Australian aid money from
being spent on contraception and family planning advice. (general business
notice of motion no. 348)
The government (or any Senator) can stop it being put to a vote wihtout debate, in which case it wouldn’t be voted on (or debated straight away) – perhaps they’ve already indicated that’s what they’ll do. Matters relating to abortion are one of the few that tend to be treated as a conscience vote by the major parties, so having a straight up vote on a conscince vote issue without a debate might be seen as problematic. (and the leadership of both major parties probably feel that could do without stories about internal splits on the issue)
It should also be emphasised that even if the motion was passed, it would have no direct effect. It is only an expression of the Senate’s opinion, so it has a political effect, not a legal or adminstrative one.
#55: “Why, then we girls will all go back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, and ask for permission…”
Well, then I guess a good way to not be taken seriously (except by your shrieking unthinking a priori supporters of course) would be for you to parrot a caricature of a non-realistic made-up alternative, in order to spuriously claim what I suppose passes for the mantle of Orwell (and his talentless lesser sister M. Atwood) these days. Right.
Wake me up when you’d like to actually talk. (Though I’d suppose –and given what you seem to think the stakes are, it’s reasonable to imagine– you don’t actually want to talk about this, really. Ever.)
If by ‘talk’ you mean ‘agree with you’, and I think you do, then you’re quite right. I’m astonished that you don’t recognise that your own position is at least as shrieking and unthinking as mine, but then it’s a classic blind spot of privilege to say ‘I’m normal and you’re mad, bad and/or dangerous to know.’
I also notice that you have ignored the issues of (a) women’s right to control over their own bodies, and (b) being forced to bring a child into the world when you know you can’t give it a decent life. Perhaps if you had addressed these points (although the “pro-life” brigade — another made-up term that exists only in the minds of some — rarely do), I might have been more inclined to engage properly.
But here’s the answer to your question about “moral evil”, always bearing in mind that we all have different definitions of morality and some of us don’t believe in evil at all, only in suffering and the alleviation of suffering, to quote another woman writer whom you would no doubt also despise as inferior. I think it is immoral for one class of people to try to force another class of people to live lives they’re not allowed the freedom to control. I think it is immoral for men to claim any right at all over anything inside a woman’s body unless it’s a foetus and he’s its father. And I most definitely think that terminating an early pregnancy is a lesser “moral evil” than forcing a woman to give birth to a child she knows she can’t care for properly (either emotionally or socially or financially or all three) and then leaving her and the child to suffer the consequences of that intervention for the next twenty years, simply so that the enforcers can satisfy themselves that they have conquered a “moral evil” and feel good about themselves.
Colin: If men had babies there would certainly be more restrictions on the killing of unborn humans. Didn’t you know only women have “choices”, men have responsibilities.
This is too silly to actually argue with, but it does raise the rather beautiful story of one of Sheri S Tepper’s books (I’ve forgotten the name). In it a race of intelligent creatures with life-cycles rather like parasitic wasps visits Earth. In order for them to reproduce they must find a large mammal and inject their offspring into the abdomen where they can gestate. Humans seem to be the most common creature of appropriate size, so the wasps choose a bunch of prominent anti-abortion activists as the hosts, on the basis that clearly these men won’t mind.
Some parts of the book have not stood the test of time well at all, particularly the bits about benevolent military interventions, but this bit really nails the whole debate. Colin, Saint, how would you react?
“and his talentless lesser sister M. Atwood”
Don’t talk about Meg that way. She is made of equal parts win and awesome. Her politics (and nonsensical opposition to free trade) in no way dilute her prodigious talent (a hundreth of which would outweigh your own).
your shrieking unthinking a priori supporters of course)
This, just before complaining about people who “parrot a caricature”. The irony is delicious.
Nah, j-p-z. Don’t really want to talk about it. It’s been talked about for many, many years. The differing arguments are well known. You’re just posturing.
That’s it in a nutshell, Fine.
Women literally build embryos into foetuses and eventually babies using their own blood and bone. If a woman decides not to sacrifice her blood and bone to another organism, that should be her ultimate choice. If she decides that she will sacrifice her blood and bone for another organism, that should also be her ultimate choice. Others may advise/recommend/encourage/discourage, but should not impose their own views upon a woman’s decision.
Feminists support both choices, and oppose anyone who tries to prevent a woman making the choice for herself – no forced birth, and no forced abortion either.
Hear hear, Tigtog.
“using their own blood and bone”
See – there’s your problem.
We planet-raping men would use super phosphate.
if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one.
*snort*
Does that mean all babies would be born bright green?
…and batshit crazy, yes.
Cool.
Liam @ 39. The link you provide helps support what I said – The only help pro-abortionists offer women is to affirm them in their choice to kill their offspring.
And yes I actually agree with you in that having an unwanted pregnancy is not a trivial problem (if that’s what you meant by saying “it’s a lot more complicated than you think”). But don’t you think you ought to tell that to the “yobbettes” who go around screaming “Free Abortion on Demand”. Isn’t the issue just a bit more complicated than the “it’s all about me” mentality promoted by pro-abortionists?
Sublime cowgirl @ 40. Re your link, Wolf in sheep’s clothing comes to mind.
Helen @ 43. I hear what you’re saying. The majority are just a rabble anyway. Government by the minority, unless of course you happen to be in the majority. Did I sum you up about right?
I notice you’re now using the term “medical care” to describe the deliberate killing of a woman’s unborn offspring. Is it medical care even though the unborn is causing no harm to the woman? As I said earlier free yourself from the bondage of euphemisms.
As for helping women with crisis pregnancies or those experiencing post abortions problems here are to groups:
http://www.therecord.com.au/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=679&Itemid=27
http://www.rachelsvineyard.org.au/
You’d think with all the money the likes of Planned Parenthood rake in they could do something too. Although one wouldn’t expect too much compassion from an organization that specializes in the terminating of human life.
Your objection to the use of the term “Pro-Abortion” is truly bizarre. The “pro” in pro-abortion is Latin and means “for” or “supportive”. Therefore a person who is supportive of abortion is “Pro-Abortion”. Are you now trying to tell me you not supportive of the practice of abortion?
And as far as anti-abortionists cooking up scary brochures, do you mean including photos like this:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0UOYKKCir8c/SYpYIjxzTWI/AAAAAAAAFK4/S5UgcNYP_p4/s320/belly-baby-foot.jpg
Mindy @ 47, Apart from you, I’ve never seen or heard anybody use the phrases, “you can’t abort that baby, it’s murder” and “ single mother slut” in the same sentence. I think you might have “issues”. You might want to look over the Rachel’s Vineyard site I linked to in my reply to Helen.
Fine @ 48, I’m more interested in knowing what you would say to a those people (men and women) in the third world who have no access to contraception. You obviously think telling such people not to have sex is a silly idea. So what would you tell them?
Pavlov’s Cat @ 49. If you think the term “unborn children” is an oxymoron, why use it? As far as I can tell you’re the first person on this thread to use the term. Personally I usually don’t use the term when discussing abortion because I’ve found most people who support the killing of human life in the womb get a bit narky if that term is used. However it is usual for most people to use the term “unborn baby” when talking outside of the topic of abortion. Pavlov have you ever heard a pregnant woman say her fetus is kicking? I think most pregnant women would say their baby is kicking.
Pavlov, you also state: “[Colin] comes right out and says that in his opinion a woman is nothing more than a centrally-heated wheelbarrow.” Of course I said, nor implied any such thing. What I do think however is that women (and men), although in a fallen state, are created in the image of God. And as such are called to reflect and to strive towards the perfection of “our Father in heaven”. This cannot be done by promoting the idea that killing the human life within the womb is an acceptable practice.
Colin, I’d ensure they have access to free, easily available contraception in a form that suits them. After that, they can do what they want. The Global Gag prevents this by not allowing abortions to be supplied. All forms of contraception fail at times. That’s when access to abortion is essential, for those women who want to use it.
You mention your belief in God and how it informs your ideas. But what about the women who don’t share this belief. Why should they be bound by your beliefs?
Colin I’m not suggesting that they use both phrases in the same sentence I’m suggesting that by their actions this is exactly what they believe, which I suspect you knew all along. Why are people so keen for women to be forced to keep unwanted pregnancies, yet so nasty to single mothers? That clear enough for ya?
I couldn’t put it better than Fine @62 and Tigtog @63.
And yet, Helen I’ve been sucked into the argument. I should know better.
Best to go back to making guano jokes I reckon.
@Colin:
…as one of the options available when faced with an unplanned pregnancy or pregnancy complications, yes. A conceptus/embryo/foetus is not a viable human life until full term gestation has been reached, and is therefore very different from a born infant which someone else can nourish and protect should the mother decide not to.
As I said before, gestation involves the mother providing nutrients from her blood and minerals from her bone in order to provide the chemicals required to build the body tissues of the developing progeny – these are nutrients and minerals that her body normally needs, so there is a deleterious effect on metabolism and bone density with every pregnancy. There are also significant risks of a wide variety of disabling and/or life-threatening medical complications, also the risk of acute or chronic mental illness triggered by giving birth, before we even get to the socioeconomic consequences of giving birth and whether a child added to the family means the difference between existing financial security and future financial dependence/insecurity/outright poverty.
Then we get to overpopulation pressures on societies as a whole and families in particular. There are many, many reasons that a woman might decide to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, including looking out for the future interests of children she is already parenting by ensuring that they have a larger share of the family’s resources than they would have if she did have more children.
Damn right I find abortion as a solution to an unplanned pregnancy an acceptable practise. Because abortion has its own medical risks (although they are fewer and less likely to be fatal than actually giving birth) other family planning methods are medically preferable, but I don’t consider those other methods as inherently morally superior.
“Damn right I find abortion as a solution to an unplanned pregnancy an acceptable practise. Because abortion has its own medical risks (although they are fewer and less likely to be fatal than actually giving birth) other family planning methods are medically preferable, but I don’t consider those other methods as inherently morally superior.”
Yay, Tigtog.
“What I do think however is that women (and men), although in a fallen state, are created in the image of God.”
haha.
I support choice on the authority of the tooth fairy, the easter bunny AND santa claus – so beat that!
Have another look; Saint said it at #13. You have said ‘unborn humans’ and ‘unborn offspring’, which frankly I find even more odd. They’re not offspring till they’ve, erm, sprung off. Or so one would have thought.
FDB, I think you may be right about the guano. I admire Tigtog’s patience, but it’s very clear to me that any appeal to the value that Saint and Colin and all their benighted brethren’s might put on an adult woman’s life is going to end in us finding out things we’d rather not know. If either of them ever directly responds to the point, that is.
Um, ‘all their benighted brethren’.
Bloody cut’n'paste sentence-arranging thingy.
To get more directly back on topic – here’s an article from Make Poverty History:
The way that the Global Gag Rule worked with respect to US funding is that in the Make Poverty History coalition, that wishes to address child and maternal mortality in these countries from every possible angle, they are put in this horrible position: if any one of the aid organisations mentions abortion as one option to women in danger of dying in childbirth due to preexisting conditions/obstetric medical history of previous complications (it is very rarely women who have no children at all who are in danger of dying in childbirth), then that organisation is ineligible for any funding. The Australian Ministerial Rule has similar conditions attached to aid funding
That is how it is dangerous and discriminatory and actively contributing to preventable deaths of women whose existing children are then orphaned and at higher risk of child mortality without her. It is an obscene policy that directly promotes the death of women and children in the name of non-viable foetus protection.
But haven’t you heard that they don’t count once they are born Tigtog, it’s only the unborn who matter.
Now that’s a moral evil.
“Get me some new cliches.”
– Sam Goldwyn
“Is this girl versus boy
With different symbols?”
– The Minutemen
Dr. Cat — well, one place we can agree, astonishing as it may seem: I too think it’s wrong (and worse than wrong, as a French cynic once quipped, it’s a *mistake*) for the anti-abortion forces to insist on changing social mores over to their ways without substantively addressing the issue of how unprepared mothers and their children are to be cared for.
Seriously: now that legal abortion has been an institution in Western nations for several decades, it’s just not feasible to simply wish civilization back in time (and I’ll agree it wasn’t ever rosy in those days either, but then again nothing was) to a situation where mothers were at the mercy of social institutions like marriage or else on their own. The thing needs to be thought about carefully, and supplied carefully, and new mothers need a very wide and flexible range of options provided reliably and in advance. That’s simply what the landscape is like: that this is not being thought through with the utmost care by the anti-abortion side is I feel a very serious blot upon their agenda. Then again it pales in comparison with the moral horror of the pro-abortionists. And yes, I said horror. Seems to me that these civilizations are rich enough and smart enough to figure these things out, and you’re right to fault them that they don’t.
Most of the rest of your objections to my previous comment are merely stamping-your-foot childish and/or risible (and sometimes lend fuel to pure moral pathology). For an example: “I also notice that you have ignored the issues of (a) women’s right to control over their own bodies…”
Maybe you haven’t noticed (or maybe I wasn’t so clear, who knows?! it’s the blogosphere!: the Wild West, innit?!) that I am in fact questioning the very validity of the claim to such an invented “right.” Now in historical terms, there is a reasonable argument to claim that all “rights” were more or less ‘invented’ round-about the eighteenth century or so, and that you only ever get the “rights” you’re willing to invent and then fight for. On paper, it’s defensible; but if you believe that rights are real (and some people do), then there is a large, solid body of moral, political, judicial and religious thought claiming that so-called “reproductive rights” are in fact “invented” rights. As D. Boon would say:
“So dig this big crux!”
My convictions about this matter are based ultimately on religious and moral premises, and if I cannot convince you to share my religious premises (and I bet I can’t), then I have no right, politically speaking, to coerce you or anybody else to my view of things. I think the only way we could find anything like a mutual accomodation would be, as I implied above, to delineate a practical and generous plan whereby unwilling or unexpected mothers could give birth in social and economic security, with the knowledge that their children would still be cared for properly if they chose not to participate in that care. I believe that the anti-abortion team does itself no favors, so long as it refuses to countenance propositions like this.
btw: “barefoot and pregnant”… very witty, Wilde. Very, very witty.
Jarrah: I quite agree: it requires an extraordinary talent indeed to be both ludicrous and dull simultaneously — and this talent M. Atwood displays in spades.
Helen: Like so many people, you seem not to understand what the word “irony” means. Here’s a recap…
1. saint describes his view of “reproductive rights” as being (in my view inadequately) “a made-up term”.
2. PC pounces (correctly) on the literal sense of saint’s poorly-phrased formula, scoring an easy point but ignoring the substantive issue which saint (at least I believe) was trying to raise.
3. In trying to sort out the linguistic muddle, I attempt to call attention to the political problem of “invented rights” (in case you’re not thinking –but then I repeat myself, don’t I?– going around inventing “rights” is bound to cause many problems in the long term which are unrelated to the short-term issue you were rallying for… but you understood that, didn’t you?).
4. PC responds with cliche twaddle about “barefoot and pregnant.” Regardless of what she really thinks in detail, this is, on the page, about as unthinking and shrieking as anything I can think of.
5. That’s where you jump in.
I’m not sure you should be permitted to play around big, sharp words like “irony.” Here, this is a rubber ball, made out of rubber bands. You see, the more rubber bands you wind around it, the bigger it gets!
It’s fun!
wtf is this supposed to mean?
IF you believe rights are real…
THEN there is a “body of thought” CLAIMING that reproductive rights are not real?
so you’re saying that a woman’s right to control her own womb is an “invented” right, but other rights are “real”?
“so you’re saying that a woman’s right to control her own womb is an “invented” right, but other rights are “real”?”
Yeah. Fantastic, isn’t it?
Doubtless, the rights j-p-z believes in are ‘real’ and all others are ‘invented’.
j-p-z, it wouldn’t matter what sort of marvellous schemes you invented, many women don’t have any moral qualms about having an abortion. And ironically, enough it’s feminist pro-choice women who have historically pressured governments to introduce measures to make it possible for single mothers to keep their child, not the anti-abortionists. Because the anti-abortionists basically couldn’t give a flying fuck about the actual women involved. I think you represent that view quite well by ignoring tigtog’s posts at 78 and 81. But let’s not talk about the women, after all.
Tigtog @78 you say,
“A conceptus/embryo/foetus is not a viable human life until full term gestation has been reached, and is therefore very different from a born infant which someone else can nourish and protect should the mother decide not to.”
You indicate abortion is morally unproblematic during the entire gestation period. Does this mean it is your belief pregnant women have no responsibility to the unborn life they are carrying?
You also indicate that it is morally okay for a mother to decide not to care for the baby she has just given birth to. You indicate it is a mother’s right to give her baby to someone else to care for. It seems to me you think women have no moral responsibility for the life they help create and give birth to. If a mother has no moral responsibility for the welfare of her offspring whether it be in the womb or born, does anyone else? If yes who and why?
We could even broaden the discussion to include the responsibilities men have toward the women they impregnate and the child they father. Do these men have the same responsibilities as these women or are they greater or lesser?
@Colin:
The right of biological parents to give their children up for adoption has been established for centuries. You are simply being hysterical.
In situations where no legal adoption has occurred, both biological parents are required by law to support the child financially. The observed datum that most custodial parents are the mothers and most non-custodial parents are the fathers (this is the natural distribution outside any formal custody decisions by a family court) is the reason that fathers pay child support more often than mothers do. If the mother is the non-custodial parent she has the same obligation to provide financial support. There is nothing in law which says that either parent has to be a live-in parent, and I don’t believe that there is any moral obligation on either parent of a newborn to do so.
Once a parental bond has been established with the child during its infancy, THEN an ethical obligation of providing continuing emotional support exists, for both parents. That still does not constitute a legal requirement, and sometimes there is so much crap going on in people’s lives that they quite legitimately realise that they are being rubbish parents and the child would be better cared for by someone else. Until adoption relinquishment papers are signed though, they are legally obliged to provide financial support.
Adoption is not a one-to-one substitution for abortion. To take a pregnancy to full term and give birth is a horse of a different colour entirely. Colin and others can only ask for this substitution, I surmise, if they have a hazy, romantic idea of pregnancy and birth which does not take into account the huge physical, social, financial and other realities of that action. As I’ve said, it’s not a course they themselves would ever be asked to take, so it’s very easy for them to recommend.
@Helen: Adoption is not a one-to-one substitution for abortion.
Deffo, I was merely responding to the particular question Colin was asking entirely literally: yes, it is entirely socially acceptable “for a mother to decide not to care for the baby she has just given birth to” as long as she assigns its care to the relevant civil authorities, and this has been true for centuries.
Colin and others can only ask for this substitution, I surmise, if they have a hazy, romantic idea of pregnancy and birth which does not take into account the huge physical, social, financial and other realities of that action.
Hazy and romantic is the perfect description of their ideas re pregnancy/birth. What about if a woman will lose the job that puts food on her family’s table if she completes a pregnancy? How is she supposed to feed the kids she already has if a pregnancy makes her unable to continue working?
Methinks Colin (and possibly jpz) are confusing ‘moral/immoral’ and ‘right/wrong’ with ‘what I do/don’t approve of’.
A common mistake, but an important one to avoid.
A bit like this entire conversation really.
j_p_z, I’m normally on your side on most of the debates here. But not this one.
You describe abortion as an “invented right”. But in fact it would be better to describe the criminalisation of abortion as an ‘invented crime’.
In the English common law, it was not a crime to cause an abortion before ‘quickening’ (roughly half-way through pregnancy).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion
This was also the case in the Thirteen Colonies in 1776 — and the Founding Fathers saw no need to criminalise early abortion either. Evidently they lacked your clear sense of what a “moral horror” it is. The statutes completely banning abortion in the US and UK only appeared as 19th century legal inventions.
So I agree with you — social activists should not go around inventing stuff and foisting it on the rest of society. And for that reason, I oppose the criminalisation of abortion. ‘Pro-life’ people can go round till the end of time wailing about the immorality of it — and they are entitled to their opinion — but the law should damn well stay clear.
*Applause*
I’ve dealt with much of the law on this point exhaustively here, but for now I’ll just endorse Paulus’ historical points, and note that the law has in many ways been forced to extend wide leeway on both abortion and infanticide due to the absence of consistent moral convictions on the issue outside the law.
People forget that morality exists largely independently of law, and when enacted as positive law depends on a fairly large social consensus in order to flourish as either law or morality.
Murder, for example, is rare in developed countries not because there are laws against it, but because most people think it is wrong. Law works at the margins, not at the centre of social obligation. Abortion (and, interestingly, infanticide) enjoys no such social consensus. If laws against either are enacted, they really do require — as Joseph Raz once noted — a ratio of 1:1 citizen:policeman.
What happened to the UK’s infanticide laws is instructive here, as it illustrates what happens to a moral law when there is little social consensus behind the morality in the law. The common law – with its fealty to juries – has always had to be sensitive to their verdicts, which have never been patriarchal in the way many people assume:
What is important to remember here is that the juries that forced this change to UK law were comprised entirely of males — at that point women could not serve. Both anti and pro abortion advocates are dealing with very old and entrenched cultural and social attitudes to life and its relative ‘worth’ in their attempt to change attitudes to abortion. Sure, j_p_z may argue that it’s possible to change those old attitudes, but some honesty in appreciating the difficulty of any such change is merited.
A degree of both infanticide and abortion has been widely tolerated — including by all-male juries – across all the cultures that have fed both common and civil law conceptions of life and the preservation of life, not to mention many cultures outside these traditions.
And — as P.J O’Rourke pointed out in a superb essay on just how important it is for the GOP to let this issue go — the anti-abortionistas couldn’t even win an anti-abortion referendum in one of the reddest of Red States (North Dakota) in 2008. They didn’t just lose, either — they didn’t even come close.
Now I am not suggesting that all morality be decided at the ballot-box, but I am suggesting that morality independent of the ballot box — especially when law is expected to ‘do the moral work’ — is devilishly difficult. Advocates of gay marriage have a big job on their hands, even in liberal California, because the ballot-box is against them. Anti-abortionists have an even bigger job, because even historically conservative ballot-boxes are against them.
Now why someone would want to enact morality at all is something this libertarian finds mystifying, but for those who think that law is simply (and always) a mere tool of policy, the above democratic considerations should be born in mind.
Paulus, that was supoib.
Clappity clapitty clap.
*more applause for Paulus*
Excellent piece skepticlawyer, although it was South Dakota that rejected the abortion legislation, not North.
And as for the supposed good work done by the anti-abortion groups, well if they’re behaving so honourably, why the hiding?
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/08/07/exposed-american-pregnancy-association-hides-links-cpcs
I think it’s a little more complicated in some instances. In drug law, for instance, positive law enforcement depends a lot on the public’s moral double-standards. The middle-class couple who roll up a joint at a barbecue are perceived (and punished) differently to the poor bugger who grows the grass in the first place in a lightbox-fridge in a public housing garage. We’re happy to enforce moral law on underclasses, as long as we can separate mentally classes of deserving and undeserving.
Alas, the war on drugs as law and morality flourishes.
I’d argue that public-morality thinking about abortion criminalisation suffers from the same public hypocrisy, thinking of the act itself as immoral without reference to the lived experience of women. That’s why I linked to the blog before at #39.
Andrew Bartlett #5
Re your comment:
According to an abstract of a letter written by Brian Harradine , and published in the British Medical Journal in 1994, Paul Keating was also responsible for suspending funding in this area, i.e. “suspending 26-75 million Australian dollars for a new 4 year population control program”.
According to Harradine, Keating was “critical of Australia’s support for target-driven population programs as a violation of human rights.”
Do you have any more background about this Labor/Keating angle?
Of course this leads us to the tricky “reproductive rights” / “reproductive responsibility” argument…
People on both the left and right of politics have conspired to thwart policies that seek to address out of control global population growth. Whether for “politically correct/culturally sensitive” reasons or religious reasons, action on population growth has been impeded.
We’re now facing a situation where the population of the developing world, which is currently around 5.4 billion, could almost double to 10.6 billion by 2050 if family planning isn’t increased in the poorest countries. (Ref: UN Report World Population Prospects, The 2006 Revision)
It is those poor countries where population growth is out of control that will bear the consequences. The UN report World Population Policies 2007 notes that “many developing countries have realized the importance of reducing high rates of population growth in order to ease mounting pressure on renewable and non-renewable resources, combat climate change, prevent food insufficiency and provide decent employment and basic social services to all their people”.
It’s time for a reality check and to get this subject out in the open. Australia needs to significantly boost its foreign aid for family planning.
[blush] Thank you, PC, SL, FDB, tigtog. I don’t think I’ve ever been so popular on LP! :)
I was always pro-choice on an intellectual level, but what struck an emotional chord was seeing Mike Leigh’s film “Vera Drake” a few years ago.
I expect youse folk have seen it, but if by chance you haven’t, it’s well worth the price of a rental. The restrained, non-preachy way Leigh handled the subject-matter (backyard abortion in the 1950s), and the superb acting, made it quite a remarkable movie — and a great illustration of how ridiculous it is to have the criminal law operating in this area.
that movie is a masterpiece IMHO.
Liam: in order for something to flourish, it actually has to have efficacy. I should have made that clearer, as it’s an important part of Joseph Raz’s argument (who I’m paraphrasing). I’m just applying his ideas on morality to abortion.
Drug laws are all kinds of fail, just as abortion and infanticide laws were back in the day, and they fail for the same reason — the lack of a wide social consensus to back them. They are expensive, don’t operate at the margins, soak up vast police resources, imprison a large number of people who are not violent, and (in the US) impact disproportionately on a minority (blacks).
This is part of Raz’s larger argument that you can’t just ‘incorporate’ morality into law, which in turn is part of his analysis of authority: law doesn’t actually have as much authority as many people think it does, and it’s easy to fritter away that authority by attempting to use law to do things for which it is ill-suited (like change people’s fundamental moral values).
And I agree with Paulus on Vera Drake. Clear-eyed and utterly without sentiment, that film.
Paulus @ 102
You’ve always had the odd shining moment, Paulus. This one was especially bright.
Given that Nature (or “God”, if you prefer), has equipped men and women to enjoy sexual pleasure without the reproductive sex act, i.e. coitus, why is coitus often seen as the be all and end all, the ultimate sexual act, between “heterosexual” men and women, in both traditional cultures and modern society?
Given the pressure that is exerted on “heterosexual” women to be available for coitus in both traditional cultures and modern society, why is it women who seem to be forced to bear most of the moral responsibility and opprobrium for unwanted pregnancies?
JPZ – What if abortion is less like a “right” (and how did you get there, anyway?), and more like a moral evil
.
The two aren’t necessarily incompatible. This country has the right, the most ancient right of states, to kill, en masse large sections of foreign peoples in certain circumstances. One can argue that this is only true in self-defense but that would be a problem for Australia considering we’ve only been involved in one war where we were actually threatened. Should we then disband the army? After all war is undoubtedly a moral evil. But it is hard, especially these days, to meaningfully conceive of it being illegal.
.
…and what if it can be reasonably morally defined as such?
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Well it can be morally defined as such. To define a morality requires only the will to do so. To transmit such requires a voice, a pen, a computer. A morality exists if there is a sizable group to sustain it. But perhaps it will be restricted to your good self. Still you’re entitled to develop your own moral system as long as it doesn’t interfere with the liberty of others to the same.
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In some places the moral system is dictated in law. These places are not usually very pleasant. You and I might think it immoral to separate family members but I understand the Brethren do this all the time. And they think they are the epitome of morality. The best. Nazis likewise thought they were the best.
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The law’s decisions must be about what is actually done and what one can actually do and what the consequences of such action are. I accept that people like yourself, Saint and Colin have deep moral misgivings about abortion. I respect that to a certain extent. I, for example, don’t think the state of Victoria has any business compelling Catholic hospitals to supply referral for termination. However none of you has addressed the arguments that say that abortions will continue regardless, that women have rights over their body and that granting the foetus rights will deny the mother hers, that there is a clear correlation between quality of life and options to terminate.
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You simply continue to talk of killing unborn children. Children have consciousness, they can feel fear. They are. A foetus is not.
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I could add also that the welfare program you suggest for ‘unwilling mothers’ would be massively costly. Is it also worth pointing out that pregnancy is not a physically simple matter? It’s hard work and it has long lasting effects.
Given the pressure that is exerted on “heterosexual” women to be available for coitus in both traditional cultures and modern society, why is it women who seem to be forced to bear most of the moral responsibility and opprobrium for unwanted pregnancies?
Yes, the exhortation to “just don’t do it” is entirely useless in the context of social reality, especially in traditional societies where a lot of women just don’t have a choice.
Just don’t do it
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I suspect the real meat of the matter.
I haven’t read Raz, skepticlawyer, so I can’t comment on his arguments, but I’m not sure I agree with your argument about drug laws (and by implication abortion law).
The war on drugs is wasteful, immoral, inefficient, and cruel, in all the ways you describe, just as the enforcement of anti-abortion law was before decriminalisation. However, I don’t see those things as failures of law: in both cases they’re successful applications of our social hypocrisy. Those bad laws exist precisely because we have such common and pervasive double-standards about drugs and sex.
There does exist now a wide social consensus that the middle classes should be able to buy cheap coke and access discreet medical services, while the poor should be prevented from making money from trafficking and controlled in their access to family planning. It’s a perversion of the way we both think law ought to work, but it works very well in maintaining systems of oppression and injustice—which, as you point out, have their basis in democratic choice. (Blame me: I voted for Rudd).
I suppose our difference rests in that I see the law in both cases primarily as an instrument reinforcing social consensus about class—and in the US, race.
In a lot of ways, I think the ‘hazy romantic’ vision of pregnancy and birth really does hamper the ability of a lot of anti-abortion people to understand why a woman should not have to go through it unwillingly.
Pregnancy and birth can be deeply life-threatening to women – conditions such as Pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome, as well as things like ectopic pregnancies, are not mere ‘inconveniences’.
Even the milder effects of pregnancy are not rosy – regular vomiting; aversion to or cravings for different foods; exhaustion; frequent urination; discomfort sleeping, walking, standing, sitting…
Not to mention birth itself – whether vaginal or caesarian, there really isn’t a way to have a child that doesn’t involve significant effort, and almost always a great deal of pain.
Anyone who has actually seen a woman suffering from pregnancy would not think it was something that should be able to be forced.
The values I’m talking about could come from the moon, Liam, but for the moment I’ll grant you your social hypocrisy. The point I am making is that these values are then enacted into positive law, and because they lack wide social consensus to support them, the laws fail. They fail because they are bad laws; the badness coming about because law is is the wrong instrument to do that kind of moral work.
Let us say, for argument’s sake, that j_p_z and colin are correct in their assessment of abortion, and that it is immoral. That is an entirely separate issue from the enactment of a prohibition on abortion. My point (and Raz’s) is that the discovery of a particular moral truth cannot (and should not) lead inevitably to legislative enforcement. Indeed, enactment may lead to more of the very harm that the law was enacted to prevent (think prohibition of alcohol and — these days — drugs).
When lawmakers attempt to enact morality into law and that morality (I really am uninterested in its origins — it could be religion, social hypocrisy, small green men living on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri) lacks widespread support independent of the law, then the law will fail. Now successful laws are all pretty similar in their operation, but bad laws fail in many different ways.
They may be expensive to enforce — so expensive that no sensible legislature should have passed them on even the most cursory CBA. They may lead to unequal treatment of otherwise identical persons in identical circumstances. They may be more honoured in the breach than the observance. They may (and this is the biggie) lead to more of the harm they were enacted to prevent (as often happened with abortion laws, particularly in developing countries. Talk to an Ob-Gyn who’s spent time in the Philippines or Iran, for example. It’s a very sobering experience).
In brief, there is a right way and a wrong way to ‘do’ law. Most of the time — in the developed world — we get the mix about right, and our laws have genuine efficacy. Some laws, however, are pervasive and ongoing failures — like drug laws. My point is that laws of this type cannot be saved — even if it were actually wrong to take drugs, ie one could make a watertight normative argument against the activity.
This may seem a dry lawyer’s argument, and nowhere near as interesting as the exciting political argument you’re making, but then I have to work with the wreckage of bad law every day. And most of the time, that bad law involves attempts to incorporate morality into law. There are exceptions — many laws are simply badly drafted, with no thought either to clarity or their economic consequences, or because some gormless politician thinks that law is nothing more than a simple tool of policy. But the very worst laws are moral laws where the lawmaker is trying to second-guess the morality of the people, and he’s guessed wrongly.
There does exist now a wide social consensus that the middle classes should be able to buy cheap coke and access discreet medical services, while the poor should be prevented from making money from trafficking and controlled in their access to family planning.
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Is there?
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How do you come to that conclusion? I don’t see this wide consensus being uttered at all. Th Blimpocrat Tories no doubt think this but others? It might have more to do with the capacity of money and cultural capital to negotiate more successfully with power and the general tendency of judges to be more lenient with ‘respectable’ persons.
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I’ve always thought the general prohibition against drugs stemmed from pressure from the US govt. Various arguments abound as to why they do it.
Agree with you, SL – there is a distinction between law and morality, and laws do work best if the law reflects the majority moral opinion. Then they don’t have to do so much work, because the people already believe in them.
I think what SL is asking is whether the law actually works – if it doesn’t work, or if it actually makes the problem worse then it is a bad law. Not bad in a moral sense, but bad because it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to.
With regard to regulation of drugs, the morality of the people is ambivalent and contradictory, as well as hypocritical in some cases. But the law is not ambivalent in itself – it is crystal clear that certain listed drugs = illegal.
I was reading a post on John Birmingham’s blog the other day about a 17 year old girl who overdosed at the Big Day Out because she saw police with sniffer dogs approaching and took 3 ecstasy tablets so she wouldn’t get caught. She died.
Now, supporters of laws against drugs would say that it is to stop people from harming themselves and others in society as a result of drug use. But then we have to ask whether the law succeeds in achieving that aim. Sometimes, as in the case of the girl who died at the BDO, the law achieves the opposite of what it is intended to do. It is intended to stop people from harming themselves with drugs, but this poor silly girl ended up killing herself as a result of the enforcement of those laws (and her own choices as well, it must be said).
So one could argue that the law in that case is a bad law because in that instance, at least, it had the opposite effect from what was intended.
The moral reasons why we might or might not want to have laws which legalise abortion in some circumstances have already been rehearsed in detail above. The bottom line might be that availability of abortion as an option for women in certain circumstances is a good thing (I personally believe this).
But then the question is: how do we put that moral position into a legal form so that it works? We need to be very careful about our laws and how they work: do they achieve what we want them to achieve? If the laws don’t reflect the societal values of the society they purport to govern, will anyone take any notice of them whatsoever? Or do they actually make things worse for women rather than better? You’ve got to be really careful about how you want to legislate morality into law.
the other day about a 17 year old girl who overdosed at the Big Day Out because she saw police with sniffer dogs approaching and took 3 ecstasy tablets so she wouldn’t get caught. She died.
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Ecstasy is a dangerous drug. People take it and fall in love with entire human race for three hours. Can’t have that.
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What a drag festivals with cops and dogs. :(
Yvonne Singh on the international impact of the global gag rule:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/06/women-abortion-global-gag
That’s a mighty positivist view of laws you two have, SL and LE. Surely there’s more to the moral purpose of legislation than those provisions written in the text? Common law might have the basis of common sense and the prevention of harm, but legislation certainly doesn’t.
In the case of drugs laws, certain drugs are unambiguously prohibited not because we have anything particular against those drugs as drugs, but because the prohibition reflects the society legislators would prefer to see—clean, sober, hardworking, and intolerant of alien counter-influences. Anti-abortion law likewise was written with the cruel assumptions that through prohibiting one particular moral evil, a society could be built of sensible, sexually abstinent women. The two examples aren’t laws that were designed to prevent harm; they’re laws made to produce a social result of righteous intolerance.
When people suffer as a consequence of the contradictions, it’s not because they’re bad law, it’s because they very effectively carry out the wishes of legislators. The young woman’s death at the Big Day Out was on the narrow, legal level a result counter to the intent of the law against drugs as substances, but on the larger level, it was the predictable—and to the minds of anti-drug legislators, desirable—consequence of the war on drugs as social influences.
When you say, SL:
I argue that the badness there arising is precisely the point of legal wars on drugs and abortion. You and I can tell that the argument that “illegal drugs kill because they’re illegal therefore they should be illegal” is circular, but we’re rather a minority.
I do make a political rather than a legal argument, finally, because that’s the argument I thought was being had in this thread.
Paulus — you make some interesting arguments, but since I have to defer to religious authority, (others do not consider themselves so obliged) I can’t really engage you in detail.
I will say this: for my own part I have zero desire to “criminalize” these matters. I’m not looking to see anybody get punished over this — I’m concerned with the public moral consensus and understanding, viz., I hope for a world in which people don’t choose abortion because they don’t *want* to, based on their own clarified moral understanding, because they can see for themselves that it’s problematic. Probably unrealistic in my time, but like a man said, Dum spiro, spero.
Me, I hope for a world in which people don’t think they have the right to dictate what goes on inside other people’s bodies, based on their own clarified moral understanding, because they can see that it’s problematic. I’ve just been reading a book about an old couple with, respectively, Alzheimer’s and cancer, at the end of which the one with cancer quietly settles them down in their camper van with the faulty exhaust, locks all the doors and windows and turns the engine on. She’s the narrator, and I was particularly struck by her, and the book’s, final line: ‘It is not for you to say.’
Also, how many times has it been said in this forum over time in these debates, often by women who have had an abortion themselves, that nobody wants to have one? Do you honestly believe anybody does? Do you know any women?
In that case, you have absolutely zero right to expect others to engage you in detail, and yet you have been snottier-than-thou on this thread to me and others for not doing so. You should have said this right at the beginning. If you have to defer to ‘religious authority’ then I have to defer to the authority of reason and enlightened humanism, which tells me that no human being has the right to insist that another human being must build an entire baby with nothing but the resources of her own body, possibly derailing her own life and pre-dooming the foetus’s in the process. So I can’t really engage you in detail.
Oh, relax, Doc. You took a dismissive swipe at me, then you act astonished when I return the compliment. “General — an unforeseen development! The enemy, they’re… they’re firing back! It’s almost as if they can defend themselves in some uncanny way!”
So we can’t agree. Well, I don’t make policy, and I’ve said more than once here that I don’t view any sort of coercion as an acceptable path to travel. So, nothing further to add. Since I last checked in on this thread a few days ago, Paulus, SL and others have taken the arguments in new directions which I’m not well equipped to contribute to; but before bowing out I thought I’d acknowledge Paulus’ contribution which was gracious and lucid and earned general plaudits, even though I can’t concur.
That’s about it. Snottier-than-thou? Well, that’s all relative isn’t it; first we need to know who the ‘thou’ is, before we can really compare.
Hint.
Hint.
I’m always fascinated that discussions about abortion generally have very little to say about the specific sexual act that led to an unwanted pregnancy. It just seems to be generally accepted that it is the wanton woman’s fault and serve her right for having to deal with the consequences…
WARNING – PLOT SPOILER
I saw Revolutionary Road last night.
If you see this movie, look out for the sex scene in the kitchen, where the husband and wife in the movie engage in coitus. The whole thing takes about 3.4 nanoseconds… Kate Winslet gives us the usual oohs and ahhs, but really, I wasn’t convinced there was a lot in it for her. This exceptionally speedy and pedestrian sexual encounter has some rather serious repercussions for Winslet’s character later in the movie.
It made me think of Margaret Jackson’s reference to:
Now if LP hosted a Great SF and /or prequels thread, one could podulate on a prequel to John Wyndham’s “Consider Her Ways” in which a matriarchy applied the power of the state to wring maximum mileage out of failing male reproductive organs.
I bet I’m not the only bloke uneasily crossing his legs at this thought. But what’s sauce for the gander….
For info…
Ban on foreign aid being spent on abortion services lifted
I hope new and expanded international family planning programs include a focus on men taking responsbility for their fertility too, otherwise we’ll continue to
Populate and perish
Really about time it happened but I’m just so thrilled that it did. Bummer about Kevin’s views but no great suprise.
Yes. Kevin could learn a lesson from Brazilian President Lula Da Silva.
Plus, Catholic hospitals are instigating an appeal against the recent Victorian decriminalisation of abortion, because it’s apparently denying them their human rights under a recently signed convention. The specific beef, apparently, is that they are compelled to reveal their religious affiliation in order to refuse to provide the operation.
That’s very interesting, because religious groups of all kinds are compelled to reveal their religious affiliation in order to get those lovely tax breaks that they are so fond of. so It’s funny they weren’t complaining about that. I’m sure they’ll be happy to give up the tax breaks, to be consistent.
Paul, the excommunication of the Brazillian mother who arranged her 9yr old daughter’s medical procedure (after the girl had been raped by her step-father) was a very extreme act.
If it happened here I can imagine even Tony Abbott saying what Lula said: “As a Christian and a Catholic, I deeply regret that a bishop of the Catholic Church has such a conservative attitude. The doctors did what had to be done: save the life of a girl of nine years old. In this case, the medical profession was more right than the Church.”
We in the First World really don’t know what some in those societies have to go through.
Lady Bracknell,
{deep bow}
We’ve not been formally introduced.
Forgive my impertinence, but are you by any chance descended from Lord Bracknell Creep, the celebrated Taxation Advisor to the aristocracy?
your Humble and Obedient Interlocutor,
Mr Wilde Daze, Esq.
Mr Daze, I think you’ll find she is a Greenslime on the mother’s side. Hope this helps.
Ha – a thin disguise is worse than no disguise at all.
Dear Ms Cat
Thank you for proferring that identification. I had not realised the Greenslime possessed a “mother’s side”. I had imagined it was all hermaphrodism and primogeniture back to Methuselah.
with all good wishes,
your grateful reader,
Mr Wilde Daze Esq
Hi all, long time reader first time poster :)
Colin @ 32: ah two of my favourite fallacies! The fallacy of necessity – because some people rape others we should counsel everyone not to have sex till they’re married. That’ll stop AIDS and unwanted pregnancies. Then the argument from popularity fallacy. 40% of Americans believe the world is about 6000 years old so that obviously shows they’re right – after all, so many people couldn’t be wrong…could they?
Oh, Mr Wilde Daze, please give my best wishes to your navel, or fundament, or whichever part of your anatomy it is you meet next on your journeys.
(Is this about me using a ye olde pronoun to begin a sentence with? Or do I just become paranoid whenever someone creates a sockpuppet for the next post after mine?)
Reckon you’re wrong about Abbott, Nickws @ 128. He’d be approving of the excommunication (while perhaps regretting the original rape). He’s not a very nice man.
Dear nickws
Sorry to have troubled you. I was in fact reacting to the name “Lady Bracknell”, who as I understand it was featured in a lurid expose by my late Uncle Oscar (on his mother’s side). Yes, Oscar Wilde. As a young boy I was advised never to read Uncle’s writings and I have steadfastly held to that course. It seemed best.
I meant neither harm nor disrespect to your posts.
with best wishes,
Mr Wilde Daze Esq
WD, is ‘Lady Bracknell’ a Sydney gay community inhouse joke name for Abbott?
Perhaps he Christened himself…
Ew, don’t bother answering that.
Don’t feed it, please, Nick :-)
W wld lk t s brtn lss s “rght” nd mr s cmplsrly rtrctv fr th mddl clss wht lds nd thr tds schl mrm srmns.
Where’s a moderator when you need one?
Crossed wit ya!
Corr blimey, the blippin’ middle class white lady attacks!
Thanks Helen!