It has been reported that one in three terminations of pregnancy at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide is performed on students from abroad.
The emphasis of experts and authorities quoted in these reports is on the need for improved sexual and reproductive health education and information for international students, and nobody will quibble with such calls. However, it should also be obvious to anyone whose critical faculties have not been overborne by misogynist ressentiment, and whose capacity for compassion has not been vitiated by religoius fanaticism, that the last thing the young women in these difficult circumstances need is for the Criminal Law to intrude in their cases.
Meanwhile, Tegan Leach and Sergie Brennan are still waiting for Anna Bligh to grow some vertebrae.
This is a very interesting story, though disturbing.
Amongst other things, it implies that the sex isn’t safe.
The universities have a duty of care here. At the very least, the lecture notes should come packaged with condoms.
I have no issue with abortion where the physical health of the mother is in danger or due to birth abnormalities, whilst still tragic it is necessary.
However the media highlighting of these cases is misleading because we all know that the vast majority of abortions are not due to these facts but are due to what I call lifestyle reasons. People having sex and then not accepting that this biological procedure can result in pregnancy..even if you use protection.
Your last line could be changed to “Meanwhile, the unborn are still waiting for their mother’s to grow some vertebrae” and look at adoption instead of termination. Yes yes I know this last line is going to get me in trouble on this blog and I’m not trolling just offering a heartfelt opinion as my wife is adopted.
Tropsmurf, the unborn are not waiting for anything because waiting is an activity which can only be engaged in by conscious persons.
Paul, that depends on your definition of consciousness, which would be a debate for another time.
My disagreement with ‘lifestyle’ abortions is down to my belief in individual responsibility. If you choose to engage in an action you should also choose to accept the consequences of that action especially when it impacts others.
My ex-missus used to work in one of the university health services (about 10 – 15 years ago, so pre-voluntary student union – thank you, Mr Howard). They had this huge lolly jar full of condoms with a “Help Yourself” sign, and apparently many of the overseas students did. It’s unlikely they intended to use them as party balloons and water bombs.
Tropsmurf, stop trolling.
It only took two comments until a forced birther jumped in. *Sigh* And attempting argument with them is a pointless exercise in frustration.
Those poor girls. How horrible for them to be in a foreign country and get pregnant.
Fine #6, agree 120 per cent. A young Chinese woman who finds herself needing to terminate an unintended pregnancy in her first few months of the difficult and often very lonely cultural transition involved in studying in Australia is hardly engaging in a “lifestyle choice”.
The use of the word “lifestyle” is a deliberate trivialisation of the woman’s experience. The idea that anyone with an accidental pregnancy should just suck it up is a deliberate punishment of sexually active women – I don’t hear calls for “the couples” to take responsibility, only the women.
I’m reminded of a song my mate Terry wrote and used to sing. It’s a 12 bar, and starts like this: “The woman always pays, and that’s the way it should be.” It used to bring the house down … around his ears, even though it was sung with his tongue firmly in his cheek.
I’m really glad this issue has come to light as I was aware of it while at DIAC and dealing with international student issues when all the hoo-ha was focussing on the racism / assault issue.
It’s not just the uni health services that have found themselves struggling to deal with things like abortion, but certainly in Tas and I’m sure in other jurisdictions there was a major flow-on to state health services. In general most international students (remembering their countries of origin) have not had access to anything like what we’d call proper sex education, and on top of that there are other health issues, particularly around sexual health that were spiking in the population. To its credit the health services here particularly around multicultural health were working to move from reactive to more proactive – trying to get info out there etc., but it can be a very hard population to get effective engagement with.
I also found while working on this that sexual freedom was a big and I think largely unreported / mostly ignored drawcard for some internationals students. As a state-specific example, people at unitas told me that when they did overseas trips spruiking the uni to prospective students, they would often be approached afterwards and asked about Tasmania’s laws on homosexuality. The students were very aware that Tasmania has globally recognisdd progressive laws in this area, and many of these students were interested in Tas specifically because they wanted a safe place to explore their sexuality, something that’s next to impossible in many origin countries. Obviously this would not be a factor in their choice of uni that they would be sharing with parents.
This has also resulted in unintended consequences which (I think / hope) the uni is now working on – for eg, students assume that having progressive laws on homosexuality meaning that they can be overtly homosexual as couples in public, and then getting a very nasty shock; and definitely issues around safe sex.
Now we can see that for heterosexual students, issues around safe sex and female student autonomy is also a pretty big issue. Anyone else get the feeling that we really didn’t prepare as a country for the massive numbers of international students we have accepted?
Further to myriad74 last par, I think there’s a real and long overdue discussion to be had about how much of the lucre which international students bring into the Australian education system goes into support services to help them with issues like those which have been raised on this thread, and especially in myriad’s comment.
My guess’d be none of it, Paul. Do any of the unis still have student health or counselling services?
David, Griffith still has a health service and a counselling service for students and staff.
Agreed, Paul. I think it’s pretty shameful the blind eye that regulators and govt have largely turned towards the O/S student racket – and not just at a university level, either.
There doesn’t seem to be any formal means of orienting foreign students to the local cultural and social environment and the outcomes are frequently dire. Students walking into bars that cater for a restricted and violent cultural groups, for example, and not realising their mistake until they had already been assaulted – an incident related to me by a relative who works in student support. Leaving them to work it out for themselves seems really unsatisfactory, especially since I recall that a lot of locals really like to watch people from other cultures making faux pas and so can’t be relied upon for guidance.
So the argument is then that the unborn children must be victims of abortion for the convenience of healthy parents who simple decide that despite their choice to have sex they don’t want to adopt the responsibility this entails. Yet more of the responsbility free culture that sections of the left promote. If you choose to have sex then you need to be prepared to accept the consequences. Ending the life of the unborn child for convenience is wrong. Abortion like capital punishment, torture and war is part of the culture of violence.
Abortion should remain a crime and doctors doing abortions should be charged and deregistered. A just world of non violence will never come about while abortion is seen as a solution. Killing is not a solution.
The abortions in question were predominantly in Chinese students. What most of the comments here fail to take into account is that abortion is a common and accepted routine form of birth control in China and in other Asian countries such as Japan. Abortion is ‘normal’ and does not have the stigma it carries here, whereas oral contraception is often seen as ‘abnormal’ and having harmful side effects (and is very difficult to access in Japan, for example). So it’s wrong to think that better sex education would fix this [non] problem for Chinese students. The notion that there are female Chinese students in Australia suffering in isolation because they have not been ‘oriented to the local cultural and social environment’ is a bit of an assumption. The reality is that many of them are not isolated, but simply continuing to adhere to their own cultural and social norms, which include abortion as a routine method of contraception.
Spana, not every one thinks abortion is a sin like you do. China has a strict 1 child policy and India has enforce a 2 child policy. When you live in a society where the numbers of children you have are restricted you want to be sure its the right time and right father.
Agree that universities and colleges should take positive steps to acclimatise students to life in Australia and adult responsibilities for creating a social life, controlling fertility and managing their study and work commitments. Often those in most need are the hardest to engage.
I was going to say basically what Michael2 said – but I would not have said it as well as he did.
Just so you know, Tropsmurf, getting pregnant involves two people, only one of whom has to carry the can of an unwanted pregnancy.
And wot Michael2 said.
So to be against abortion you have to either be “overborne by misogynist ressentiment” or “vitiated by religoius fanaticism.” How about those who genuinely believe that the unborn are human? Oh yeah. Forgot about them. (BTW: I do not agree that a 2 month foetus is human. But a 7 month foetus definitely is).
But Paul’s not finished. How much of the “lucre which international students bring into Australia” goes into support services? Perhaps we should give free health care to tourists as well?
The only reason for taking foreign students is to make money. It is no different to Japan selling me a Honda. Should they give me support services? Places at the good unis are way over-subscribed. When the market starts softening, we might start offering some optional extras. There’s just no need at the moment.
“The only reason for taking foreign students is to make money.”
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No it isn’t. There’s lots of reasons to take foreign students even if you didn’t make money out of them. Indeed, it’s something Australia did in the 80s, and still does today for a small number today.
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Also, if it happens the case that some are going to have some problems that you know can be easily avoided, I really don’t see what the problem is with a bit of an education campaign directed towards them, especially given these are essentially free to run. Less contentious things, for example, that some groups of foreign students get taught about are how to rent a place, littering and other forms of etiquette, and how to use a non-squat style toilet. I don’t see why things like contraception can’t be added to the list.
Conrad – educating foreign students is Australia’s fourth largest export – we are in it for the filthy lucre.
Students who study at established universities alongside Australian students have access to student services but students studying in campuses set up primarily or only for foreign students have no student services available.
Many of the colleges are privately owned to provide an income and generate wealth for the owner. The owners of the 4 Meridian Colleges in Melbourne bought a Sydney college for $8m and needed the money out of their existing colleges now, TOO BAD that it was 2 weeks before the end of the year.
As federal government funding fell per capita the federal government allowed full fee paying overseas students so many universities started accepting overseas students to make up for the funding shortfalls. Although students are expected to abide by a range of visa conditions there is no compliance regime.
Of course “one in three abortions at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide is performed on students from abroad.” because one in three tertiary students comes from abroad.
The main reason for decriminalising abortion is that the law is ignored, except in North Queensland, and has been ignored for 30 years.
Leaving abortion laws on the statute books makes the law look an ass because the law is flouted 120,000+ times annually. When the law is selectively applied like it was in FNQ then the justice system looks arbitrary and capricious and not worthy of our respect.
“Conrad – educating foreign students is Australia’s fourth largest export – we are in it for the filthy lucre”
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We’re in it for _multiple_ reasons, and only one those reasons is money. You have indirect reasons related to money, in that many will fill professions Australians are too thick or lazy to do (e.g., engineering, IT etc.), many will have language skills Australians are also too lazy to acquire etc. . There are non-monetary reasons too, in that we might actually be helping some of the countries that they come from, both directly when they return, or indirectly if they, say, send money back home. Some people even think they might be making our cities more vibrant and interesting — try thinking of what, say, Melbourne city was like 30 years ago, and compare it to now. Even more indirectly, many are coming from groups that have some positive values that many Australians have lost, like trying to do the best you can at school and university.
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Given this (and given the money they give us), I really don’t see the problem with a bit of education, and I agree with PN, that the idea of criminal law entering the fold is crazy.
Wow Conrad – you hate Aussies!
Who can blame him for hating Aussies? It is simply staggering to me that abortion hasn’t already been decriminalised. This is a country full of backward, blinkered morons.
It’s not “hate Aussies”, but working in the education sector, it’s just what you see (and it’s backed up by educational statistics also if you care to look, especially with males). You also get sick of the absolutely stereotyped view of OS students people have. Really, most (a) don’t want to have abortions; (b) would prefer a good quality education over a bad one; c) are equally as competent as local students (in fact, moreso in many areas such as mathematics thanks to the stupidification of the Australian curriculum); and (d) want a decent job in the area which they study. Somehow or other this gets changed into something like (a) most are here only to buy visas; (b) all courses they do are shoddy; (c ) once they’ve got their visa they will get an entirely new job from the area they were trained in (and this is what they want); and (d) they are responsible for all ills of the university sector (which is quite the opposite of the reality — if it wasn’t for them, I’d hate to think of what the sector would be like now). Obviously I can add use abortions like contraception to this list to.
Digging around on the web, it’s worthwhile looking at the real rates of abortion before claiming people like the Japanese do it as birth control:
This paper for example: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/25s3099.html
finds Australia is higher than Japan. So obviously if the Japanese are lower than Australians yet Australians don’t use it as birth control but the Japanese do, then it must be the case Australians are doing it for fun.
Conrad you’re racist, you are anti-Aussie males in particular.
Agree that if Australia is to continue to develop its export oriented education industry then it needs to safeguard its reputation by controlling the quality of the courses offered and perhaps who can set up a college
In this era of globalisation why should foreign students expect to work in Australia any more than Australians do
Maths education is Australia like other English speaking countries has always been weaker than Maths education in Russia, Germany and China. That will require a systemic change all the way through the school system.
I remember an Australia where the brightest studied the “Asian Five” to become doctors, scientists, engineers and IT specialists had blue eyes.
If Australia’s foreign student tertiary education industry is based on the expectation of permanent residence, if the visa rules change then will the student demand remain?
I pointed out that abortion numbers at the Adelaide Womens Hospital are roughly in line with the number of foreign students in the community. Approximately one in three university places are available for full fee paying students – who are often foreign and until recent years could not be Australian citizens.
From the Sydney Morning Herald
“the sudden collapse of the Global Campus Management Group, which ran four colleges in Sydney and Melbourne with about 3000 students.
“Global Campus Management Group is owned by a Cayman Island-based company, GCM Sinoed, which the Herald understands is owned by a Chinese national.
“Mr Basnet has a degree in biology and experience in accounting, but his parents mortgaged their Katmandu home to put him through the $26,000 two-year commercial cookery course because it was the best way to secure a permanent residency in Australia.” http://www.smh.com.au/national/tenth-school-for-overseas-students-collapses-20091106-i254.html
conrad – and others – calculating abortion rates for whole countries is a difficult exercise as there is no agreed systematic way of collecting what might fall under the term abortion even in a relatively sophisticated court like Australia.
There was some discussion of this a long time ago on Helen Cast Irons Balcony – if you do a search you should get the thread up.
I can’t get the site up. Maybe theres a problem.
Helen – yoohoo anybody home – its only me luv…
“Maths education is Australia like other English speaking countries has always been weaker than Maths education in Russia, Germany and China.”
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No it hasn’t. Try looking at international comparison benchmarks over time (e.g., the TIMMS, or you can go back further into the 70s with just Australian data to see the drop over time). Also calling me a racist for pointing out Australian males are going to be the new underclass is hardly worthwhile. Try checking out what proportion of new university graduates are male, or which subjects males beat females in at in high school, and then come back and tell whether my claim was unreasonable. Also, it’s not me making the crazy unsubstantiated claims (see e.g., Michael2 at #17), like that the Japanese and Chinese are obviously so stupid that they use abortion as contraception.
I’m not buying this argument that boys are going backwards. Boys are doing no better or worse than they ever did; girls, however, are doing a lot better.
I think the difference in comparative male/female achievement is because both the education system and society at large started giving girls options they never had before and this led to a confidence to move into more traditionally male academic streams such as the maths and science and, later on, engineering.
Had girls always had the same educational opportunities as boys then this would have not only been the case for years, it would be an accepted fact that girls seem to match (if not better) boys in terms of academic achievement.
Why, I don’t know. Maybe someone with expertise in this area can tell us.
Spana, I see that you are back. We have an unfinished conversation from a previous thread. You say ” If you choose to have sex then you need to be prepared to accept the consequences”.
So I repeat my earlier question- I never want to have children- so does that mean that I should never have heterosexual sex?
There would be a sort of macabre fascination in watching the Liberal Right twist and turn if it could be proved that VSU had led to increased abortions. What would Tony Abbott do?
That said, I’m pretty sure any effect would be small, and impossible to seperate from the noise. The main reason is that universities have generally funded the health services from general revenue. There may have been small cutbacks, but generally nothing major. As far as the overseas students go, the support services for them at universities has often been protected, at least partially, from VSU induced funding reductions. As noted above, a bigger problem is the students studying at private colleges, who generally have no support services at all.
Nevertheless, one thing that has been badly affected at many campuses is student organisation initiatives like safer-sex week. I’m fairly sure the number of free condoms distributed has fallen on campuses. In some cases this would just hit student budgets as they pay for them themselves, but there probably have been a few more unwanted pregnancies, as well as more STIs.
But that’s only right and proper, feral. After all, sexual activity without any of the unpleasant possible consequences would cause the collapse of civilization itself. Wasn’t that the reason the Right got so bent out of shape about the contraceptive pill back in the day?
FX, I was in the country sampling the alternative lifestyle that would have been mine had I not made the choice to pop out the two sprogs – and of course I love’em dearly and wouldn’t have it any other way – but yes, long sleeping (with only temporary wakings due to possums having a marital next to the window), fattening cheeses, wine, DVDS, books and walks with the dogs.
The posts you were seeking are here and here.
Angela,
If you don’t want children then by all means take all the precautions you can to avoid that. However, you must understand that sex can result in pregnancy. It may be a possibility even if you take precautions. A baby is created. This is a life which deserves respect and protection. If you still do not want the baby then you can adopt the child out and give it to a couple. Many couples would very willingly adopt it. However, to end its life is not acceptable. Adopt it out if you never want children. So to answer your question, the rights of a child to life takes precedence over your right to have responsibility free sex.
Spana, I will clarify for you- I do not wish to progess a pregnancy AT ALL, it’s not something I want to do with my body or my life, nor do I approve (in my world view),of bringing more people into this polluted, over-crowded world. So according to you, no heterosexual sex for me then – not ever, just in case? I recall that in the previous post, you said that real “feminism” meant that women would be supported to give birth. How would your “real feminism” address my absolute disinclination to breed – would you really insist I never have heterosexual sex – and do you still see this as “real feminism”. Is it really down to breeding v celibacy – is your world so black amd white? Woulsn’t it be really weird to condemn hetrosexual non-breeders to lifelong celibacy and stil call that feminism?
Clearly Spana is advocating gay sex for everyone.
When men try that cheesy line, “what do you look for in a bloke”. I usually reply, “a vasectomy”. You can borrow it if you like Angela.
Angela, if the result of your sexual activity will be the ending of the life of an unborn child then yes. Humans need to accept that there are some natural consequences to their behavior. Obviously you would like a biological system where sex did not result in pregnancy. Tough. That is not the way of the world or nature and you might just have to accept it. What comes through is a me, me, me attitude so prevalent in the left. Its not just all about you and what you want. The life of another is also aconsideration.
You may not like to go through the process of growing and having a child but that is life. If you have sex then ir may happen. Because you don’t like it does not mean that ending the child’s life is okay. There are many things I don’t like in life but killing another person to remove the unpleasant things, especially if I have created them is not an option. Your point on feminism is irrelevent. Feminism and non violence are both principles I adhere to. Equality for women, equality for all human life. non violence in solving problems. Abortion is not feminist and is a form of violence. A just world requires consistency and yes, at times black and white principles.
aah so you were up at Daylesford laying around smoking dope and getting on the piss and listening to Jefferson Airplane
THat’s completely untrue!! I was at Deans Marsh.
Spana stop talking nonsense! There is no such thing as an unborn child!
Even in Australia, pregnancy and childbirth is still a dangerous activity that can result in death and harm to the woman.
billie, I don’t think Spana will stop talking nonsense until we all agree that birth control is sinful, that women should have no right to decide what happens to their bodies, and that zygotes are fully human, and thus have even more rights than the women who carry them.
Billie, this only makes sense if you claim that all abortions are performed on students. Which is patently untrue.
Rainne @ 48, That comment was made because the discussion was getting emotional about the high number of abortions performed on students from abroad which I put into some perspective by pointing out that a third of university students come from abroad. All male and female students can benefit from sex education, access to accurate fertility, contraceptive and STI information.
No I don’t know if women presenting for abortion are more likely to be students, women with children, women without partners. I don’t know the Adelaide abortion scene so I don’t know whether students frequent the Adelaide Womens Hospital and mature women use Marie Stopes or other private clinic.
Wevs, Spana.
Until you start advocating for forced blood and organ donation then you don’t get to pick and choose which people are forced to give their bodies to keep another person alive.
David David, once again pro abortionists confuse abortion with birth control. Birth control prevents a pregnancy, a life being created. Abortion ends an already created life. At least stick to the facts. As usual the abortion lobby focuses on life at 6 weeks and ignores the horrific relity of abortion past 20 weeks, such as the horrific case of the baby diagnosed as a dwarf and killed by lethal injection at over 30 weeks. Injecting a baby with poison to end its life before delivery is not just about a bunch of cells. This baby was a life which was fully viable. It was a child. The choice was between delivering a dead baby or a living one. Oh wait, Billie has just informed us that there is no such thing as an unborn child. Umm, 31 weeks? 36 weeks? 39 weeks? Nope. According to Billie a second before birth there is no unborn child. Just a woman/couples right to ignore science and kill what they don’t want. Seriously Billie? Do you really believe that?
Most abortions occur before 12 weeks, like probably 98% or more. Abortions that take place after 12 weeks are dangerous to womans health and a much more complicated procedure with far more emotional angst.
When a foetus dies in utero in the third trimester, its generally not viable and it is a distressing and complex procedure to remove a dead foetus.
You don’t know whether the dwarf highlighted by Senator Julian McGauran in Parliament was viable or seriously disabled. Would you trust the word of that reactionary climate denialist misogynist? McGauran is staunchly single so he isn’t going to rear a disabled child and he isn’t interested in your children inheriting a liveable planet.
No, that was a health of mother issue. She was seriously unwell and the abortion wasn’t done until it had been past doctors and ethicists.
What “Spana” doesn’t mention is that Julian McGauran, the piece of human shit who thought it OK to publish a woman’s private medical records to advance his personal political agenda, could only find one example that was as lineball as that. That’s because they’re not as awfully common as the forced-birthers would like to make out. Don’t be in any doubt about the fact that the awful McGauran would have been happy to exploit other cases, had he been able to find any.
McGauran’s action set off a witch hunt that tarnished the reputations of the doctors at RWH. It took years for the doctors and the hospital to clear their names, meanwhile funding is cut, doctors change specialities and women get poorer quality health care.
What were his motives? McGauran has a reputation for being dull. Was he trying to increase funding to the Catholic maternity hospital?
The Mercy Hospital is funded to deliver 12% of babies in Melbourne. As it’s a Catholic Hospital it will not give contraceptive advice, tie fallopian tubes or perform terminations. The women in the feeder zone for this hospital get substandard care which the grateful taxpayer pays for. Ethicists are questioning the accountability over the standard of service provided by tax payer money.
My girlfriend is from Taiwan and buying a visa is absolutely the reason her and about 6 of her mates decided to enroll in colleges here.
Just because you don’t like that fact doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The majority of non-univerity “education” TEFL institutions are absolutely in the business of selling visas.
Spana, my characterisation of your position was deliberately slightly exaggerated to point out its absurdity.
Everyone else got the point, I’m sure.