By James O’Neill*
The nomination to the United States Supreme Court of Amy Coney Barrett has raised again the issue of access to abortion, legalised in the United States in the decision in Roe v Wade 410 US 113 (1973) 47 years ago. If Ms Barrett is confirmed as a member of the Supreme Court it will make the conservative majority of the court 6:3. It is difficult to see why her appointment would make a difference to the United States abortion laws. The conservative capacity to make such changes already existed.
What her prospective appointment has done, however, is to raise the issue of a women’s access to abortion as a live political issue. Despite the undoubted significance of the Roe v Wade decision, the issue of abortion and a woman’s rights thereto has been far from settled.
The legal right to have an abortion is only part of the equation and other issues have equal importance. Unless all of those issues are addressed and satisfactorily resolved, the right to have an abortion per se, can be a nugatory one. There are a number of other issues that need to be addressed.
Those who support abortion law reform, i.e. the decriminalisation of the law forbidding abortion, are still waging battles around the world. Roe v Wade was a milestone in the United States, but the legal right to an abortion had existed elsewhere for many years. Sweden for example has had legislation regulating the legal termination of pregnancy since 1939 (Journal of Biosocial Science Vol 3 (2) April 1971 pp173-192.)
Other developed countries, by contrast, followed years or even decades behind Roe v Wade. In the major Australian States of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria, for example, abortion was only legalised in 2018, 2019 and 2006 respectively.
The legal availability of abortion did not, of course, mean that it first became available at that time. Women anxious to terminate the pregnancy had long sought and found the means to do so for a long time before the act was decriminalised. What the restrictive law did do, however, was either force women to have an unwanted pregnancy or risk an action that was not only criminal but also carried significant health risks, being performed in unsafe conditions by inadequately qualified persons.
The decriminalisation of the procedure was not the end of the matter, as the United States experience vividly illustrates. The availability of the procedure varies widely from State to State where the removal of criminalisation was only one step in the process.
What the United States experience vividly illustrates is that decriminalisation is a necessary but not a sufficient condition in removing obstacles to the termination of an unwanted pregnancy. To be effective, the law must also provide both the means and the resources for the procedure to be actually carried out.
A reduction in the number of unwanted pregnancies, and hence the demand for abortion access could most effectively be approached by reducing the incidence of unwanted pregnancies in the first place. This is clearly achieved by women having access to safe and reliable contraception. Here one runs into one of the great paradoxes of the anti-abortion supporters. They are also overwhelmingly the holders of conservative views on both knowledge about and access to reliable contraception, particularly by unmarried persons.
It should be self-evident that the most effective means of reducing the number of abortions would be to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. The most efficient and effective way to reduce unwanted pregnancies is to prevent the conception occurring in the first place.
“Keeping your legs crossed” or “just say no” has never been realistic advice. Yet it is still advocated by conservative sections of the community as an effective antidote to an unwanted pregnancy. It is also inherently illogical to punish those unable or unwilling to accept such unrealistic advice by forcing them to continue with an unwanted pregnancy.
Having a child is not simply a consequence of a night’s carelessness, forgetfulness or ignorance. It is in effect a lifetime consequence. For many decades the result of the unwanted pregnancy could be removed by having a child adopted at birth. While such programs had their altruistic element, providing a supply of babies to couples unable to have children of their own, there were also huge social and psychological costs for the women obliged to give up their child in this way.
Changes in social attitudes to “unmarried mothers” together with the provision of financial support, radically changed the instance of adoptions. In New Zealand for example, the legislative changes in the late 1960s had precisely that effect. The word “illegitimate” was legally abolished, social attitudes changed, and raising a child as a single mother was no longer financially impossible.
The significant reduction in the social stigma of having a baby whilst not married, and the easing of the financial pressures have not been enough. There are still far too many unwanted pregnancies as the demand for abortion services amply illustrates.
Whilst it is not a complete answer, the solution for those opposed to abortion on moral, ethical or religious grounds, is to prevent as far as possible the occurrence of the unwanted pregnancy. History amply demonstrates that will not be achieved by moral exhortations or legislative discrimination.
The only realistic policy option is to reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancy as far as possible. It will never be eliminated, and there will always be medical reasons for termination. For those truly wanting a radical reduction in the incidence of abortion, however, the present policies are clearly inadequate. Restricting access to abortion as history amply demonstrates is a manifestly worse policy option. It is these broader policy options that legislators should be addressing rather than focusing on the views of a prospective Justice of the Supreme Court.
*Geopolitical analyst. He may be contacted at jamesoneill83@icloud.com
Gates needs as many aborted babies as he can get for his vaccines.
What Is Coming Through That Needle?
The Problem of Pathogenic Vaccine Contamination
Benjamin McRearden
“……….There is an even stronger statement dating back to 1990. A scientist in the field writes, “The present concern is for safety of vaccines made using transformed or neoplastic mammalian cells that may contain endogenous contaminating viruses or integrated gene sequences from oncogenic viruses. There is also concern for use of plasmid vectors employing promoter elements from oncogenic viruses. The principal concern for safety lies with retention of residual DNA in the vaccine, especially since induction of cancer is a single-cell phenomenon, and a single functional unit of foreign DNA integrated into the host cell genome might serve to induce cell transformation as a single event or part of a series of multifactorial events. Current proposed standards for vaccines would permit contamination with up to 100 pg [picograms] of heterologous DNA per dose. This is equivalent to about 10(8) ‘functional lengths’ of DNA. Total safety would seem to require complete absence of DNA from the product.”(31)
Please note that 10(8) means 10 to the power of 8, or 100,000,000 “functional lengths” of DNA are allowed per dose of vaccine. Is there something wrong with this picture? How long will the general public be subjected to these vaccine products that according to this information, are nowhere near safe?…………….”
http://www.vaclib.org/sites/vac_coming_thru.html
What seems to be missed is the mere fact that the presumed “solution” to all sorts of hedonistic crimes is to murder the innocent. While it is lamentable and horrible that some women bear children that are conceived of rape and incest, to imagine that the “fix” is to murder the innocent is a worse crime than the cause crime. The widow and the orphan are much more than just women and children whose husband/father has died. The portion of children murdered because they were conceived in rape is infinitesimally small anyway; most are simply done away with as an inconvenience.
How is that much different to Herod’s edict to kill all the male children around Bethlehem because he thought one of them might pose a threat to his comfort and convenience?
We might also wonder about the difference between cannibalism by ingestion or injection.
All I can say is there’s more hope of a round table discussion in the U.S. than in the Great South Land
As evidenced by the ejection of Troy Newman(4th bod down):
https://www.crikey.com.au/2016/06/15/australias-personae-non-gratae/
Being as objective as possible I’d ask “What’s more dangerous, a dickhead like Julien Blanc or a Thought Police coup ?”
This so-called doctor confirms that abortions are being routinely carried out without informed consent
I wasn’t really persuaded either way until a vehemently anti friend asked me to store some of her books and videos. Boy, were my eyes opened as to how out of touch with the real World most people actually are.
The “legalisation” would have to be THE most significant shift of the Age
A few days ago I listened to the long video I think under the headline Our Fiona and she was saying the prominent surgeon Chang who was murdered a few years ago was dealing in body parts. The murderer was labelled terrorist which I guess straightaway puts you under a different jurisdiction. Nifty work, NWO. At the time I had the impression it was a mind-controlled drug crazy or similar.
Well I don’t know if anything is true but any repair shop needs a reliable supply of good quality spare parts. If you can’t get the parts how are you going to beat the competition. They must be doing lots of parts in China for export.
Speaking of China i see this morning on the China news they are benevolently bringing piped water to the Tibetans who apparently have lived in the mountains for centuries at least but don’t have enough water. So now they are probably fenced off from their water and there is no choice but to drink the Chinese water, whatever they put in that. Next they’ll be trying to do the water in Taiwan. I think Nostradamus called this period starting about now “the time of troubles”. How time flies, it seems we already got there.
Ah well, if we can all be conned into believing that all life is an accident of chemistry and that the predominant rule is “survival of the fittest” or some kind of “selection” then there is NO sustainable argument against the elitist’s “Brave New World” or any kind of eugenics etc.
It should be perfectly obvious to anyone not deprived of the powers of observation and reason that the difference between a freshly dead organism and a live one is not mere chemistry; it is the lack of some metaphysical thing that makes the chemistry work as a living organism. A freshly dead organism has all the chemicals of the live one, including untold millions of highly specialised proteins etc. that never, ever, even one of which, could form by accident as attested by the fact that as soon as an organism dies all the chemistry begins to degrade into its simplest components; it doesn’t spontaneously reform into another “new, improved” organism even though all the chemical components that never spontaneously appear in non-life “nature” are present.
What should really terrify Materialists and Naturalists is the universal observation that even a grass seed has no potential to be anything but a grass plant that can produce more seeds of its kind. A monkey zygote is only an undeveloped monkey that has no potential to be anything but a decrepit old monkey. A monkey zygote is a monkey at a stage of its growth… it’s not a bacteria, moss, carrot, fish, lizard, rodent, potential man or god. Likewise, a human embryo is a human; nothing else!
Life is only transmitted from life. Dead sperm or ovum do not produce babies as many barren couples have been grieved to know.
Anyhow, the take-away is that one can’t become God by just killing other people even though that is the assumption of diabolical narcissism in the ghettos or the government.
Great comment. Ditto the one above.
The new age technocracy is the cause of great sufferings and hardships.
Where porn has become the only religion permitted, in the reset for new normal, abortions are not
decreasing. Maybe that’s the plan for mass sterilisation resulting in test tube humanoids.
Who knows? Everything is inverted, Creation is now replaced by destruction.
Only the truths revealed by Jesus can save us from this mess.
They are not complicated to follow, have faith in His advice, for better living.
There are billions of different lives on earth, but only two paths to choose – Love or evol.
Murder anyway anywhere in any form is prohibited by our Creator. His law is simple, trying to live by it much more difficult now, with all these temptations in artificial insanity.