Remember the brouhaha earlier this year? You know, the one about abortion and whether our taxes should fund terminal ‘medical procedures’ carried out because the unwanted lump of ‘non-human’ cells has the wrong human genitalia?
Well it’s back in the news.
Not because our politicians are finally going to do something useful and say no, it’s a waste of money to fund a practice that, at best, could be described as ethically questionable. That little idea has already been proposed and shunted off into the ‘It’s too hard to make a decision’ basket. Then it was nailed shut when the Liberal Party promised during the election campaign to leave all abortion funding arrangements in place.
But hey, the Liberals are not the bad guys.
This time the story is that Doctor Mark Hobart is now at risk of losing his medical licence because he refused to help kill a baby girl and instead did his best to save her life.
That’s rather ironic, considering the context of the original media storm surrounding the proposal made by Senator John Madigan to prevent Medicare funds going to those who carry out abortion simply because bub comes with the wrong birthday suit.
This idea was poo-poohed because, apparently, there was no evidence that gender-selection abortions occur in Australia.
The outrage was led by the always lovely Greens Senator from South Australia, Sarah Hanson-Young. For those who don’t know her, Ms S. H-Y is the not-so-shy face of the ludicrous in Australian politics.
So when the story broke, Sarah and her lovable Green companions decried it as a stunt. Gender-selection abortions in Australia was an outrageous claim, they claimed with outrage. There was no proof they cried, as if that disproved the proof offered by a doctor.
Well, now the Victorian Medical Board has put Dr Hobart on the chopping block precisely because he did not assist in a gender-selection abortion. I’m not sure that collective logic is one of our politicians’ strongest points, but it would seem a bit hard to claim that gender-selection abortions don’t occur in Australia when doctors are hung, drawn and quartered because they refuse to carry them out.
But proof is not really an issue when you are a politician. They obviously ignored this little headline from 2011 that gave graphic details of how twins conceived through IVF were aborted in Victoria because they were boys.
Just in case you are wondering, IVF is also subsidised with our taxes. And by pointing this out, I’m not going out on a crazy limb and suggesting anything logical, like that we should have an interest in how our taxes are wast, I mean utilised to stimulate the economy.
Also, it seems that the Victorian Medical Board, which exists to ensure that doctors meet minimum standards, has its own problem with logic. So while Victorian women are being infected with hepatitis C or dying in abortion clinics, it has, instead, chosen to go after the doctor that didn’t end a life.
And this is where I’d like to delve a little into the murky world of simple Australian politics. Because while pretty much everyone in federal parliament has adopted the same do-nothing course of action on gender-selection abortion, not all are considered the same way by those who oppose this barbaric practice.
Yes, logic eludes more than just our federal politicians and the Victorian Medical Board. That is why there is an illogical hierarchy of ‘badness’ attributed to political parties by those who are concerned about pro-life issues.
At the super-bad end of the spectrum are the Greens. And they are super-bad. Not because they are any different than the Liberal or Labor parties on the issue of gender-selection abortion (or any other type of abortion). But because they, like the Liberal and Labor parties, don’t want to do anything about it. They just get the super-bad title because they are more vociferously outspoken about sitting on their hands than their bigger brothers in parliament.
The Greens don’t actually have the power to do nothing in parliament, but they like taking the credit for it when nothing happens. So when Senator Madigan’s bill came up, they went more berko with outrage than the rest and insisted with the greatest force that nothing be done.
Next on the scale is the Labor Party. It is ‘bad’ because of Emily’s List, an organisation that supports reproductive choice. That is translated as abortion in any and all circumstances. Now that’s a pretty good reason to be labelled bad and it is certainly a worthy title for the Labor Party.
And then there are the Liberals. They are the good guys on the spectrum, not because they actually do anything good, but simply because they are not Labor or the Greens. And because there are lots of pro-lifers who hand out how-to-vote cards for them on election day.
But that doesn’t actually mean the Liberal Party has any pro-life policies. It doesn’t. In fact, the Family Voice Australia election scorecard gave the Liberal Party’s abortion policies a lower mark than Labor’s.
And finally there are the pro-life parties. They are not on the spectrum at all because they are irrelevant. Mainly because they do everything possible to make themselves irrelevant, although I hope that the addition of Family First’s Bob Day to the Senate alongside Senator Madigan will change this. I’ll write more on that later.
So that’s the illogical pro-life political spectrum. The only parties on it are pro-abortion. And even though they all basically have the same policies and philosophies that result in a descent towards state-sanctioned and taxpayer-funded abortion on demand (even after birth), they are marked differently. The Greens are marked worst because they target rabid nutcases on the far left. Labor gets a slightly better, but still bad score, because they target your more mainstream pro-choicer. And the Liberals are given a thumbs-up because they are cunning and like winning government with their pro-abortion policies thanks to the hard work, dedication and sacrifice of pro-lifers.
And pro-lifers think that it’s great the Liberals rule the roost again because they dream the blue team will probably almost sort this problem out quick smart, sometime in the future. But the reality is that the Liberals are so interested in stopping gender-selection abortion that in Victoria, the state where this problem arose, they have admirably done nothing at all. Even though they are in government. And have been since 2010.
It’s time to understand some basic facts.
It isn’t the Greens who put in the abortion laws at state level.
And it isn’t the Greens who put in funding arrangements for abortion at the federal level.
And it isn’t the Greens who have ruled across most states, territories and in Canberra over the last four decades. In fact, they have not ruled anywhere.
And it isn’t Labor who take pro-life votes to get elected and then do nothing to reverse abortion laws.
It is the Liberal Party that does that. The party that has ruled at the state and federal level for much of the last forty years. And while they continue to rule you can bet on one thing: there will be more Dr Mark Hobarts facing the firing squad in the years to come.
October 15, 2013
Hi Bernard,
A slightly different subject but a question I have had for a while is this, a unborn baby is not considered a person unless it has the capacity to survive outside the womb, that is my understanding of the law, the question is where did this precedent come from? I would like that question to be looked at using modern medical methods to settle the question. I know that my wife’s firstborn had a heartbeat at 30 days, I have seen on TV on a documentary a baby inside the womb responding to external noise. Why can the government not look at that and determine if the baby is a person, regardless of the ability to live outside the womb, or just an appendage of the mother?
I really believe a modern look at the question should be done. Incidentally, the woman from the famous court case Wade v Roe now campaigns against abortion. At least that is what I have read. As a catholic, I know truth is important to you as it is to me, a mormon. If truth is important in Australia at all, we should look at what really is going on inside the womb and have another look at the question of what constitutes a human being from the point of conception.
October 16, 2013
Hello Mick. The laws are state-based and they mostly recognise life at 20 weeks. This is a completely random and unscientific basis for recognition of life. Furthermore, they do not protect life, but simply impose requirements, such as registration of birth etc.
October 11, 2013
To your “…hierarchy of ‘badness”, I would add ‘doctors’ themselves: up until 2008 in Victoria, very many abortions were “authorised” by doctors’ false declarations, while doctors generally allowed their profession to acquiesce in the flagrant commission of these gross violations of honesty [or perjury] in pursuit of killing, not to say income.
Your point re the Liberal Party is supported by the fact that these modern tragedies were allowed, or engineered, in Victoria under the Hamer Liberal Government.
And I wonder if the ‘stop violence against women’ crowd bother recognising the high level of coercion of the vulnerable pregnant in the toll of 250 daily abortions.