Why Is The Left So Keen On Killing Their Future Voters

"But what about the CHILDREN?"

"Lyn Allison was 18 when she found out she was pregnant. Living in Fairfield, Victoria, in the 1960s, the idea of being an unmarried mother was a burden too great for her family to bear. As the Democrats leader revealed in the Senate last night: "An estimated one in three women have had an end, and I am one of them." Senator Allison explained her decision to the Sydney Morning Herald: "I came from a very conservative family and for them the shame of having a child out of wedlock was unacceptable... I lived near an unmarried mothers' home and they were out of sight in what was effectively an insbreastution. That was never going to be a prospect for me." Her family knew, and her GP referred her, an act that would have been illegal at the time. Having a child at 18 would have changed her life in ways she was not prepared to contemplate. "I probably wouldn't be here in the Senate," she said..."

-- Stephanie Peatling, "Revelation adds to emotional debate", Sydney Morning Herald (9 February 2006)

Perhaps not, Senator. On the other hand, there might be one more 40?-year-old Democrat voter alive today, to help your party stave off its impending electoral extinction.

Unfortunately for the pro-aborts, in a political system based (buttuming we can continue to stave off the imposition of a Bill of Rights) on universal adult suffrage, there's no way around the brute mathematics of "I'm pro-life and I vote... and so do all my kids", no matter how often they repeat the chanted mantra of "Not the Churchnot the stateLet the Womandecide her fate". It is not necessary for the pro-life side to chant back "Children's lives don'tbelong to othersNot their fathersNot their mothers". We just have to be the ones who have children. (With the caveat that you don't of course, have like, fifteen or sixteen kids so they grow up unfed and unclothed and get so peeed off with their pro-life upbringing that they turn your society into another Italy, France, Ireland or Quebec in a single generation.)

Having had much experience in my youth with student politicians, I always simply buttume that at least half of our MPs at any given time have either aborted a child (if female) or have sired an aborted child (if male). This cuts across Left-Right lines, since the logic of easy end is as highly appealing to the Party of Lust as it is to the Party of Greed.

Perhaps we can have similarly rational and impartial debates about the merits of other controversial social policies? Hmmm... "When I was 18, I called an effeminate schoolmate of mine a 'faggot'. The Bill before this House today, by outlawing vilification on the grounds of loveual orientation, would have made me -- and thousands of others like me -- a criminal! A law-breaker! But I'm a law-abiding citizen! Therefore, if what I did would conflict with the law, then the law must be wrong!..." And of course, society is still locking up young unmarried mothers, in what is effectively an insbreastution, just like in Lyn Allison's youth, to brutally punish them for having love out of wedlock.

I don't really expect much more than this from the Democrats (although I do hope Natasha Stott-Despoja took care to turn down the TV sound in case her baby son hears her telling the world "Mummy might have had you chopped up by the doctor if you'd been inconvenient for her lifestyle"), or from Julia Gillard. But Fiona Nash? One of the few redeeming traits of the Nationals used to be their much-trumpeted attachment to Christian values. If they want to become the party of selfishness in relation to children's rights, not only to tariffs and taxes, then to hell with them.

Having said that, the pro-life side seems to be putting a lot of energy into a battle over an essentially short-term and symbolic question: whether it is the Health Minister, or an appointed govt board, that can give final approval to the end pill. Even if they win, it could well turn out a pyrrhic victory: Tony Abbott (who seems, given his views on end and the monarchy, to be undecided as to whether a person's chances in life should depend on whether they're lucky to be conceived in the right womb) won't be Health Minister forever.

Moreover, I disagree with the anti-RU486 tack of framing opposition in terms of concern for the woman's health. Not that I want women to bleed to rest as punishment for procuring at-home ends, but because they have voluntarily buttumed the risk. Pro-aborts frequently depict anti-aborts as paternalistic chauvinists who don't think adult women can be trusted to make decisions in their own interests;* this anti-RU486 argument plays right into the hands of those who peddle this stereotype. Me, I have no doubt that on balance women are as good as men are at making decisions to promote their own interests; what I don't buy is the creative Cannoldian line that, if your mother decides to abort you, that's in your interests too. (I am not making that up. Cannold is an ethics lecturer, believe it or not. But then, so is Peter Singer.)

* Except, of course, when women vote for John Howard. Then they're naive dupes of the ruling clbutt, the media and dog-whistle politics.