Buyer's Remorse, Reproductive Rights

[tcpip]

One of the better achievements of the last Federal Labor government was managing to get the Gonski education reforms approved by the state governments. Now this going to be all undone. Richard O'Brien (FB) has a few choice words to say on the matter. This follows a notable lack of diplomacy in foreign affairs, and impending doom with proposed changes to the NBN. All in all, it's becoming a boulervard of broken promises, with a some indication that "buyer's remorse" has set in already. Well, just imagine what the next three years are going to be like.

In more local matters, it seems that the state government (no doubt with some support from knuckle-draggers in the ALP) will be attempting to recriminalise abortion. The Victorian Secular Lobby will be meeting to discuss this. Part of the problem of course is that people of certain strong religious persuasions hold the sanctity of life as being the most important moral standard, independently of whether it is a good life, a safe life, or the costs of other lives (it gets really confusing when the same people support the death penalty) - hence absolutely crazy situations such as the Baby K case where there was legal enforcement to keep a child alive who had no brain. Arguably the child then went on to become a member of the Victorian State Parliament.

Comments

[serehfa]

The state of affairs on abortion does scare me. I live in a town where there was an abortion clinic unstaffed for a year because the local Catholic hospital had a grip on the goolies of the doctors who largely work in both hospitals. Apparently GPs weren't invited.

[tcpip]

This is a typical problem in smaller townships or suburbs where the only health and welfare services are those organised by religious bodies - and whom which receive public funding no less.

You can see where the push to change the law is coming from as clear as day.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Would it be considered appropriate for media to ask Rudd for comments on the phone tapping thing? This was 2009, after all.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That would certainly be justified - one does want to know why Australia saw need to tap the 'phones of a neighbouring head of state.

[botrytis.livejournal.com]

Why then, or why in general? I would have assumed that there would be some level of spying going in both directions. That it reached the level of phone tapping - I'm not sure if we should be surprised or not.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Intelligence gathering and analysis is typical by any state. But that's based on material that's on the public record. There was something happening in 2009, which as the Snowden documents reveal, required convert spying.

[korgmeister.livejournal.com]

One of the big problems I have with pro-lifers is getting them to tell me what their premise is.

One cannot take "All life should be protected" literally. Humans need to consume other life forms in order to continue living and our immune systems are constantly killing other organisms that threaten our bodies, again, in order to sustain our own life.

I strongly suspect their fundamental premise is something along the lines of "Anything with human DNA in it has to be kept alive without regard to cost" but I've never been able to get far enough in a discussion to know for sure that's what's actually going on under the hood. The hardest part about figuring out underlying premises is convincing someone that it isn't just an exercise in pointless semantics.

It bothers me, because I suspect their underlying premises are fundamentally humanochauvanist and I've long held the opinion that humanochauvanist attitudes are going to end up becoming an existential threat to our species once we start creating intelligent life that isn't human and doesn't appreciate being treated as inferior.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, life feeds upon life. Even the most ardent vegan recognises the need to consume another carbon-based lifeform, albeit distantly removed and one without a nervous system.

A better argument I've encountered is the potential that is lost through restricting reproductive controls . Which may be valid as well, but leads to the very odd conclusions that various forms of contraception should be readily available in countries and among income groups which are likely to have to generate progeny with excellent opportunities.

Ultimately, it seems, that nearly all absolutist anti-contraception positions seem to rest on, well, metaphysical presumptions about the sanctity of human life as soul-carriers.

[korgmeister.livejournal.com]

I keep forgetting it's a mainstream Christian proposition that only humans have souls.

I've always found that position baffling.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The creation myth claims "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him" ( Gen 1:27) - and that stewardship was granted over other animals, etc.