At last, another guilt free abortion story.

Congratulations Clementine Ford, it's nice to read more stories from women who aren't ashamed of controlling their fertility, and who have a realistic idea of what an abortion actually entails.
No abortion story is a happy story. Let's face it, it's often surgery, often a decision made during an emotional roller coaster of panic and your hormones give you a swift kick afterwards (just in case the whole ordeal of having to ask a stranger to assist you with your fertility in an intensely personal way wasn't bad enough).

Some women sail through it, for some it's a rocky ride. However, no one I know regrets their abortion, they maintain that it was the smartest decision they ever made. Then again, no one I know was forced into having one.

Is it just me? or is the internet bilious with post abortion sob stories?

We need more stories from people who do not regret their abortions to counteract the internet discharge of emotion from women who feel they made the wrong decision.

Where are the stories from women for whom it was a smart decision? Does anyone know? Or are they all getting on with their lives?

If you google "positive abortion stories" you'll find some links to them. I haven't checked them out so they could be booby traps for the unwary :-\

Too tired. Doing it tomorrow.

Ron remembers his conception....

WARNING: Ron is at it again with the graphic pictures, if you don't want to see it, don't go to his website.

... and just before I go to bed, the bit in red, below has been added to the "About Me" section of Ron's website. It's just too hilarious.

"ABOUT ME
(Photo of Ron and friend in a boat.)
RON VAN WEGEN
MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
I remember my conception."

In my deliriously tired state I want to shout, "It's a miracle! A man who remembers being conceived! Praise the lord!"

I'll settle for laughing on the inside. Does he want people to take him seriously?

Stupid question.

The only reason I hang around there is in hope that the ProChoice commentary will continue to be added to the mix. So the uninitiated will at least be exposed to another point of view.

It's keeping me up rather late though :-( never mind. All worth it.

Things our new citizens should know...

I accidentally rediscovered this while looking for other things. It's Catherine Deveny's version of the citizenship test and must be shared. I particularly like: "I've had a gutful and I can't be fagged. Discuss."

Catherine Deveny's Citizenship Test

Where is TellTheTruth.org.au ????

I tend to link to the Australian ProLife Conference blog via Tell The Truth just to see if it's changed and this morning it did not exist!

Also, links to Tell The Truth have been removed from Ron's blog. What happened?

ALWAYS check out the authors of papers when the topic is abortion.

A certain hard working and articulate Angela on the
Australian Prolife Conference blog referred me to this article in order to convince me of the enormous risk of breast cancer faced by women who had terminated their pregnancies:

1. Carroll PS. The breast cancer epidemic: Modeling and forecasts based on abortion and other risk factors. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 2007;12(3):72-8.

I read the article, and did some back ground digging on the author. Fun. Fun. Fun.

This was my response, posted on Australian Prolife Conference:

Hi Angela,

You have given me far too much work to do! :-)

However, I did check out Patrick Carroll, both his article, and his back ground.

Wikipedia has a good article on his back ground, and the back ground of the journal he published in.

As I said, I am highly suspicious of articles published by doctors with an anti-abortion stance. in this case however, PS Carroll comes under the heading of rabid right winger, the kind who would deny women contraception and claim that health care is not a right.

If he is the author you wrote to he also says that RR is estimated using OR which is deeply worrying, as it is misleading at best.

I am not a statistician (doing 6 months of University statistics gives you enough information to realise how easy it is to manipulate information, but not enough know how to spot it at every single turn) so I cannot comment on his article.

However, I imagine non-partisan medical journals would have their own statisticians and I cannot help but wonder why he is not published in a more reputable journal. They can not all be concerned about being PC; in particular, I've found the BMJ to be very conservative in some issues.

I've read a great deal about medical history, as I'm interested in that kind of thing, and doctors have been responsible for some of the most heinous cases of denial. One of the worst being that curare was an anaesthetic (IMHO). They are also renown for interfering with women's business (reproduction) and blaming our bits and pieces for all sorts of perceived maladies; the word hysteria is a permanent reminder of those days.

Modern doctors are still interfering in the birth process way too much in my opinion and would do less damage to women if they butted out of all but the three percent of cases that needed them. But that's another topic altogether....

Basically, I believe the medical community can be wrong about things. However, my experience in the natural birth debate allows me to see that good research, no matter how it contravenes the dogma of the day, gets published in high impact journals.

If PS Carroll's research is as good as you claim, it would have shown up somewhere other than the journal of a politically conservative group of doctors.

This is a shame. I really wanted to take it seriously too.

No hard feelings.

Cheers,
Emervents
_____________________________________

*sigh* She is probably not going to like it :-( I wonder if she knows where the article came from? She's quite the conspiracy theorist about this.

I disagree with half the medical community about child birth, but I don't think there's a conspiracy or cover up going on. Just that some people are well meant, but gravely mistaken.

How Geothermal spends my money...

Just for something a little different. I do have a life outside of the abortion issue!

Geothermal, a South Australian company looking for hot rock formations to create geothermal (green! -ish) energy is one of the few speculative share holdings I have.

The other day they sent me a pamphlet with this on the front to show me how they were spending their shareholder's millions. One hose reel, a piece of string and a teeny weeny hole someone else had drilled!! How ripped off did I feel?

Luckily they also had other pictures of their bigger drilling rigs. This was a small relief, and made this picture seem hilarious. How could anyone think that this was showing off? Were they trying to look thrifty?

I'm not sure that this company is going to do too well anyway, as they don't have the same backing as the other geothermal company I have interests in. My hope is that they'll discoverer something and be bought out for more than I paid for them. Fingers crossed :-)

Secular arguments for the beginning of life.

Find - "Given that one can easily argue from a completely secular basis that the fertilized egg is the beginning of a unique human life with unique DNA etc., I can only wonder when you consider human life to begin in a way that is both practical and logical."

One might be able to argue that a fertilised egg is the beginning of a unique human life with unique DNA etc. But does it follow that the beginning of a life should have the same rights as a life?

Let's start with the fertilised egg. Unique DNA? yes. Member of the species Homo Sapiens? yes. Potential individual? hmmmm, Maybe. The beginning of a life? Depends.

Allow me to quote from John Harris, The Value of Life because rephrasing his explanation would probably just reduce clarity:

"The moment of conception may seem to be the obvious answer to the question of when life begins. Over any rival candidates it seems to have the decided edge that it is an identifiable event from which point the egg begins the continuous process that leads to maturity. But of course the egg is alive well before conception and indeed it undergoes a process of development and maturation without which conception is impossible. The sperm too, is alive and wriggling. Life is a continuous process that proceeds uninterrupted from generation to generation continuously (or at least sporadically) evolving.

It is not, then, life that begins at conception. But if not life, is it not at least the new individual that begins at conception?

A number of "things" may begin at conception. Fertilisation can result not in an embryo but in a tumour which can threaten the mother's life. This tumour, called a hydatidiform mole, would not presumably be invested with all the rights and protections that many believe spring fully armed into existence at fertilisation.

Even when fertilisation is, so to speak, on the right tracks, it does not result in an individual even of any kind. The fertilised egg becomes a cell mass which eventually divides into two major components: the embryoblast and the trophoblast. The embryoblast becomes the foetus and the trophoblast becomes the extraembryonic membranes, the placenta and the umbilical cord. The trophoblastic derivatives are alive, are human, and have the same genetic composition as the foetus and are discarded after birth.

A further complication is that the fertilised egg cannot be considered a new individual because it may well become two individuals. The fertilised egg may split to form twins and this can happen as late as two weeks after fertilisation."

So much for the fertilised egg being an individual eh? Never mind, says the secular pro-lifer (which, by the way, I've only ever met one of, and they admit that their position is more emotional than reasonable), the egg is a "potential life".

More on potential lives on another day. Must do thesis now :-(

Find's response and the question of basic human rights.

Find - "The question of pain or consciousness is interesting, but not at the heart of the matter. The question is merely whether or not the victim is deserving of the same human rights as anyone else. To use your criteria to determine the value of a human life is unworthy because on a logical basis very similar arguments could be directed against adults who might be in a coma, on life-support or merely asleep! As far as being considered whether or not to be deserving of life at the "discretion" of another human being, I charge you again with spouting drivel. Dangerous drivel at that, since arbitrary criteria of a 'life worth living' by someone more powerful is exactly the kind of justification used by oppressors of basic human rights throughout the centuries."

Again, Find and I have a fundamental disagreement. For me, pain and consciousness are right at the heart of the matter.

No, I do not think a non-conscious entity has the same rights as a conscious entity (being asleep hardly meets the criteria for being a non-conscious entity). As for directing similar arguments against people who are in comas or life support, I do have views on that. I don't believe a brain dead person should be kept on life support. Those resources should be directed toward people who have a chance of coming out of their comas. Similarly for humans in vegetative states.

Personally, I do not want to be kept alive in a vegetative state, that is, a state where it appears that I am awake, but actually there is no brain activity. If I were to end up like that, the being on the bed being force fed through a tube would not be me, it would be a hunk of meat, hanging around and causing misery to my poor family. The being on the bed could not have a cereal preference let alone want to live. It could not choose to live or die, it would not be able to choose anything. As far as I'm concerned, it should not have a right to life. If my family saw some benefit in having me there, fine, if they would rather not see me in that condition and prefer for the ordeal to be over, that is fine too. The choice, whether or not to keep me alive, would be theirs.

As for "arbitrary criteria of a live worth living by someone more powerful", are you trying to compare me to a Nazi doctor? or perhaps Pol Pot? I have said that I support a woman's right to choose whether or not to give birth, and that I do not believe a non-conscious undeveloped human can be harmed by not turning into a fully fledged conscious human. I have NOT said we should practice euthanasia willy-nilly on anyone who does not meet arbitrary criteria.

My criteria have been carefully thought out over a number of years. They will probably change and develop over time. However, giving a fertilised egg the "right to life" would indubitably be a step backwards for me.

An example of the danger of assumed positions.

Find - "You've missed the point completely. Of course, rape is a violation of rights - for the victim. So it is with abortion. I suppose you are going to tell me that the unborn choose to be aborted? You don't even notice that in your argument you switched the victim and the accomplice! The real victim isn't even mentioned in your argument! Where is your logic?"

Apparently, when Find substituted rape for abortion in my belief statement, she meant that the victim of abortion was the embryo. Sorry dude, it just didn't come through.

The misunderstanding is a good example of how difficult it can be for two people to communicate when they come from completely different positions. This is usually because they are operating from a different set of assumptions, and that those assumptions are obvious is taken for granted by one or both parties.

My assumption was that a non-conscious entity could not be a victim. Find's assumption was the opposite, neither were neatly spelled out for the other's benefit, misunderstanding and anger ensued.

I imagine that Find and I would have very different takes on the criteria of person-hood as well as whether or not a fetus should have the same rights as the woman.

My position, for the record, is that a fertilised egg, blastocyst, embryo or fetus should not have the same rights as a woman. This includes the right to life. You cannot have equal human rights between parties that are not equally human. That is, one is a fully fledged functioning human being and one is not even self aware. This view depends heavily on the criteria for personhood which I do not have room for here. The Value of Life by John Harris gives a good introduction to personhood.

My position on victimhood, for the record, is that in order to be a victim, you have to have the capacity to know that you are being done a harm, at the very least. Since an embryo does not have the capacity to know this, it simply didn't occur to me that an embryo could be a victim. I don't believe that an embryo is "a life" in the same way that a full term baby is "a life" so do not confer victimhood on an embryo that has not gone on to become a baby.

Sorry about the misunderstanding.

Something new about the Hippocratic Oath.

You may notice that I'm doing the quickest points first and in no particular order. Here, Find says, "Ever heard of the Hippocratic Oath? About 2500 years ago. Here is a quote: "Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion." New?"

No, not new. However, this tidbit of information may be new: Hippocrates was against using pessaries or drugs to procure abortion because of the detrimental effects these methods had on the woman. He advocated other methods of abortion, one of the more peculiar was jumping up and down, or rather, "leaping with the heels to the buttocks for the sake of expulsion". Back in ancient Greece, any method that involved invasive procedures or poisons was dangerous for the woman; of course Hippocrates was against them. It is quite possible, that if abortions back then had been as safe as they are today, Hippocrates would have thought differently on the matter. For a fascinating read on other methods of birth control in ancient Greece and Rome, try Immaculate Contraception by Emma Dickens.

Why substituting words does not turn the tables on an argument.

Find believes that by substituting words in my stated belief below that she has "turned the table on my argument". The intent of this post is to show why I think she is mistaken.

(Find, I'm not sure whether you're a he or a she, I chose She, my apologies if I am wrong about that.)

Here is the refresher, for those of you who have forgotten, or who were not following the comments on that particular post:

Me - "I believe that whether or not to continue a pregnancy should be between a woman, her medical practitioner, and her own God. The law has no business meddling in private reproductive decisions."

Find - "Slight rewording:
'I believe that whether or not to rape should be between a man, his medical practitioner, and his own God. The law has no business meddling in private reproductive decisions.'
Please don't spout such illogical drivel when it it is so easy to turn the tables on it."

Me - That kind of retort is what we call an Appeal to Emotion.

Find - "Actually, no, all I did was substitute a few words using your logic. If my statement is an appeal to emotion, then, logically, so was yours!"

Ummm, actually, no. That only works if your substitution retains the truth of the premises.

We'll try it on a classic argument:

P1 Socrates is a man
P2 All men are mortal
C Socrates is mortal

Now, let us try some substitution, how about, "ape" for "man"?

P1 Socrates is an ape
P2 All apes are mortal
C Socrates is mortal

In this case, the argument is still valid (if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true) but it is now unsound because P1 is false. Socrates was not an ape.

... and one more example, how about "unable to bear children" for "mortal"?

P1 Socrates is a man
P2 All men are unable to bear children
C Socrates cannot bear children

In this case the argument retains its soundness as it is true that men cannot bear children.

If my statement, were an argument, which it clearly was not. (It laid out my preference for the way abortion ought to be handled. Premises leading to a conclusion were nowhere in sight.) Changing the gender to male, and the action to rape within the context of a reproductive decision was, as far as I can tell (and I have three years of university level logic) doomed to failure. Abortion and rape have less in common than Socrates and his ape cousins.

However, I may have a formal logic eduction, but I do not have your drive, Find, so perhaps you can come up with a valid argument against abortion which does not have its soundness compromised by those substitutions? Should be an interesting exercise if nothing else.

Back!

Hi Folks, I'm back from a lovely family holiday and eager to get back into blogging.  But first there is...... washing.  The glamorous underbelly of motherhood.

See you soon!

An example of a Pro-Life "Appeal to Emotion" argument.

This is a comment on another post, but I thought it worth reposting here. The commenter rewords my belief that an abortion should be between a woman, her medical provider and her own god:
________________________

Slight rewording:
"I believe that whether or not to rape should be between a man, his medical practitioner, and his own God. The law has no business meddling in private reproductive decisions."


Please don't spout such illogical drivel when it it is so easy to turn the tables on it.

You are denying the humanity of others.

________________________

At least they said "please".

I'm afraid no one with a background in logic or argument would call that turning the tables.

If I spout drivel then I modestly claim that it is better considered drivel than yours. I published your post specifically to demonstrate the kind of logic pro-lifers tend to use.

That is, a logical fallacy called Appeal to Emotion.

Rape is a horrific violation of a woman's rights in all circumstances; abortion is NOT a horrific violation of a woman's rights in all circumstances. Yet by comparing abortion to rape, the above commenter is trying to make abortion as horrific as rape. The argument, if it could be called that, relies on our abhorrence of rape to try to provoke the same abhorrence for abortion.

However, comparing abortion to rape is fallacious. Rape is sex performed against the will of the woman - it is assault. No doctor will perform an abortion on a woman who is specifically telling him not to, he knows that would be assault. If all women are aborting against their will, they aren't telling their doctors at the time.

Rape is the violation of the rights of a living, breathing, self-conscious human being with a full life and full knowledge of its pain and future losses. That is why it is against the law and people are sent to jail for it.

A foetus is only living at the discretion of the mother, can not breath on its own until at least 24 weeks (and even then it needs expert medical help), is not self-conscious and cannot possibly have any knowledge of its pain or losses. That is why women are not sent to jail for aborting despite the law in Victoria.

Abortion and rape are two very different things. Once we see that their argument falls over.

Even if I were to concede that the foetus was a child (which I won't), I would still maintain that a non-conscious, not yet born individual does not take precedence over a fully functioning conscious individual.

As for denying the humanity of others: The commenter holds the position that all human life is sacred, it's called "the sanctity of human life", it is a religious premise clung to by fundamentalists and does not actually reflect the value of the unborn in the bible (look up "abortion" in The Oxford Companion to the Bible for a better set of quotes and explanations than I can provide here).

This idea that human life is sacred from conception is historically very new, even for the Catholic Church. Until the last few hundred years (precise date escapes me, not going to look it up for you, sorry) ensoulment was at quickening, not conception.

Again, drivel? maybe. Illogical? rarely, and not this time.

Dumped babies are the saddest...

As a vehement ProChoicer, the news stories that make me saddest are "dumped baby" stories.

Sometimes they are still-born, sometimes they are not. Sometimes the mother leaves them to die, sometimes she leaves them on a church doorstep. (And I'm only talking about the cases that make the news!) In this case the mother of four didn't even check to see whether the baby was alive before wrapping it up. In this case an abortion might have saved the woman from another pregnancy (increasingly dangerous the more babies you have) and a traumatic experience in a hotel toilet. It might have even saved her marriage and kept the other four children from a broken home.

Having said that, I should probably say one thing in favour of the mother. After my experience with my son's eye last month, I'm a great believer in the gut instincts of women when it comes to their children. My punt is, that the baby was indeed stillborn and the dumping was the action of a severely distressed post-partum mother.

We shall see I suppose.

Update: 24/5/2008

The case has now been referred to the coroner. It seems the baby may have been still born after all.

UPDATE: 7/8/2008

She was charged with "Concealing the Birth" here are the details:

http://theherald.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/bond-for-concealing-birth/1230033.aspx

Commenting on Andrew Bolt's Blog? Who'd have thought?

I supported Stephen's (btw you rock) comments on Andrew Bolt's blog. You have to dig a bit to find Ron's piece and the few comments below. It certainly didn't make the same impact as the letter drop.

As far as I know, this attempt to regain publicity for his blog has failed. No new posts have appeared on his AustralianProlifeConference blog, but that could be because he hasn't got around to moderating it yet.

At least I know he won't be getting any publicity from this site... no readers! :-)

Tell The Truth tries to revive its dying blog...

By the looks of Ron's last post it looks like Ron needs a way to revive his dead blog that doesn't involve a leaflet drop. I wonder if it will work?

I'm sure he'll get a sympathetic ear with Andrew Bolt's readers, perhaps that was what he was missing on his own turf?

Where are all the pro-lifers at the "Pro-life Conference"? Why aren't they all "conferring"?

Supermarkets don't know why they run out of stock? My arse they don't.

Article in The Age today stated that Coles and IGA are having trouble keeping their shelves stocked with basic goods.

I shop at Coles and my in my personal experience, when my favourite brand is not there, there is invariably a "You'll love Coles" substitute close by. I have seen this occur often enough to wonder whether it is a deliberate attempt to pressure customers into trying their brand. The practice was particularly rampant when Coles was facing the take over by Wesfarmers.

I think they should fess up.

My views on a quick PubMed search - "Abortion Risks"

I'm lucky enough to have full access to PubMed through Uni so I thought I'd take a quick tour of the literature. My conclusion?

Anybody, pro-life or pro-choice, could cherry pick to prove whatever they wanted to about abortion risks. There were abundant papers supporting both sides, both sides being:

RISKY! - Abortion increases risk of "insert bad thing here". (I looked at preterm birth, future miscarriage, depression and breast cancer.)

and

NO WORRIES DUDE! - Abortion carries no significant risk of "insert bad thing here".

What was odd about all the figures, is that for most of them, the OR was so low, and the 95% Confidence Interval was so wide. In my view this explains the ability to widely interpret the results. For example, some authors claimed that an OR of 1.19 with a 95% CI of 0.8 - 1.5 indicated no significant risk (they would have been the pro-choice folk) yet, the next paper would give very much the same result and declare it a serious risk worthy of further medical investigation or action (meet the pro-lifers).

And that's not the oddest part, the oddest part is when you look at how the OR affects the actual risk.

The Odds Ratio (OR) is a measure of how much larger the ODDS are that one group is to suffer from a condition than another group. An OR of 1 means that both groups are equally likely to develop said condition. An OR of 1.2 would mean that a woman with a previous termination of pregnancy is 1.2 times MORE LIKELY to have a preterm birth as a woman who had not had a previous termination. (This number , 1.2, is an example, every paper had different figures.)

Most of the risks of abortion cited in the papers had ORs in the order of 1.1 - 1.6. In the grand scheme of things that increased risk is extremely low, but since it is heavily dependent on what the initial risk was, and since the initial risk is rarely cited (at least in the abstracts) it's hard to tell if the increased odds are significant.

However, here's an example of how much an OR of 1.3 would increase the risk of preterm birth using a figure from March of Dimes.

According to March of Dimes 6% of women give birth prematurely (this figure excludes known complications, such as short cervix). That's 6 out of every 100. So if you're having a healthy pregnancy the odds of a preterm delivery are 6 in 100. If you have had a previous termination you have 1.3 times that risk. 1.3 x 6 = 7.8 so the odds go up to 7.8 in 100, or rather, in the group of women who have had previous abortions, 7.8% will have a preterm birth.

That's a very very slight increase and in my view, worth taking in order to stop an unwanted pregnancy.

You see, in this case, the choice appears to be a very slightly elevated risk in future pregnancies versus a 100% certainty that you will bear a child you don't want.

It's a no brainer.

For the record, both my babies were full term unproblematic deliveries.  This means I won't be asked to participate in any preterm birth studies.... 

Ron doesn't represent the Tell The Truth Coalition?

UPDATE 30/9/08 For those of you interested in reading more about the Tell The Truth Coalition, try my more up to date posts.
_______________________________

This has suddenly appeared on the Tell The Truth blog:

"The views expressed
on this site are not
necessarily those of
the Tell the Truth
Coalition."

Could it be people like me they refer to? Or Ron? One wonders if Ron has had a quiet ticking off....

Letter to friends about Decriminalisation of Abortion in Victoria

You may never have one yourself...

...but that doesn't mean everyone else should be denied a safe abortion if they should choose to have one.

I'm sorry to bother you with such an emotive topic, but it's one I feel passionately about so I am doing what I can to help.

Did you know it is officially illegal in Victoria? Victorian parliament will vote soon on a bill to decriminalisation abortion and bring the law into line with current medical practice.

The Religious Right (Pro-Lifers) are busy campaigning to have abortion kept illegal and to have the law enforced, denying Victorian women a fundamental right to control their fertility.

I believe that whether or not to continue a pregnancy should be between a woman, her medical practitioner, and her own God. The law has no business meddling in private reproductive decisions.

If you agree with me, you can show your support by signing up with:

http://www.ProChoiceVic.org.au

and signing this petition from the YWCA:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/decrim_abortion/

You could also write to your MPs giving your views, the Pro-Lifers will be, and personally I don't want them to look like the majority!

Yours in hope,
Emervents

Alas! Moderated out of TellTheTruth?

I don't think Ron can handle the truth.

Dear Ron has held me up as a target for abuse as a baby killer and switched on comment moderation. So far he has not published my responses.

Lets give him the benefit of the doubt, he might be busy.

If it's a serious block I suppose there is nothing to stop me responding here!! :-)

Tell The Truth and Pro-life lie dissemination tactics

Some one told me to condense the letters to MPs to 800 words. So I did:

On the labour day weekend Right to Life Australia started a campaign called “Tell the Truth”. Or rather, they delivered pictures of dead foetuses to peoples’ homes. The distress caused to anyone who recently lost a pregnancy is bound to be immense. What most disturbed me, however, is the thought of anyone reading the material and accepting it at face value, particularly a woman in the middle of a life changing decision. My background in foetal development and an interest in mass communication techniques allowed me to see the leaflet in a rather different light to my friends. My friends saw pictures they never want to see again. What I saw was pro-life propaganda masquerading as informative and helpful information. This is what I saw:

Five out of six sections of their leaflet have “DID YOU KNOW?” emblazoned in white across the top. This implies that they have knowledge to impart, knowledge that you need; “DID YOU KNOW?” prepares the reader’s mind the facts for to follow. Facts like this: “Every week in Victoria enough children to fill a primary school are aborted.” Did you think of your local primary school? How many children attend? Do you think it matches the number of abortions in Victoria per week? How would you know?

The primary school comparison is more emotive than factual. The idea is not to impart knowledge as implied by the “DID YOU KNOW?” heading, the idea is to aid the pro-life cause by planting a picture of a school’s worth of dead children in your mind. However, and this is the scary part, you were subconsciously prepped for knowledge by the heading. You would feel you know that a primary school’s worth of children are aborted each week in Victoria. Yet in reality you would know nothing of substance. Under interrogation – exactly how many abortions? – the knowledge illusion fades.

The use of primary school imagery is significant. For the pro-life movement, the more child-like the foetus appears, the easier it is to make their claim that abortion is the murder of a child. The next quotes attempt to make the foetus child-like by exaggerating foetal development and capacities. The grains of truth amidst the exaggerations were obvious to me, but not to someone with no exposure to foetal development.

“DID YOU KNOW?” “Unborn babies have all their organs and body features present by eight weeks.” “By between 7 and 12 weeks gestation the heart has been beating for weeks…fingerprints are evident and taste buds and teeth are beginning to form. The baby has a skeletal structure, nerves and circulation.” “At 11 weeks you were able to swallow, digest, urinate, sleep, dream and taste.”

As foetal development forms part of my studies I knew immediately that most of these claims were exaggerated. The foetus is not as developed as they claim and that an 11 week foetus sleeps, dreams and tastes is pure conjecture. These quotes promote the idea of a tiny fully formed baby capable of mature human acts such as tasting and dreaming; the reference to the reader (“DID YOU KNOW?…you were able to…”) makes it personal.

Sadly, these quotes neither accurately inform nor encourage rational thought. By describing the foetus in this way, they portray a mental image of a fully formed, mentally active baby at only 11 weeks gestation. This emotive mental picture is factually wrong. If it were truly equivalent to a baby or child, we could put it in a pram and walk it around the block.

“There are many psychological and physical risks for women who have had abortions...” We now have the list of risks under the trust inspiring “DID YOU KNOW?” banner. These “risks” are reported by women that the authors of the leaflet have counselled after an abortion. Note - not doctors, or epidemiologists, but women who have undergone a termination. Now, I know that these reports from women do not constitute abortion risks. I know, and my educated friends know, that these are abortion anecdotes. So, while they are gloomy and possibly true, they are not risks.

I know this, but does the teenage daughter of immigrants who lives near me know the difference between a medically established risk and a story? Will she be media savvy enough to see that the authors of the leaflet have a clear agenda? Maybe, maybe not, and the thought that she might use this propaganda in place of accurate and impartial information sickens me.

There are many other errors and insinuations in the leaflet that unfortunately I don’t have room for here. In my humble opinion, the leaflet is propaganda that employs misinformation, exaggeration, one-sided anecdotal evidence and shocking pictures to persuade others that abortion is the murder of a child and dangerous for women. It makes a mockery of the idea of informed choice. The only way to correct this misinformation and contain the damage is to deliver another round of information by the same route; make it approved by the relevant government and medical bodies, make it medically accurate and above all, impartial.

TellTheTruth - There IS a little thing we can do! Hooray!

Hello Everyone,

I have just finished a phone conversation with one of my local MPs, and apparently there is something we can do! It's a little thing, but if LOTS of people participate it will become very, very annoying for the perpetrators.

If you had a "No Junk Mail" sign (or equivalent) on your letterbox, you can complain to the local council that you received unsolicited mail. The offender is fined $200 (in my area anyway). I am not sure if it's $200 all up, or $200 for each incident. If each incident is fined separately the number of complaints will add up and hurt their hip pockets...

So, even if only 5 people complain they'll be $1000 out of pocket.

If 25 people complain that's $5000.

If 50 people complain it's a sizzling $10,000

There are 118,000 people living in my municipality. If all of them got the leaflet, only 5% have to complain for the fine to be a million dollars.

Imagine that.

Again, I'm happy for people to use my example as a template. Copy and paste into your word processor, add your details, print, put into envelope, find your local council address here: Find your local council, stick a stamp on and post. (You could also send them an email but they tend to take print more seriously.) Hopefully you've just effectively sent them a fine of $200 dollars. Feel good? Thought so.

The down side is that it is only a valid course of action if you already had a "No Junk Mail" sign.

Here it is:

To whom it may concern,

We have a sign on our letterbox that clearly states that we do not wish to receive unsolicited material. On Saturday 8th of March we received a leaflet from an anti-abortion group that can only be described as horrifically explicit. The leaflet was authorised by a D. Kelly and the person who runs the website referred to in the leaflet (www.tellthetruth.org.au) is a Ron Van Wegen. Normally I simply recycle unwanted junk mail but this leaflet was so upsetting that I am extremely angry that it was delivered against our clear and specific wishes.

I believe there is a fine for delivering unsolicited mail. I send you this letter in the hope that the local law will be upheld in this matter.

There is only one R Van Wegen in the white pages:

*Deleted*

Whois details for the website domain:

Registrant Contact Name: Margaret Tighe
Registrant Email: rtl@rtlaust.com
Tech ID 2146197395
Tech Name: Ronald Van Wegen
Tech Email: *deleted*

"rtlaust" stands for Right to Life Australia their website is www.rtlaust.com, Margaret Tighe is the president. Their details are a matter of public record: ABN 12774010375

Again, I hope the local law prevails in this particular instance.

Yours sincerely,

Name,
Address,
Contact details

________________________

That's it people! Post away!

Cheers
Emervents

Petition to Decriminalise Abortion

w00t!  Thank you Shell for the link to an online 

Petition to Decriminalise Abortion in Victoria

Letter to MPs re TellTheTruth #2

Here is an updated version. Sorry about the odd formating folks, I'm still getting used to posting blogs from google docs :-\

My name is Emervents, I am a mother of two and an honours student. My qualifications include a double degree with majors in biochemistry, chemistry, philosophy (including bioethics) and logic. Currently I am completing an honours thesis in applied ethics - the topic is Foetal Pain. This letter addresses the graphic anti-abortion drivel that slid into my letterbox this weekend.

The knowledge that some people will have believed the anti-abortion campaign leaflet provided the motivation to write this correction. The leaflet makes a mockery of the idea that a woman should be well informed when making the decision whether or not to abort.

How can this situation be rectified? What can one person do? I can do this. The first part of my letter comprises my official complaint against them, the second part details the inaccuracies (to put it mildly) in their leaflet.

According to reports on the website given in the leaflet, this mail-out was opened by children and the elderly - people who are normally protected from exposure to such vulgar explicit material. I shudder to think how this coloured slip of lies was received by someone who has miscarried or otherwise lost a baby. Goodness knows how it was received by a woman who had just made the difficult decision to stop a pregnancy. An abject apology is in order, also a further mail out correcting the calculated lies and unsubstantiated generalisations. In the best of possible worlds they will be arrested for delivery of unsolicited obscene material.

It is my son’s job to collect the mail and deliver it to our desks and occasionally he likes to open mail addressed “To the Householder”. It was just luck that I noticed something in our letterbox on a Saturday and investigated, thus avoiding a conversation with my ten year old son that I had planned to leave until he was older. I do not think that I underestimate the potential distress caused if he had opened it, or if my husband, who goes out of his way to avoid this kind of material, had opened it. The warning was woefully inadequate, even tempting for someone my son’s age, I can only assume that this was intended.

Our letterbox is labelled “Australia Post Only” so the leaflet distributors blatantly disregarded our wishes not to receive unsolicited material. Is there any action we can take against these people? I do not object to them airing their views. I do, however, object to their methods. As I have detailed below, a great deal of the information in the flyer was false and emotive. It must be against the law to distribute such material, especially against the wishes of the occupants of the house. PLEASE tell me it is against the law! I will be calling your offices three days after I send this letter in order to ascertain whether there is anything more that can be done to prevent this happening again.

The above comprised my complaint, below I detail the inaccuracies and blatant untruths in the flyer. I hope you find it useful.

Though my thesis is on foetal pain, I am no expert on foetal development so I needed to refer to some texts to help me with some of the developmental information:

An atlas of human prenatal developmental mechanics : anatomy and staging, by Jan E. Jirásek, London : Taylor & Francis, c2004

The developing human : clinically oriented embryology, by Keith L. Moore, T.V.N. Persaud. 7th ed, Philadelphia, Saunders, c2003.

The Pictures

When I refer to the age of a foetus I mean biological age. This is different from gestational age, which is calculated using the date of the woman’s last period.

The “8 week old fetus” pictured could not possibly be 8 weeks. At 8 weeks the eyelids have fused or are beginning to, the foetus pictured is not even close to eyelid fusion - it is an embryo, and more likely to be six weeks biological age. The hands on the arms of the 11 week old foetus are too developed for 11 weeks, it is more likely to be at least 13 weeks. As for the foetus labelled 24 weeks, later gestational age is more difficult to discern so the caption could be accurate. However, the texts I have consulted indicate that at this stage the foetus has saggy wrinkled skin in preparation for the laying down of fat under the skin. Since the skin is taught, the foetus is well proportioned, eyebrows and head hair are evident, and the lids could still be fused, my educated guess is that it is closer to 21 weeks biological age.

The pictures are also not obviously the result of an optional abortion. A curette after miscarriage gives the same result. Also, the 24 week old foetus is intact and does not have the black skin associated with potassium chloride poisoning. It could have been the result of a premature stillbirth, we cannot know, as the author lacks credibility.

Not only is foetus spelled incorrectly for an Australian context, the author is confused about the age of the foetuses pictured. He very clearly did not do his homework, which is the least one could expect from a leaflet purporting to contain facts.

As an interesting aside, American prolifers have a tendency to underestimate the age of the foetus pictured, e.g. they will label a 20 week foetus as “8weeks”. Though the captions in this leaflet were inaccurate, the authors do not appear to have attempted this deception. If anything, the errors went the other way, labelling a foetus as older than it really was.

The Facts - “Did you know?”

In this section I will give a quote from the leaflet in italics followed by a comment.

“Every week in Victoria enough children to fill a primary school are aborted.”

This is a nice use of visual analogy, however, it is extremely vague as a Victorian primary school can contain from 20 to 600 students (to the best of my knowledge). The idea is to plant a picture of a school full of dead children in your mind. This sentence is more emotive than factual, and fairly typical of prolife marketing.

“Your taxes pay for the abortions.”

This cannot be entirely true for the state of Victoria. The people I know who have had abortions have paid for them from their own pockets. Also, The Age article on late term abortions (quoted below) states that patients paid for their terminations.

“Unborn babies have all their organs and body features present by eight weeks.”

As I am doing a thesis on foetal pain I knew immediately that this is patently untrue. For example, skin keratinisation (where the skin becomes more like skin on a full term baby) does not begin until week 16, thalamocortical structures in the brain (important connections for pain perception) are not laid down until 26 weeks, 22 at the very earliest. Scalp hair patterning begins at 16 weeks, bone formation (calcification of bones) begins at week 14. Limbs do not reach their final relative proportions until week 17. The uterus in females is not complete until week 18… I could go on, but I think I have made my point. This sentence is, again, incorrect and emotive. The idea is to paint a picture of a miniature fully formed baby at 11 weeks. If it were truly equivalent to a baby, we could put it in a pram and walk it around the block.

“At 11 weeks you were able to swallow, digest, urinate, sleep, dream and taste.”

Was I able to indeed? Swallowing, digesting and urinating is something that can be, and has been, observed. Rapid Eye Movement associated with dreaming is not observed until 21 weeks. It is pure conjecture to claim that the 11 week old foetus sleeps, dreams and tastes - yet this leaflet states it as fact. Again we are asked to picture a fully formed baby capable of human acts such as tasting and dreaming, only this time it is personal. The reference to the reader (“…you were able to…”) is an attempt to instil the irrational fear of being aborted in the reader’s mind: “What if I’d been aborted? I’d be dead! How would I feel about that?” Factually, there wouldn’t have been a you to feel anything. Sadly it is not the intent of this quote to communicate facts.

“For every 5 babies born 2 are aborted.”

I have not been able to confirm this number from any reliable source. Certainly not from the website.

“There are more than 100,000 abortions every year - between 20,000 and 30,000 in Victoria.”

That is quite vague is it not? It is also, as far as I have been able to tell, erroneous. For figures that are a tad more accurate, including a description of how difficult accurate figures are to come by, see this parliamentary research brief, “How many abortions are there in Australia? A discussion of abortion statistics, their limitations, and options for improved statistical collection.” at

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/RB/2004-05/05rb09.pdf

“Most abortions are performed between 7 and 12 weeks gestation.”

This has a ring of truth to it and is supported by South Australian data in the report referred to above, which says that 98% of abortions occur before 14 weeks.

“By between 7 and 12 weeks gestation the heart has been beating for weeks, all organs and body features are present, fingerprints are evident and taste buds and teeth are beginning to form. The baby has a skeletal structure, nerves and circulation.”

The heart has been beating since week four and circulation is present – the cells of the embryo could not receive oxygen and nutrients otherwise! However, again, not all organs are present. The skeletal structure is yet to ossify (or become hard bones), the foetus might have nerves but the central nervous system has barely begun to resemble that of a full term baby. The 12 week old foetus does not have fingernails, hair, certain reproductive organs, skin as we know it, functioning lungs…. But I’ve been there already, haven’t I?

“Late term abortions (after 20 weeks gestation) are increasingly performed.”

This is not true according to a report in The Age on 31/1/2007 “After rising dramatically over several years, the number of women having late abortions has fallen in Victoria for the first time since the state began collecting data on the contentious procedure. New figures show that in 2005 there were 309 late abortions (after 20 weeks' pregnancy) in Victoria, compared with 327 in 2004. The number of women having the procedure for psychological reasons, where there is no genetic abnormality, also fell for the first time - from 197 to 180. More than half those women came from interstate or overseas. It is the first time numbers have fallen since the state began reporting the data in 2000.” According to the same report these abortions cost the women $2500 each, the tax payer was nowhere in sight.

“There are many psychological and physical risks for women who have had abortions.”

Generalised, vague and therefore frightening. No references.

Quotes from women who have had abortions and later regretted it. The source is: “From women we have counselled after an abortion.”

Who’s WE? People are referred to the telephone directory, not a counselling service. An actual counselling service, or church, or something would have lent these quotes a little credibility.

“Women have reported to us they have suffered these problems after abortion: Infertility, subsequent miscarriage, very premature birth, ectopic pregnancy, suicidal urges and thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares about babies, sleep disorders, psychotic episodes, deep depression, rage, despair, guilt, shame, severe grief, eating disorders, relationship break-ups, anger with and/or over protection of their children, drug and alcohol abuse, serial relationships with violent and abusive men, inability to form relationships, increased risk of breast cancer and years of suppression and denial before post abortion stress symptoms break through.”

Where does one start with this quote? All of them except the last one are possible without an abortion in the equation. I could not find any evidence that drug and alcohol abuse and violent relationships are caused by abortions. Though I can accept that a user of drugs or alcohol might increase their use after an abortion. Drugs, alcohol and domestic violence are more likely to be the context in which abortions occur. For an Australian study on this, see “Termination of pregnancy: associations with partner violence and other factors in a national cohort of young Australian women.” Angela J Taft, Lyndsey F Watson. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. Canberra:Apr 2007. Vol. 31, Iss. 2, p. 135-142. The Age reported on it in April last year (7/4/2007).

Though I would not be willing to claim that none of the above could occur after an abortion, all of the claims in that quote are unsubstantiated in that they are reports to an anonymous “us” by anonymous women. By the look of the list of complaints, it was cut and pasted from a list of “risks” from a prolife website. Who would call a counselling service after an abortion complaining of their increased risk of breast cancer? Depression and regret, I can completely understand, but “increased risk”? That part of the quote would have made me laugh if the issue in question were not so serious. I imagined a distraught woman weeping to a counsellor, “…and now I have an increased risk of breast cancer!!” She could only think that if she had been misinformed. The best place to be misinformed about a breast cancer link to abortion? Religious prolife websites (there is a list of them on www.abortion.org.au). Prolifers propagate that particular porky pie to terrify women who are interested in making informed decisions. If a boffin at Oxford University examined the evidence and can’t find a link between abortions and breast cancer that’ll do me: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2004/03/26/1074846.htm

But if that’s not good enough for you, try the World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs240/en/

“These reports are consistent with research which is posted on our website www.tellthetruth.org.au”

I have been there, and no, they are not. There is NO research posted on that website. The closest thing there is to research is a link to www.afterabortion.org, which does contain links to research, though not much of it occurred in the last twenty years. I have not had time to go through the 500 odd articles they cite – I’m only human! However, I would like to do so, if only to discover why so many prolife people use religion rather than reason in their arguments when there is obviously research out there.

(Beside picture of apparently 24 week old foetus - note they use the American spelling, fetus) “Unenforced abortion laws have allowed this.”

Really? The 309 late abortions in 2005 were perfectly legal. Of the 309 legal abortions that occurred 180 of those were NOT for foetal abnormality. Lets assume (probably erroneously) that NONE of those 180 women had genuine health reasons for aborting so late and use the lower figure of 20,000 abortions in Victoria that he’s given us. That’s 0.9% of abortions that were even remotely like the one pictured. Using the larger figure of 30,000 abortions a year the percentage goes down to 0.6%! The emotive tone and graphic pictures on the leaflet would have you think that late term abortions are common, or even, heaven forbid, encouraged by a lax legal system.

Maybe I’m being unnecessarily picky, but I believe if a group is going to distribute such a leaflet then they should at the very least have their facts straight. As it stands, their facts were either quite firmly crooked or entirely without substance. I am aware that these people will not be the first to use emotive phrases and loose facts in an attempt to persuade others to join their cause. However, in this particular case, for this particular issue, for this kind of monumental life-changing decision, it is vital that women are correctly informed. I don’t know what can be done about this, but I am relying on my MPs to know. I will contact you next week if I do not hear from you first.

Letter to MPs re TellTheTruth

This is it. It is the penultimate draft as some of the language needs cleaning up. If any one wants to use any of it in an official letter of complaint against these letterbox bandits, please do. The information below is correct to the best of my knowledge. Of course, all care taken, no responsibility etc etc..

My name is Emervents, I am a mother of two and an honours student. My qualifications include a double degree with majors in biochemistry, chemistry, philosophy (including bioethics) and logic and I am completing an honours thesis in applied ethics - the topic is Foetal Pain. This letter addresses the graphic anti-abortion drivel that slid into my letterbox this weekend.

According to reports on the website given in the leaflet, this mail-out was opened by children and the elderly - people who are normally protected from exposure to such vulgar explicit material. I shudder to think how this coloured slip of lies was received by someone who has miscarried or otherwise lost a baby. Goodness knows how it was received by a woman who had just made the difficult decision to stop a pregnancy. An abject apology is in order, also a further mail out correcting the calculated lies and unsubstantiated generalisations. In the best of possible worlds they will be arrested for delivery of unsolicited obscene material.

It is my son’s job to collect the mail and deliver it to our desks; occasionally he likes to open mail addressed “To the Householder”. It was just luck that I noticed something in our letterbox on a Saturday and investigated, thus avoiding a conversation with my ten year old son that I had planned to leave until he was older. I do not underestimate the potential distress caused if he had opened it, or if my husband, who goes out of his way to avoid this kind of material, had opened it. The warning was woefully inadequate, I can only assume that this was intended.

Our letterbox is labelled “Australia Post Only” so the leaflet distributors blatantly disregarded our wishes not to receive unsolicited material. Is there any action we can take against these people? I do not object to them airing their views. I do, however, object to their methods. As I have detailed below, a great deal of the information in the flyer was false and emotive. It must be against the law to distribute such material, especially against the wishes of the occupants of the house. PLEASE tell me it is against the law! I will be calling your offices three days after I send this letter in order to ascertain whether there is anything more that can be done to prevent this happening again.

The above comprised my complaint, below I detail the inaccuracies and blatant untruths in the flyer.

The knowledge that some people will have believed the contents of this pamphlet provided the motivation to write this correction. The pamphlet makes a mockery of the idea that a woman should be well informed when making the decision whether or not to abort. How can this situation be rectified? What can one person do?

I hope you find it useful. Though my thesis is on foetal pain, I needed to refer to some texts to help me with some of the developmental information:

An atlas of human prenatal developmental mechanics : anatomy and staging, by Jan E. Jirásek, London : Taylor & Francis, c2004

The developing human : clinically oriented embryology, by Keith L. Moore, T.V.N. Persaud. 7th ed, Philadelphia, Saunders, c2003.

The Pictures

When I refer to the age of a foetus I mean biological age. This is different from gestational age, which is calculated using the date of the woman’s last period.

The “8 week old fetus” pictured could not possibly be 8 weeks. At 8 weeks the eyelids have fused or are beginning to, the foetus pictured is not even close to eyelid fusion - it is an embryo, and more likely to be six weeks biological age. The hands on the arms of the 11 week old foetus are too developed for 11 weeks, it is more likely to be at least 13 weeks. Later gestational age is more difficult to discern so the caption could be accurate for the foetus described as 24 weeks. However, the texts I have consulted indicate that at this stage the foetus has saggy wrinkled skin in preparation for the laying down of fat under the skin. Since the skin is taught, the eyelids still look fused, the foetus is well proportioned and eyebrows and head hair are evident, my guess (and I’m a terrifically good guesser) is that it is closer to 21 weeks biological age.

The pictures are also not obviously the result of an optional abortion. A curette after miscarriage gives the same result. Also, the 24 week old foetus is intact and does not have the black skin associated with potassium chloride poisoning. It could have been the result of a premature stillbirth, we cannot know, as the author lacks credibility.

Not only is foetus spelled incorrectly for an Australian context, the author is confused about the age of the foetuses pictured. He very clearly did not do his homework, which is the least one could expect from a leaflet purporting to contain facts.

The Facts - “Did you know?”

In this section I will give a quote from the pamphlet in italics followed by a comment.

“Every week in Victoria enough children to fill a primary school are aborted.”

This is a nice use of visual analogy, however, it is extremely vague as a primary school can contain from 20 to 600 students (to the best of my knowledge). The idea is to plant a picture of a school full of dead children in your mind. This sentence is more emotive than factual.

“Your taxes pay for the abortions.”

This cannot be entirely true for the state of Victoria. The people I know who have had abortions have paid for them from their own pockets. Also, The Age article on late term abortions (quoted below) states that patients paid for their terminations.

“Unborn babies have all their organs and body features present by eight weeks.”

As I’m doing a thesis on foetal pain I knew immediately that this is patently untrue. For example, skin keratinisation (where the skin becomes more like skin on a full term baby) does not begin until week 16, thalamocortical structures in the brain (important connections for pain perception) are not laid down until 26 weeks, 22 at the very earliest. Scalp hair patterning begins at 16 weeks, bone formation (calcification of bones) begins at week 14. Limbs do not reach their final relative proportions until week 17. The uterus in females is not complete until week 18… I could go on, but I think I have made my point. This sentence is, again, incorrect and emotive. The idea is to paint a picture of a miniature fully formed baby at 11 weeks. If it were truly equivalent to a baby, we could put it in a pram and walk it around the block.

“At 11 weeks you were able to swallow, digest, urinate, sleep, dream and taste.”

Was I able to indeed? Swallowing, digesting and urinating is something that can be, and has been, observed. Rapid Eye Movement associated with dreaming is not observed until 21 weeks. It is pure conjecture to claim that the 11 week old foetus sleeps, dreams and tastes - yet this leaflet states it as fact. Again we are asked to picture a fully formed baby capable of human acts such as tasting and dreaming, only this time it is personal. The reference to the reader (“…you were able to…”) is an attempt to instil the irrational fear of being aborted in the reader’s mind: “What if I’d been aborted? I’d be dead!”

“For every 5 babies born 2 are aborted.”

I have not been able to confirm this number from any reliable source. Certainly not from the website.

“There are more than 100,000 abortions every year - between 20,000 and 30,000 in Victoria.”

That is quite vague isn’t it? It is also, as far as I have been able to tell, erroneous. For figures that are a tad more accurate, including a description of how difficult accurate figures are to come by, see this parliamentary research brief, “How many abortions are there in Australia? A discussion of abortion statistics, their limitations, and options for improved statistical collection.” at http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/RB/2004-05/05rb09.pdf

“Most abortions are performed between 7 and 12 weeks gestation.”

This, at least, is relatively true according to the South Australian data in the report referred to above, which says that 98% occur before 14 weeks.

“By between 7 and 12 weeks gestation the heart has been beating for weeks, all organs and body features are present, fingerprints are evident and taste buds and teeth are beginning to form. The baby has a skeletal structure, nerves and circulation.”

The heart has been beating since week four and circulation is present but again, not all organs are present. The skeletal structure is yet to ossify (or become hard bones), the foetus might have nerves but the central nervous system has barely begun to resemble that of a full term baby. The 12 week old foetus does not have fingernails, hair, certain reproductive organs, skin as we know it…. But I’ve been there already, haven’t I?

“Late term abortions (after 20 weeks gestation) are increasingly performed.”

This is not true according to a report in The Age on 31/1/2007 “After rising dramatically over several years, the number of women having late abortions has fallen in Victoria for the first time since the state began collecting data on the contentious procedure. New figures show that in 2005 there were 309 late abortions (after 20 weeks' pregnancy) in Victoria, compared with 327 in 2004. The number of women having the procedure for psychological reasons, where there is no genetic abnormality, also fell for the first time - from 197 to 180. More than half those women came from interstate or overseas. It is the first time numbers have fallen since the state began reporting the data in 2000.” Not only that, these abortions cost the women $2500 each, the tax payer was nowhere in sight.

“There are many psychological and physical risks for women who have had abortions.”

Generalised, vague and therefore frightening. No references.

“-From women we have counselled after an abortion.”

Who’s WE? People are referred to the telephone directory, not a counselling service.

“Women have reported to us they have suffered these problems after abortion: Infertility, subsequent miscarriage, very premature birth, ectopic pregnancy, suicidal urges and thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares about babies, sleep disorders, psychotic episodes, deep depression, rage, despair, guilt, shame, severe grief, eating disorders, relationship break-ups, anger with and/or over protection of their children, drug and alcohol abuse, serial relationships with violent and abusive men, inability to form relationships, increased risk of breast cancer and years of suppression and denial before post abortion stress symptoms break through.”

Where does one start with this quote? All of them except the last one are possible without an abortion in the equation. Drug and alcohol abuse and violent relationships are not caused by abortions. However, they can be a context in which abortions occur. For an Australian study on this, see “Termination of pregnancy: associations with partner violence and other factors in a national cohort of young Australian women.” Angela J Taft, Lyndsey F Watson. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. Canberra:Apr 2007. Vol. 31, Iss. 2, p. 135-142. The Age reported on it in April last year (7/4/2007).

All of the claims in that quote are unsubstantiated, and by the look of them, were cut and pasted from a list of “risks” from a prolife website. Who would call a counselling service after an abortion complaining of their increased risk of breast cancer? Depression and regret, I can completely understand, but “increased risk”? That part of the quote would have made me laugh if the issue in question were not so serious. I imagined a distraught woman weeping to a counsellor, “…and now I have an increased risk of breast cancer!!” She could only think that if she had been misinformed. The best place to be misinformed about a breast cancer link to abortion? Prolife websites. Prolifers propagate that particular porky pie to terrify women who are interested in making informed decisions. If a boffin at Oxford University examined the evidence and can’t find a link between abortions and breast cancer that’ll do me: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2004/03/26/1074846.htm

But if that’s not good enough for you, try the World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs240/en/

“These reports are consistent with research which is posted on our website www.tellthetruth.org.au”

I have been there, and no, they are not. There is NO research posted on that website. The closest thing there is to research is a link to www.afterabortion.org, which does contain links to research, though not much of it in the last twenty years. Www.afterabortion.org is also affiliated with the Elliot Institute; reading their site for twenty odd minutes was enough to detect the religious prolife premise.

(Beside picture of apparently 24 week old foetus - note they use the American spelling, fetus) “Unenforced abortion laws have allowed this.”

Actually the 309 late abortions in 2005 were perfectly legal. Of the 309 legal abortions that occurred 180 of those were NOT for foetal abnormality. Lets assume (probably erroneously) that NONE of those 180 women had genuine health reasons for aborting so late and use the lower figure of 20,000 abortions in Victoria that he’s given us. That’s 0.9% of abortions that were even remotely like the one pictured. Using the larger figure of 30,000 abortions a year the percentage goes down to 0.6%! The emotive tone and graphic pictures on the pamphlet would have you think that late term abortions are common, or even, heaven forbid, encouraged by a lax legal system.

Maybe I’m being unnecessarily picky, but I believe if a group is going to distribute such a pamphlet then they should at the very least have their facts straight. As it stands, their facts were either quite firmly crooked or entirely without substance due to a dire lack of creditable references.

I know that this was long and unnecessarily detailed, but if just one person was going to believe that pamphlet and changes their mind after reading this, it will have been worth writing it.

Finally, a word to Ron and his ilk: Did you notice that I used words to make my point?

Delays, delays...

This letter to the MPs is taking longer than I thought. Partially because I had a family weekend, but also because there are SO many errors!!!

The best claim so far is the one where people have told a counsellor that the abortion has increased their risk of breast cancer. How can they know this? Possibly they've been reading prolife websites. If they'd gone to the World Health Organisation instead they'd have been set straight.

Soon, soon, soon....

Just for Fun, here are my posts on TellTheTruth

Thanks for the link to the cool tool that enabled me to easily find all my local politicians. I will be sending them emails detailing the distress you caused my family and asking if there is any legal action that can be taken against you. I will also send them letters correcting the errors in your mail out (fully referenced, unlike your mail out). Finally I will spend all day Tuesday calling them to make sure they got the message. Your link also enabled an easy email to all my victorian friends who feel the same way, so that THEY can also contact THEIR pollies... You just might have roused the pro-choice movement with your little pamphlet. Good on YOU!!

Call me fussy but I get somewhat irritated when religious old men, who will NEVER have to walk their talk, tell me when and where to use my power to create people.

___________________________________

Someone calls me a megalomaniac.
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I'm not a megalomaniac, I'm a realist. Babies do not fall from the sky, they are made, and the primary producer is - women.

What turns a combined sperm and egg into human being (and makes it different from, say, a skin cell) is a long nine months or so in a nurturing environment. In other words, nine months or so inside a woman.

If the developing baby cannot survive without the mother then it is still being made. It is it is not a baby yet and will not be until the mother has finished making it. If the mother dies before the growing foetus can survive outside of her, then no amount of wishful thinking on anybody’s part will make it a human being. No mother to complete the process = no new human being.

Women carry inside them the power to make new people. Hundreds of thousands of women around the globe are willing to risk their lives having unsafe abortions rather than use their power to create a new human being. They do this because they understand two things. They understand the implications of the use of their power at that particular time, and they know that the embryo within them is not a human baby unless they make it so.

With great power comes great responsibility. Now is the time to place that responsibility where it belongs, with the women with the power to make the babies.

In order to be responsible, we need sex education, access to plenty of birth control, and recourse to abortions if that birth control fails. Those of us who have read the latest Marie Stopes report will know that birth control fails a LOT and is the major reason for abortions in Victoria.

As a woman with the power who has both stopped a pregnancy and given birth (regretting neither), I’d like to request that the church and government butt out of my reproductive decisions.

Your money would be better spent on making abortion SAFE (performed by medical practitioners only), and RARE (increase sensible sex education and access to birth control).

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When Ron said he wouldn't respond to anonymous posters I said this...
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Ok Ron, I did not post anonymously. Could you please respond to my post? Who is D. Kelly who authorised the pamphlet?

Oh, and in Australia, we spell it FOETUS not fetus.

Cheers,
Emma

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Ron responds that D. Kelly is a personal friend to which I have two responses...
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So, Ron, you put the name of a personal friend on the kind of thing that would cause this much outrage? Nice friend you are!

To the previous poster, your last quote sums up the tactics of the prolife campaign quite nicely: "And all the poor sheeples go Baa Baa Baa. As Hitler said, "If you repeat slogans often enough, they become the truth. And the bigger the lie, the more easily people believe it."

I wonder if any of you could tell me where unborn babies are valued in the bible? Other than as chattel of course.

Cheers
Emma

Oh and another thing... D. Kelly's credentials are relevant if D. Kelly is going to authorise such a controversial mail-out. Particularly if said mail-out contains apocryphal generalisations masquerading as truth. His credentials please?

Cheers
Emma



That's it really. I'll be at the library tomorrow doing the letters to my MPs, which I will also post and which I will also be happy for people to use as templates.

Let's make every child a wanted child.