“Pro-lifers” in the UK are dicks. Again.
May 9, 2008
Welcome to the 1968 abortion-law debate. 40 years later. Parliament is scheduled to vote on the Human Embryology Bill next week, which includes a whole raft of laws from allowing parents to artificially create a foetus to produce donor cells for a sick sibling, to using the empty shells of animal eggs to grow human tissue from cell nuclei (avoiding the need to fertilise human eggs with human sperm – bizarrely enough to appease the religious right). The most divisive part of the Bill, however, is a proposal to slash the time limit for a woman to have an abortion from 24 weeks of pregnancy to 20 weeks. The basis of the argument for this is that anti-abortionists believe that premature babies can and do now survive from 20 weeks onwards. Let’s examine that belief, shall we?
A gentleman by the name of Professor David Field, a consultant neo-natal paediatrician from the neo-natal unit at Leicester Royal Infirmary carried out two studies, the first between 1994 and 1999, and the second between 2000 and 2005. The study was over a huge population with no pre-selection of candidates – all premature births in the study’s catchment were included.
What those studies showed was this: only 18% of babies born at 23 weeks survived – in BOTH periods. Survivability of super-premature (pre 24 week) babies has not improved at all. The study went further: of all the babies born at 22 weeks or earlier, none survived. Not a single solitary one, in either study.
What’s the counter argument?
Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP sums it up: “…this report insults the intelligence of the public and MPs…. Where has all the money that has been pumped into neonatal services gone, then? [the report is] tosh produced by the pro choice lobby”
Um…. The money’s gone to trying to improve survivability? Trying takes money – it doesn’t, however, guarantee success. And…. Her opinion is more valid than a ton of evidence? Why? Sorry, but bullshit!
What should we believe? Two peer-reviewed, published studies carried out over large populations and several years by a highly qualified doctor in the field? Or a neo-conservative, religious zealot’s unqualified rantings?
This is a real no-brainer if you examine it: “pro-lifers” know that they can’t get abortion banned – it has 76% public support in the UK – but that isn’t going to stop them trying to erode it over time: Drop it to 20 weeks…. Now 18…. Now 15…. Now 12…. Now 4 weeks…. Now ban the morning-after pill…
It’s regressive and it’s harmful to force women to bear children which they’re incapable of raising, which they do not want, which will be severely disabled by genetic disorders or the mother’s drug or alcohol use, which are the result of a rape, which are incestuous…
Religious right-whingers: Your day has been and it has gone in the UK. Your ridiculous beliefs are not relevant to our lives, and people resent your constant interference and attention seeking. Fuck off and grow up, learn to take responsibility for the world yourself instead of blaming the mythical sky-daddy, and stop fucking with everybody else’s lives and freedoms on the basis of your own ignorant beliefs. In short, just fuck off.
Reports in this morning’s papers say that 10,000 have been killed in Indonesia by a cyclone and that it has left 1,000,000 people homeless. In an unprecedented move, the Indonesian government have said that they will accept international aid in this, their time of need.
So… Having resisted (read: ignored) international pressure over their corrupt military dictatorship, appalling human rights abuses and their political prisoners, now they want help…
Folks, it’s like this: When you give money to corrupt regimes in “aid”, a large chunk of it magically sticks to the hands of the rulers of said corrupt regimes. That part of it which actually goes where it was meant to go keeps the population just well fed enough that they won’t overthrow their government themselves. Zimbabwe, anybody? How do you think Robert Mugabe is a US dollar multi-billionaire in a country with 6000% inflation? And why do you think that a population with 85% unemployment hasn’t overthrown him yet?
Easy: “The people are always only three meals from revolution” – that’s true in any society in the world. So, what I want to know is this: Why are we providing the three meals which prevent the people of oppressed third-world regimes from deposing rulers who are morally abhorrent and who we don’t want in power anyway?
My take on the Indonesian cyclone is easy: Allow the UN to station troops in Indonesia, arrange for democratic elections, free ALL of their political prisoners, and THEN we’ll help to feed the people. Quid pro quo.
Only it never works like that does it? “Why should the people suffer because of their rulers?” – because those same rulers bleed Western aid dry at the same time as making us pariahs and scapegoats for all of their countries’ ills, and the bottom line is that the people are the only people who can change it. We need to remove their motivation for tolerating the status-quo.
