Wednesday, October 6, 2010

When "Choice" isn't free or good

It can be coercion:

Police say an Ohio man who wanted his pregnant girlfriend to get an abortion forced her to drive to a health clinic at gunpoint.

Columbus police say 27-year-old Dominic Holt-Reid became angry with the woman Wednesday because she refused to go through with an abortion scheduled at the clinic earlier in the day.

It can be a late, desperate and horrid abdication of moral responsibility:

BABIES that are surviving late-term abortions at Melbourne's Royal Women's Hospital might be being left on shelves to die, according to an Anglican minister.

Dr Mark Durie, minister of St Mary's Caulfield, said staff were finding it hard to cope with a reported six-fold increase in late-term abortions at the Women's since abortion was decriminalised in Victoria two years ago. He said because conscientious objection by medical staff was now illegal, the hospital could employ only people who endorsed late-term abortions.

Dr Durie said even in 2007, 52 babies survived late-term abortions, according to government figures. In some clinics they had simply been put on a shelf and left to die, and the public deserved to know what was happening now.

All the propaganda about "choice" ignores the reality that permissive abortion policy still allows men, relatives or "friends" from pressuring women to abort, and also forces people who do not approve of abortion to take part in it or risk their livelihood.

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