Society

Feminism And Gendercide

dollSusan B. Anthony (1820–1906) played a pivotal role in the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement. She introduced women’s suffrage into the United States. While she advocated for women’s rights at a time when women were not even allowed to vote, Anthony viewed abortion as a means of exploiting both women and children. She referred to abortion as “child murder”, stating:

“I deplore the horrible crime of child murder … No matter what the motive, love of ease or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed.” She added: “Guilty? Yes … It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death!”[1]

None of the early feminists believed that abortion was a woman’s right.[2] On the contrary, they believed that women’s equality would end abortion for good.[3] Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), whose “Declaration of Sentiments” (1848) is credited with initiating the struggle towards women’s suffrage in the United States, explains in a letter to a supporter, in 1873: “When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”[4] She was following in the steps of the eighteenth-century British writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), who stated in her feminist classic A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792):

Women … sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection … either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in everything demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.[5]

Although the early feminists expressed an undeniable opposition to all forms of abortion, they were followed decades later by a new breed of left-leaning feminists who have promoted abortion as a means of identity politics, economics and sexual liberation. What is today defined as “feminism” stands in general for abortion on demand, the welfare state and identity politics.

Let’s have look at some of the statements of today’s feminists. Kate Michelman, a leading feminist and former president of NARAL, writes: “We have to remind people that abortion is the guarantor of a woman’s right to participate fully in the social and political life of society.”[6] Likewise, feminist scholars Kate Hindell and Madelaine Simms believe that abortion is a fundamental right of the woman. They even employ sham science to contend that the foetus is merely a part of the woman’s body, and not yet human.[7] So the foetus may be extracted and destroyed like any tooth or tumour. If anyone is willing to see what feminists like Hindell and Simms regard as a mere “part of the woman’s body”, there are now 3D images of life in utero, showing these “part” bouncing around, sucking their thumbs, and even smiling.[8] Reading such sentiments makes one wonder what Wollstonecraft, Stanton and Anthony would think about today’s feminists. By Anthony’s own judgment, they would be “guilty” of the wholesale slaughter of the “unborn innocent”.

According to Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth of Harvard University Medical School, “it is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception”.[9] Her medical assessment is endorsed by Dr Alfred M Bongioanni, professor of obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania:

I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception … human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood … any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life.[10]

Speaking of the early stages of a child’s development in the womb, Dr Bongioanni concludes:

I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty is not a human being. This is human life at every stage.[11]

The moment of a human’s creation is the moment of her conception. The newly fertilised egg contains a staggering amount of genetic information, sufficient to control the individual’s growth and development for her entire lifetime.[12] Perhaps for this reason the United States Congress passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act in 2004, declaring that anyone who “intentionally kills or attempts to kill the unborn child … be punished … for intentionally killing or attempting to kill a human being”.[13] Congress also voted unanimously to delay capital punishment of a pregnant woman until after her delivery. Every congressman, even if “pro-choice” (that is, pro-abortion), acknowledged that the unborn baby was a separate person, innocent of her mother’s crime.[14] Furthermore, numerous American states have passed foetal homicide laws, declaring it murder for anyone but the mother to deliberately take the life of an unborn child. These laws are an explicit affirmation that the unborn is a human being.[15]

The “pro-choice” position always overlooks the victim’s right to choose. The high sounding “right to choose” ignores the fact that not all choices are legitimate or morally valid. When someone opposes a “right” to things such as rape or child abuse, she is not opposing a right. She is opposing a wrong. By contrast, “every movement of oppression and exploitation—from slavery, to prostitution, to drug dealing, to abortion—has labelled itself pro-choice. They have opposed those who offer compassion and deliverance as ‘anti-choice’”.[16] The pro-choice movement is actually a pro-abortion movement in which “choice” is basically a euphemism for the killing of the unborn child.[17] As Mary O’Brian Drum points out, “After a woman is pregnant … all that is left to her to decide is whether she will deliver her baby dead or alive.”[18]

Since leading feminists have tried to tie the abortion agenda to the legitimate issues of women’s rights, one feminist “dissenter”, Mary Ann Shaefer, has labelled this attempt to marry feminism to abortion as “terrorist feminism”. As she points out, it forces the whole feminist movement to be “willing to kill for the cause you believe in”.[19] Hence legal scholar Erika Bachiochi, who grew up absorbing feminist philosophy, explains: “I was pro-choice because I was a feminist.” As Bachiochi’s “pursuit of truth” began to replace her “pursuit of the self”, she began to reconsider her thinking and to understand that abortion diminishes the humanity, femininity and well-being of women, and is a means of demeaning and abandoning the poor.[20] Ultimately, her rejection of abortion as a “women’s rights” issue led to her questioning mainstream feminism:

… abortion hijacked feminism. Rather than elevate the status of the feminine virtues in the public square and teach the power of serving, as a true feminism ought, mainstream feminism, having allowed itself to be corrupted by the abortion imperative, taught women to place ambitions and desires of the self above those in need, and to value power more than truth and love. Some women, persuaded by this corrupted feminism, have sacrificed their very womanliness—most manifest in the ability to bear a child—by having abortions in order to continue pursuing success in the public square. Such a course of action is inherently anti-woman … Hearts will not change concerning abortion until women … insist through both words and deeds that acts of love are far more impressive, attractive and noble than acts of power.[21]

The US environmentalist Rosemary Bottcher, in her essay “Feminism: Bewitched by Abortion”, contends that mainstream feminism has degraded women by portraying them as unable to handle the stress and pressures of pregnancy without resorting to killing their children. Such feminism opposes all the efforts to require that abortion be treated like every other surgery when it comes to informing the patient of its nature and risks, because it appears not to believe that women are capable of making intelligent choices after being presented with the facts.[22] Among the facts one finds the scientific evidence that while women with one abortion double their risk of cervical cancer, women with two or more abortions multiply such risk by nearly five times. And similar risks of breast[23], ovarian and liver cancer are also linked to abortion.[24] In her testimony before a United States Senate sub-committee in 2004, Dr Elizabeth Shadigan testified that abortion increases rates of placenta previa, pre-term births and maternal suicide. Statistically, she concluded: “all types of deaths are higher with women who have had induced abortions”.[25]

Naturally, many will say that abortion might be justified when a woman’s life or health is threatened by pregnancy. It is an extremely rare case when abortion is required to save the mother’s life. While he was US Surgeon General, Dr C. Everett Koop stated that in his thirty-six years as paediatric surgeon, he was never aware of a single situation in which a pre-born child’s life had to be taken in order to save the mother’s life. Dr Koop described the use of such argument to justify abortion as a “smoking screen”.[26] Another medical surgeon, Dr Landrum Shettles, has said that less than 1 per cent of all abortions are performed to save the mother’s life.[27]

Although leading feminists insist that abortion is a fundamental woman’s right, the “pro-choice” agenda of today’s mainstream feminism does not necessarily represent the position of most women. On the contrary, abortion on demand is rejected by the majority of women both in the United States and beyond. Indeed, opinion polls reveal that more women than men affirm the unborn’s right to life.[28] By contrast, the group that is most consistently pro-choice is actually single men.[29] That being so, as Randy Alcorn says, “it is ironic that abortion has been turned into a women’s rights issue when it has encouraged male irresponsibility and failure to care for women and children”.[30]

Arguably, the mainstream feminist agenda of abortion on demand and its casual attitude towards sex is quite pleasing to promiscuous men, although it is deeply debasing to women who are used (and abused) in the process.[31] A major four-stage research project carried out in Australia concluded that 60 per cent of all abortions taking place here are done under male coercion.[32] Such coercion against pregnant women, forcing them to abort their unborn babies, comes from their boyfriends, doctors and parents—including their boyfriends’ parents. In fact, the male partner plays a central role in the abortion decision in 95 per cent of cases, even although 70 per cent of Australian women believe that having an abortion is morally wrong.[33]

Regardless of this, feminists around the world have continued to fight for the right of women to “choose” ending their pregnancy. Ironically, non-Western women have used such a right and chosen not to give births to girls. Indeed, one of the greatest ironies of feminism is that all its ideological advocacy of abortion has unintentionally sanctioned the elimination of unwanted girls across the globe. “Son preference” is overwhelming among women in some non-Western countries such as Pakistan and Yemen, who say they want only sons, not daughters, by margins of ten to one.[34] The situation is not restricted to Muslim-majority countries. According to the Economist, distorted sex ratios constitute a reality in all East Asian countries, including Taiwan and Singapore, as well as former communist states in the western Balkans and the Caucasus, and even among entire sections of the American population (Chinese- and Japanese-Americans, for example).[35]

In 1999, the government of India asked women what sex they wanted their next child to be. “One third of those without children said a son, two-thirds had no preference and only a residual said a daughter”.[36] Because of sex-selection abortions, a survey of a dozen villages in India has found that out of a total population of ten thousand, only fifty were girls.[37] In neighbouring China two-thirds of all children born are males because of selective abortion against female babies. In the countryside, the ratio of boys to girls is four to one.[38] One academic source has suggested that there could be a ratio of 168 males for every 100 girls in Danzhou.[39] According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, by the year 2020 there will be 30 million more men than women of marriageable age in China.[40] One in five young Chinese men will be unable to find a bride.[41]

This is the choice these women have made: to abort their baby girls. Mainstream feminists have demanded a “right to choose” and they are hypocrites if they find this to be unacceptable. Needless to say, if it is a woman’s “right” to choose whether or not to give birth to a baby, it must therefore be okay to choose whether or not to give birth to a girl. There is an ugly new word for this sort of mass slaughter: gendercide—a term used in the title of a 1985 book by Mary Anne Warren.[42] As the Economist explains:

It is no exaggeration to call this gendercide. Women are missing in their millions—aborted, killed, neglected to death. In 1990 an Indian economist, Amartya Sen, put the number at 100 million; the toll is higher now. The crumb of comfort is that countries can mitigate the hurt, and that one, South Korea, has shown the worst can be avoided. Others need to learn from it if they are to stop the carnage.[43]

In the United States approximately 1.37 million abortions have taken place each year since 1973.[44] Each year some 190,000 abortions are performed in England and Wales and up to 100,000 in Australia.[45] So the number of babies killed in the USA through abortion in four months is about the same number of Americans killed during the whole of the Second World War.

Of course, if one has the “right” to eliminate pre-natal life, then one might well eventually acquire a similar “right” to take post-natal life of other “categories” of human beings. Surely the next step following widespread abortion is the devaluation of human life in general—the denial of basic human rights to other categories of human beings. It is no coincidence that the eras in history which have most favoured abortion have also had higher suicide rates.[46]

In this sense, the primary result of the successful support by mainstream feminism for legal abortion is that we have become the arbitrary judges over human life. A 2004 survey conducted in Australia by Southern Cross Bioethics discovered an overwhelming support for abortion for foetal disability.[47] It has been reported that a baby girl of two weeks from natural birth was killed in a Melbourne hospital only because the doctor thought that she could have dwarfism.[48] It emerged that the hospital routinely performed late abortion (that is, after twenty weeks of pregnancy) each year.[49] The treatment of unborn children in the Western democracies is comparable to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.[50] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor that Hitler executed for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, “spoke as strongly against abortion as he ever did against Nazism”.[51] He was fully convinced that

The destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.[52]

One in three Australian women now will have an abortion in their lifetime. There is one abortion in Australia for every 2.8 births.[53] The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001 Year Book states that “abortion is being used as a form of contraception as well as a way of protecting rights of women”.[54] Quite a number of abortions (32.2 per cent) were performed on women who were married or in de facto relationships, and who wished to have an abortion due to “having completed their families” or for purely economic reasons.[55] Any society which tolerates such mass extermination of innocent humans has ceased to be truly civilised.[56] Indeed, one of the most visible signs of moral decadence of the Roman empire was that unwanted babies were either killed or left abandoned to die.[57] So we conclude with the words of the late British theologian John Stott:

Can we claim that contemporary western society is any less decadent because it consigns its unwanted babies to the hospital incinerator instead of the local rubbish dump? Indeed modern abortion is even worse than ancient exposure because it has been commercialised, and has become, at least for some doctors and clinics, an extremely lucrative practice. But reverence for human life is an indisputable characteristic of a humane and civilized society.[58]

Augusto Zimmermann is Senior Lecturer in Law and Chair of Legal Theory, Murdoch University; Adjunct Law Professor, Universitas Kristen Maranatha (Indonesia); President, Western Australian Legal Theory Association; Commissioner, Law Reform Commission of Western Australia.

 



[1] 4[1]:4 July 8, 1869. Quoted from Gary D. Naler, The Curse of 1920 (Salem/MO: 2007), p. 229.

[2] For instance, Sarah Norton, the great-granddaughter of President John Adams and who argued successfully for women’s admission to Cornell University, regarded abortion as a moral and social abomination. She wrote: “Child murderers practice their profession without hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned … Is there no remedy for all this ante-natal child murder? … Perhaps there will come a time … when the right of the unborn will not be denied or interfered with”. C E Sarah F. Norton, in Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, November 9, 1870.

[3] Frank Ludwig, ‘There is No Doubt the Early Feminists Were Pro-Life on Abortion’, LifeNews.com, June 22 2013, available at http://www.lifenews.com/2013/06/22/there-is-no-doubt-the-early-feminists-were-pro-life-on-abortion/

[4] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Letter to Julia Ward Howe (October 16, 1873). J.W. Howe’s Diary is available at Harvard University Library.

[5] Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), Chapter VII, available at http://www.bartleby.com/144/8.html

[6] Kate Michelman, quoted in The New York Times, May 10, 1988. See: Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), p.40.

[7] R.F.R. Gardner, Abortion: The Personal Dilemma (Paternoster Press, 1972), p.62. Quoted from: John Stott, New Issues Facing Christians Today (London/UK: Harper Collins, 1999), p.351.

[8] Babette Francis, ‘A Slaughter We Cannot Ignore’, Melbourne/Vic, 25 November 2005.

[9] Quoted from Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), p.40.

[10] Sub-committe on Separation of Powers to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, Report, 97th Congress, 1st Session, 1981.

[11] Ibid.

[12] A single thread of DNA form a human cell contains information equivalent to a library of one thousand volumes. At conception, in the objective scientific sense, the embryo is every bit as human as any older child or adult. At eighteen days after conception her head is formed and the eyes start to develop. By thirty days she has a brain and has multiplied in size ten thousand times. No matter how she looks, a child is a child and abortion terminates that child’s life.

[13] HR 1997 was passed by a Senate roll call vote of 61-38, March 25, 2004. See: Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 40-1.

[14] Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004). 40.

[15] In Australia, the government of New Sought Wales in 2004 passed legislation to protect unborn children against acts of violence, yet abortion was specifically excluded.

[16] Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), p.64. As Alcorn put it,Blacks did not choose slavery. Jews did not choose the ovens. Women do not choose rape. And babies do not choose abortion”.[16] Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), p.64.

[17] Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), p.63.

[18] Mary O’Brian Drum, ‘Meeting in the Radical Middle’, Sojourners, November 1980, p.23.

[19] Mary Ann Shaefer, quoted by Chaterine and William Odell, The First Human Right (Toronto/QC: Life Cycle Books, 1983), pp.39-40.

[20] Erika Bachiochi holds a J.D. from Boston University and a M.A. in Theology from Boston College. Her social conscience and concern for the poor eventually led her to examine the pro-abortion advocacy of “elitist women’s groups” as a means “to solve the problems of the poor by helping them rid themselves of their children”. See Erika Bachiochi, ‘Coming of Age in a Culture of Choice’, in Erick Bachiochi (ed.), The Cost of “Choice”, Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion (San Francisco/CA: Encounter Books, 2004), p.28.

[21] Erika Bachiochi, ‘Coming of Age in a Culture of Choice’, in Erick Bachiochi (ed.) The Cost of “Choice”, Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion (San Francisco/CA: Encounter Books, 2004), p.28.

[22] Rosemary Bottcher, ‘Feminism: Bewitched by Abortion’, in Dave Andrusko, To Rescue the Future (New York/NY: Life Cycle Books, 1983

[23] ‘After extensive research, Dr Joel Brind, professor of endocrinology at City University of New York, concluded: “The single most avoidable risk fact for breast cancer is induced abortion’.[23] Joel Brind, ‘Comprehensive Review and Meta-Analysis of the Abortion/Breast Cancer Link’, at http://members.aol.com/DFjoseph/brind.html. A woman who has abortion increases her risk of breast cancer by a minimum of 50 percent as much as 300 percent.[23] LA Brinton, R Hoover, and IF Framueni, (1983) British Journal of Cancer 47, 757-62. Moreover, another study of pregnancy-associated deaths published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology demonstrates that the mortality rate associated with abortion is 2.95 times higher than of pregnancies carried to term.’[23]

[24] F. Parazzini et al, ‘Reproductive Factors and the Risk of Invasive and Intraepithelial Cervical Neoplasia’, British Journal of Cancer, 59:805-9 (1989); H. L. Stewart et al, ‘Epidemiology of Cancers of the Uterine Cervix and Corpus, Brest and Ovary in Israel and New York City’, Journal of the National Cancer Institute 37(i):1-96; I. Fujimoto et al, ‘Epidemiologic Study of Carcinoma in Situ of the Cervix’, Journal of Reproductive Medicine 30(7):535 (July 1985); C. LaVecchia et al, ‘Reproductive Factors and the Risk of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Women’, International Journal of Cancer, 52:231 (1992).

[25] Elizabeth Shadigan, MD, testimony before the Senate sub-committee on science, technology, and space’s hearing to investigate the physical and psychological effects of abortion on women; cited in ‘Witnessess Ask U.S. Senate for Research into Side Effects of Abortion on Women’, Culture & Cosmos, vol.1, no.30, March 9, 2004. See: Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), p.69. Likewise, the odds of malformations in later children are increased by abortion (S. Linn, ‘The Relationship Between Induced Abortion and Outcome of Subsequent Pregnancies’, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, May 15, 1983, 136-40) In addition, the frequency of early death for infants born after their mothers have had abortions is between two and four times the normal rate. (John A. Richardson and Geoffrey Dixon, ‘Effects of Legal Termination on Subsequent Pregnancy’, British Medical Journal (1976):1303-4). For more information on these and other consequences of abortion for women’s health, and a list of supporting references has been produced by the USA-based Elliot Institute. See: Thomas W. Strahan (ed.), ‘Detrimental Effects of Abortion: An Annotated Bibliography’, Elliot Institute, 2001, www.abortionfacts.com/pas.asp

[26] Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), p.76.

[27] Landrum B. Shettles and David Rorvik, Rites of Life: The Scientific Evidence for Life Before Birth (Grand Rapids/MI: Zondervan, 1983), p. 129.

[28] ‘Abortion and Moral Beliefs: A Survey of American Opinion”, conducted by the Gallup Organization, 1991, 4-7. See: Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), p.59.

[29] Guy M. Condon, ‘You say Choice, I Say Murder’, Christianity Today, June 24, 1991, p. 23.

[30] Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), p.59.

[31] Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism (Chicago/IL: Elephant Paperbacks, 1995), p.56.

[32] See: Changing Hearts & Finding New Alternatives. Published by Respect Life Office, Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, 2005.

[33] Ibid.

[34] ‘The Worldwide War on Baby Girls: Technology, Declining Fertility and Ancient Prejudice Are Coming to Unbalance Societies’, The Economist, March 4th, 2010, at http://www.economist.com/node/15636231

[35] ‘Gendercide: Killed, Aborted or Neglected, at Least 100m Girls Have Disappeared—And The Number is Rising’, The Economist, March 4th, 2010, at http://www.economist.com/node/15606229 “China is nominally a communist country, but elsewhere it was communism’s collapse that was associated with the growth of sexual disparities. After the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, there was an upsurge in the ratio of boys to girls in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Their sex ratios rose from normal levels in 1991 to 115-120 by 2000. A rise also occurred in several Balkan states after the wars of Yugoslav succession. The ratio in Serbia and Macedonia is around 108. There are even signs of distorted sex ratios in America, among various groups of Asian-Americans. In 1975, calculates Mr Eberstadt, the sex ratio for Chinese-, Japanese- and Filipino-Americans was between 100 and 106. In 2002, it was 107 to 109”.—‘The Worldwide War on Baby Girls: Technology, Declining Fertility and Ancient Prejudice Are Coming to Unbalance Societies’, The Economist, March 4th, 2010, at http://www.economist.com/node/15636231

[36] ‘The Worldwide War on Baby Girls: Technology, Declining Fertility and Ancient Prejudicie Are Coming to Unbalance Societies’, The Economist, March 4h, 2010, at http://www.economist.com/node/15636231

[37] Robert Stone, ‘Women Endangered Species in India’, The Oregonian, March 14, 1989, B7. See also: Jo McGowan, “in India They Abort Females”, Newsweek, February 13, 1989.

[38] Straits Times report, Beijing, February 7, 2000. Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers (Peabody/MA: Hendrickson, 2004), p.60. Related stories www.lifesite.net

[39] Peter Hitchens, ‘Gendercide: China’s Shameful Massacre of Unborn Girls Means There Will Soon be 30m More Men Than Women’, Daily Mail, London/UK, 10 April 2010, at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1265068/China-The-worlds-new-superpower-beginning-century-supremacy-alarming-surplus-males.html

[40] ‘The Worldwide War on Baby Girls: Technology, Declining Fertility and Ancient Prejudice Are Coming to Unbalance Societies’, The Economist, March 4th, 2010, at http://www.economist.com/node/15636231

[41] In China, baby girls are victims of a malign combination of ancient prejudice and modern preferences for small families. The main problem seems to be the one child policy. Parents can only have one child, so many are very motivated to make that child a son. The quickest way to solve this would be to drop the policy. Also, the one child policy will cause economic problems later on, as China will have a large old population and a small young population. Thus, dropping the policy would be best. India is a different case altogether. Indians can have as many children as they want, but the truth is that women are strongly looked down upon in that country.

[42] ‘Gendercide: Killed, Aborted or Neglected, at Least 100m Girls Have Disappeared—And The Number is Rising’, The Economist, March 4th, 2010, at http://www.economist.com/node/15606229

[43] ‘Gendercide: Killed, Aborted or Neglected, at Least 100m Girls Have Disappeared—And The Number is Rising’, The Economist, March 4th, 2010, at http://www.economist.com/node/15606229

[44] The Alan Gutmacher Institute, website www.agi-usa.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html; Facts in Brief, rev. February 2000.

[45] The Department of Health and Ageing estimated that there are approximately 90,000 abortions in Australia each year (Answer to Senate Question Number 325 on notice on 31 January 2005 by Senator Boswell). The date contains the figures for abortions performed only in public hospitals. So the 90,000 figure does not include abortions which were privately funded.

[46] Rousas John Rushdoony, Law and Liberty (Vallecito/CA: Ross House, 1984), p.151. Regarding the abortion of the disabled, there is overwhelming support for the killing of the disabled unborn. According to an in-depth investigation carried by Southern Cross Bioethics Institution, 60% of Australians support abortion in cases of only mild disability. (See: J.I. Fleming and S. Ewing, Given Women Choice: Australia Speaks on Abortion, Southern Cross Bioethics Institute, 26 April 2005). Before the Nazis started killing the Jews in Germany, they first ordered the handicapped to be exterminated. (Bill Muehlenberg, ‘Dismantling the Abortion Myths’, The Australian Family, Vol.25, No.1, March 2004, p.22). The support of ‘civilised’ countries for legal abortion of the disabled is caused by today’s eugenic cult of the ‘perfect baby’. Hence genetic manipulation dictates that the unborn is only allowed to stay alive if the doctor thinks he or she is perfectly healthy. And yet the main reason for the killing of the disabled unborn must also justify the killing of the disable adult and the terminally ill.

[47] According to the survey, 85% of Australians support abortion in the case of server foetal disability and 60% support it in the case of mild foetal disability. (J.I. Fleming & S Ewing, ‘Give Women Choice: Australia Speaks on Abortion, Southern Cross Bioethics Institute, 26 April 2005, p.10).

[48] Andrew Bolt, ‘Yes it’s an Abortion’, Herald Sun, Melbourne/Vic, August 8, 2004.

[49] “Despite the worse efforts of doctors, a number of babies have survived abortions. Possibly some 500 to 1,000 abortions are born alive each year in the USA … On 14 July, 1998 in Darwin, Australia, a baby was supposed to be 19 weeks’ old, and the mother had been given drugs to induce an abortion During the night of 13-14 July she gave birth to a daughter who exhibited encouraging vital life signs. A registered mid-wife was shocked when she heard the little girl cry, and felt herself in the midst of what she called a ‘very big moral dilemma’–having come to work expecting to preside over a stillbirth, she was faced with a life infant. The doctor experienced no such dilemma, and denied any doctor-patient relationship with the infant’.” Peter Barnes, Abortion: Open Your Month for the Dumb (East Peoria/IL: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2010), p.11.

[50] Peter Barnes, Abortion: Open Your Month for the Dumb (East Peoria/IL: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2010), p.7.

[51] Peter Barnes, Abortion: Open Your Month for the Dumb (East Peoria/IL: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2010), p.7.

[52] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (London/UK: SCM, 1963), pp.149-150.

[53] ‘Abortion in Australia into the 21st Century: Facts, Current Trends and A Way Ahead’, NSW Right to Life, 2006, p.9.

[54] Australia Bureau of Statistics 2001 Yearbook, No.83, p.176, ABS Canberra, ABS Catalogue N. 1301.0.

[55] ‘Pregnancy Outcome in South Australia 2002’, Department of Human Sciences, Tables 39 & 40.. Quoted from: ‘Abortion in Australia into the 21st Century: Facts, Current Trends and A Way Ahead’, NSW Right to Life, 2006, p.9.

[56] To be fair, a major quantitative survey of 1200 Australians designed to explore in depth the attitudes of Australians to abortion found out that 64% of the community either oppose or are not strongly supportive of abortion on demand. Moreover, 58% of Australians do not accept the ‘foetus is not a person’ argument. Apart from ‘hard cases’ involving a danger to the mother’s health or foetal disability, fewer than 1 in 4 thinks abortion is morally justified. While 74% feel positively towards women who choose alternatives to abortion, only 28% are positive towards women who choose to have an abortion. And 80% believe that “the consequences for the unborn child” is a significant consideration informing a woman’s choice to have or not have an abortion. There is also almost unanimous support for counselling prior to abortion. Indeed, 99% of Australians believe that women contemplating an abortion should have access to counselling. Of these, 78% believed women should have counselling. Finally, 71% of the Australian community support greater public discussion of the abortion issue, and three-quarters (including 71% of women) think men have an equal right to be involved publicly in this discussion.—J.I. Fleming & S Ewing, Give Women Choice: Australia Speaks on Abortion, Southern Cross Bioethics Institute, 26 April 2005, pp.3, 4 and 22.

[57] Alvin Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World (Grand Rapids/MI: Zondervan, 2004), p.60. In those days of Roman rule the Christian opposition to infanticide and abortion was a leading factor in institutionalising the sanctity of human life in the Western world. With the decline of Christian morality, abortion on demand has become more broadly accepted.

[58] John Stott, New Issues Facing Christians Today (London/UK: Harper Collins, 1999), p.349.

Leave a Reply