Posts by B Jones
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DeepRed - It's not contradictory at all, once you realise it's not the real issue. The Real Issue is conservatism vs liberalism and/or feminism. Banning abortion punishes loose women by inflicting consequences on them for having Teh Secs. It doesn't matter if abortions just go underground, because there's inherent punishment in having an unsafe illegal backstreet abortion - see Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days. Conservatism necessitates punishment for acting out of the old-school roles.
All of the sideline debates over which abortions are deserving skirts around the elephant in the room. Many pro-lifers oppose birth control that would bring the abortion rate crashing down. Our half-hearted legislation allows only health exceptions to abortion, although it's broadly interpreted in practice. There are opponents even of health exceptions - McCain's horrible airquotes around "the mother's health" when he discussed in during the US campaign - some argue that ectopic pregnancy is the only justifiable health exception, while their more obstetrically ignorant fellows dispute even that. Some people say abortion is ok, but not when it's used as birth control. Goodness knows how that could be enforced. None of those positions work logically except based on the assumption that women can't be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies, that future generations need to be protected from their wilful ways, that sluttitude must be punished, and that where nature deals a cruel blow, that it's better that blow falls upon the woman than the tenuous scrap of life growing inside her.
The whole every life is sacred thing would be a lot more convincing and consistent if the people arguing about it focussed less on teh secs and more on infant mortality, maternal mental health, preventing miscarriage (Mother Nature's the world's biggest abortionist) and preventing unwanted pregnancy in the first place.
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Well, so am I. The world would be better if that wasn't the case. However.
The syntax is [conventionally polite and acceptable mouthings], but [what I really think is more important but am a little nervous about transgressing good taste to say]. So long as you don't expect people to take the first part seriously, it's ok.
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Heinous violence, but = I'm not a racist, but. Or No offence, but.
When Russell says "I'm sorry, but what an idiot" everyone knows he's not all that sorry. That's the correct and honest use of that particular construction, which would be entirely undermined if an argument over it started and he said "look, I said I was sorry".
It would be nice if the heinous violence buttheads had a little bit of self-awareness on how that works.
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Tess, wrt 6 month old babies, there are alternatives like adoption if the parents simply no longer want to care for them. It's harder with respect to serious painful/incurable debilitation - the father who was charged for either the murder or infanticide of his anencephalic baby I'd put in a totally different category from whoever killed the Kahui twins, and our legal system has provision for infanticide in some circumstances to be treated differently.
But six month old babies are significantly more developed than even newborns, let alone first trimester fetuses. They express preferences for different kinds of food, they howl when they can't see their caregiver, they smile back when someone smiles at them. They are starting to express their own humanity, along the continuum. You wouldn't give them the right to vote or manage their own financial affairs, but they would have a call on society to provide for their necessities if they couldn't secure them from their parents. The alternative of adoption makes non-insane infanticide unjustifiable - it's not something that works in utero, though.
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Tess, I wouldn't support those kind of protests against anyone, no matter how evil. You let the mob rule, then what happens when you don't like what the mob say? Those things channel power to those who already have it.
Incidentally, people used to do that to Dr/Dame Margaret Sparrow back in the 70s or 80s.
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Gio, sorry, missed that bit. Was it in the section where we shouldn't blend different fibres or eat shellfish, or reiterated a bit more enthusiastically?
In any case, that lends strength to arguments that unbelievers should be allowed to kill as many of their offspring as they want. Saves the believers some of the hassle of working out how to get around Thou Shalt Not Kill.
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Tess, think for a second about how important your faith is to you, about how you don't want to have to hide it and how you want to be able to live by it. None of those things are endangered by a formally secular society, which gives space to anyone to live by their beliefs. All of them would be endangered should a faith different to your own take hold of the reins of power. The religious wars of the 1600s in England, the 20th century in Ireland and today in Iraq and Afghanistan are testament to that.
A pro-life person living in a pro-choice world is free to live according to their faith, to treat every scrap of life within them as just as important as every other living breathing person around them, and to sacrifice everything they have to protect it.
To a pro-choice person, their ability to make their own decisions about themselves, their health and their families according to their own consciences is just as important as your ability to live according to your own conscience. Just as important. Choice is harder to personify and sympathise with than teeny weeny fetuses, but it's part of what makes us human.
Even if you agree that religious texts are useful sources of authority, there is nothing in any religious text I know of to say that non-believers should be forced by law to act as if they were believers.
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I really don't care how Grant manages to overcome his cognitive dissonance over people committing murderous violence in support of ideals he holds. I'd rather not accompany him on that particular personal journey, so I'd like to contribute to steering him elsewhere by counting up his PA posts on this subject and donating a commensurate amount to a pro-choice charity.
I don't know if there's a NZ equivalent to Medical Students for Choice, but I'm sure Family Planning would appreciate a bit of help. Perhaps $10 per post?
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More to the point, did Kristin Dunne-Powell get any say in the decision to publish?
Why would she? She's not a member of the police force or an editor of a major daily newspaper.
If a department were asked for a file like that under the OIA, it might ask itself whether the release of the information would breach the privacy of individuals, and make a call to the person quoted in the file to see if they were ok with its release as a matter of courtesy. Or it might not bother, given that the duty is to release unless there's a good reason not to. That's a question for the Police and the Ombudsman, but I'd imagine that there's a pretty strong overriding public interest in the transparency of the justice system. The defence team would have had that file for a long time as part of the discovery process.
Using the powers of my imagination again, I can't see any journalist worthy of that name acquiring a document like that and not publishing as much of it as they could. I doubt they'd be needing any encouragement or asking anything of anyone other than "would you care to make any more comment before I print this?". They'd have been wise not to bother with the latter, given they've now been injuncted.
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Rich - Very different prose styles. Also slightly different MOs.
Shouldn't be hard to tell from the IP address record, whoever can access those.