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QotWeek

by tigtog on February 6, 2009

in Politics, gender & feminism, reproductive justice

Pavlov’s Cat, over at LP’s discussion on Helen’s post about the Rudd government’s failure to lift our Australian version of the Global Gag Rule:

I like a person who comes right out and says that in his opinion a woman is nothing more than a centrally-heated wheelbarrow. He may be expressing detestable opinions, but at least he is not a weasel. [direct link]

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Tagged as: australia, detestable opinions, global gag rule, moral panics, rudd, weasel

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tigtog (aka Viv) lives in Sydney, Australia: husband, 2 kids, cat, house, garden, just enough wine-racks and (sigh) far too few bookshelves. Viv web-wrangles for hire and edits Gagging For It (Oz Comedy News). tigtog is the founder of Hoyden About Town and Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog.

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{ 1 comment }

1 tigtog February 8, 2009 at 9:47 am: A quick note to add this excellent comment from Paulus (with whom politically I am often in disagreement) in response to another commenter describing reproductive rights as “invented rights”. Paulus attacked that argument taking a tack I haven’t seen used before and that I plan to add to my own array immediately:

Paulus, Feb 7th, 2009 at 10:05 am:
j_p_z [link to comment], I’m normally on your side on most of the debates here. But not this one.

You describe abortion as an “invented right”. But in fact it would be better to describe the criminalisation of abortion as an ‘invented crime’.

In the English common law, it was not a crime to cause an abortion before ‘quickening’ (roughly half-way through pregnancy).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion

This was also the case in the Thirteen Colonies in 1776 — and the Founding Fathers saw no need to criminalise early abortion either. Evidently they lacked your clear sense of what a “moral horror” it is. The statutes completely banning abortion in the US and UK only appeared as 19th century legal inventions.

So I agree with you — social activists should not go around inventing stuff and foisting it on the rest of society. And for that reason, I oppose the criminalisation of abortion. ‘Pro-life’ people can go round till the end of time wailing about the immorality of it — and they are entitled to their opinion — but the law should damn well stay clear.