ABORTION is not a dirty word. Granted, it's not a pleasant one, but it's nowhere near as offensive as words such as helicopter gunship, jihad or collateral damage if you want to be holier-than-thou about the alleged sanctity of human life.
Nor is it as offensive as the religious Right's loathsome attacks on women in Australia.
Take this latest article in the Festival of Light's Festival Focus Queensland newsletter for August.
Under the headline "Toowong breast cancer mystery solved?" is the following slur on the women at the Brisbane studios of our ABC, many of whom have been unfortunate enough to contract breast cancer in recent years.
The article cites Melbourne journalist and scientist (in what field, pray tell?) Babette Francis who heads up the proudly anti-feminist organisation the Endeavour Forum (formerly known as Women Who Want to be Women) – a group with close ties to the equally antediluvian Festival of Light movement.
Francis asserts that when it comes to the ABC's cancer cluster, apart from radiation, other risk factors such as reproductive history including delayed child-bearing, long-term contraceptive pill use and aborting a first pregnancy should also be considered.
Women who put their careers ahead of children seem to be at increased risk.
In other words the female staff of the ABC at Toowong are sexually promiscuous and selfish career women whose breast cancer is probably their own damn fault.
They should be barefoot and pregnant behind a white picket fence, Bible in one hand and brat in the other, letting God rather than the Pill decide when the time is right for children. Praise the Lord and pass the nappy bucket.
(Note to Francis: I know many of the women at the ABC who have been stricken with breast cancer and many of them are mothers, you self-righteous goose.)
Francis and her Women Who Want to be Wombats forum are typical of far-right religious fringe groups in Australia, masquerading behind family-orientated names but with darker agendas based on blinkered religious fundamentalism.
If you want some truly scary reading, just go to the Endeavour Forum's website and follow some of the links (I never knew there was a group devoted to campaigning against the evils of children's day care for starters, nor did I realise condoms are responsible for increasing the spread of AIDS; but there you go, learn something new every day).
They are pro-censorship, anti-gay and anti-choice. If they'd been living in Salem in the late 17th century they would have been queuing up to help build the gallows.
And the influence of these Bible-bashing moral crusaders is wider and more insidious than you might realise.
Right now the Federal Government is calling tenders for a national pregnancy helpline.
This should be a good thing.
And, handled correctly, it will be. Handled correctly it will be a service offering pregnant women the counselling and support they need to choose the option that is best for their life circumstances and that of the complicated patchwork of cells growing in their womb.
It should not be a service government funded and driven by the murky agendas of the religious Right.
We can only hope.
Right now the only pregnancy counselling service which receives direct Federal Government funding is Pregnancy Help Australia (operating under The Australian Federation of Pregnancy Support Services umbrella), which trousers about $300,000 a year of taxpayer funds.
Consider this quote from the website of Heartbeat International, a rabid US pro-life (anti-choice) group whose mission statement is: "To help rebuild cultures worldwide that welcome every new life and nurture children within strong families, according to God's Plan, so that abortion is unthinkable."
This is what they have to say about Pregnancy Support Services: "Australian Health Minister Tony Abbott recently announced that the Australian Government would provide $300,000 in grants to organisations that provide life-affirming alternatives to abortion.
"We are pleased to report that one of the organisations receiving funding is a Heartbeat International affiliate! The Australian Federation of Pregnancy Support Services (AFPSS) will receive funding to support their national telephone counselling line. AFPSS does a wonderful job of equipping life-affirming pregnancy centres throughout Australia and Heartbeat International is blessed and honoured to partner with them on behalf of life."
This would be the same Pregnancy Help Australia that lodged a submission opposing the use of abortion drug RU486 to a recent Senate inquiry.
This would be the same group that does not "advise, provide or refer, directly or indirectly, for abortion or abortifacients (a drug or other agent that causes abortion)".
No wonder our deeply religious (nothing wrong with that as long as its kept out of secular politics) Health Minister deems them worthy of funding. The same Tony Abbott who would have us believe that stem cell research will lead to human cloning.
Memo to Abbott: None of us who support stem cell research support human cloning. God forbid, we could end up with 1000 Amanda Vanstones – a concept even most horror film directors would view as pushing the boundaries of taste.
As for the right of women to have control over their own bodies, well it seems to me that when it comes to your hard-core God-botherers, the most quickly forgotten verse of the Bible is St Matthew's admonition: "Judge not, lest ye also be judged".
Grant women the choice and leave the judging to Him upstairs.
syvretp@qnp.newsltd.com.au
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,20279590-27197,00.html