The 8th - Repealed!

Head bangers trolling the internet and putting up this nonsense everywhere... 

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]The abortion debate is essentially a moral and values driven issue, and I don’t find it a particularly complex or difficult one. I’ll preface my contribution by stating my own position. I would, on balance and with a heavy heart, allow the option of abortion for the well known exceptions. But - let’s be very clear - that is not what is proposed to replace the current provision, and I would not allow exceptions to override all else for a general rule. </span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]At the core of this debate is the value of human life itself, and a person’s arbitrary decision that it is inconvenient to have a child does not trump the independent right to life of the unborn. Their level of personal discomfort with having a child has no impact morally on the definition of whether that person is a life or not. </span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]The idea that the definition and value of human life can be dependent on an individual’s emotional state or convenience is one of grave significance. Either human life has intrinsic value or it doesn’t and anytime you draw any line other than the conception of the child, you end up drawing a false line that can also be applied to adults. Bluntly, the suggestion that human beings have the subjective capacity to define as life that which they wish to preserve is a dangerous one with consequences for society as a whole. </span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]Such statements can still appear abstract to some. Let me present the following case:</span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]I have come to regard the liberalisation of abortion laws as thee most significant act in rubber stamping the decline of a nation as we know it, or knew it. It's my strong contention that when a society deviates from the established view regarding the sanctity of life, or, in more secular terms, a simple objective definition to life, then society will also deviate from other established values as a logical consequence. The implication is not only glaringly obvious but is borne out by the demographic statistics for other nations. </span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]Take our nearest neighbour as an example. In Britain the marriage rate has tumbled and the divorce rate has risen since the late ‘60s and early '70s. Today, the percentage of marriages that end in divorce stands at 42%. The number of children born out of marriage has dramatically increased, to a point where it is nearly level pegging with its wedded counterpoint. Over 20% of all pregnancies end in abortion. This is despite the reasons for the introduction of the 1967 Abortion Act running along similar lines to those espoused for the repeal of the 8th amendment. These statistics find parallel across the ‘Western World’ with the average divorce rate in the EU currently standing at 44%, and America at just over 50%. </span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]However, Ireland’s divorce rate is still remarkably low at 12-13%, despite almost 25 years since the divorce referendum. It is also of interest to note that Ireland also has the highest natural birth rate in the EU; the only country which comes close to replenishing it’s own population (the necessary 2.1 figure) without the need for immigration.</span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]Why the difference? As religion and faith in general have declined across the Western World, the current ‘rights’ based progressive ethos has emerged to try and fill the gap. It has helped to bring many undoubted advancements, the emancipation of gay people being the most obvious one. However, this ethos has a very serious flaw. Together with the economic and legal changes that have run alongside and been spurred by it, it has fostered a culture of entitlement. In other words, an increasing mentality of self-involvement, self-interest and narcissism. This is reflected in the decline of the family and the collapse of the birth rate. The other Western nations have been in decline, anthropologically speaking, for some time now. </span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]The decline of the family heralds the growth of the state. The ever expanding state brings ever increasing debt. The low birth rate together with increasing life expectancy greatly enhances the need for immigration; and the demographic & cultural change that results from that leads to the kind of stark political changes we have seen across Europe and America in recent times. These societies lack the same cohesion they once had and have become more fractured. It's for this reason that I'd counsel against this glee, for want of a better word, regarding the decline of the Catholic church and, in more general terms, the decline of religion and faith. As Edmund Burke said - “Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership . . . not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”</span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]It’s almost painful to see how some people are so willing to throw out the best of what has gone before. I hate the smug and glib inferences that the morality and values of our parents, grandparents and beyond, was somehow inferior in comparison to that of the current enlightened, more compassionate and ‘modern’ populace. This is the same Enlightened generation that is increasingly content to subcontract the care of children, the elderly, the vulnerable and the dependent out to others. To have seen the effects of large scale immigration elsewhere, where immigrants allow the wealthy and middle classes amongst the ‘natives’ to live in the style they have grown accustomed to, whilst those ‘natives’ at the bottom who aren’t so entitled and are willing to do the more menial work can no longer compete with the cheaper imported labour. Then of course, the demographics start to change, the culture starts to change, and their country doesn’t feel like it used to anymore and the immigrants, the majority of whom only want to better their own lives and that of their family, suddenly become unwelcome. </span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]But hey….we’re ‘modern’!</span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]The central point is that morality and value systems are very important and there are consequences for society when they change. The insidious side of the rights based ethos is demonstrated best by the abortion debate. We live in an age where all forms of contraceptives, from condoms to the morning after pill, are widely and virtually freely available and sex education is, to the best of my knowledge, mandatory in schools. Despite this, it is claimed that abortion is an urgent requirement. With such facilities and such information flow so readily available, can the “right to choose” not be properly located in the choice to use effective contraception; or in adoption; or, and I don’t mean to be prudish, in abstinence?</span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]Indeed it is proposed by many that abortion is akin to a human right. This suggestion is delusional and dangerously absurd. For abortion to be a human right, one has to disengage the most fundamental human right of all – the right to life – and to dehumanise the defenceless human in utero in preference to the freedom of choice of the parent or parents. Moreover, if the most important of all the human rights is so easily upended, what the fate of the subsequent human rights, so hard-earned over the last 70 years. </span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]It is not rights that make the character, it’s responsibility, and one of the hallmarks of a cohesive society is the correct balance between human rights and human responsibilities. The granting of a right to abort the unborn, outside of the exceptions, represents a complete negation of responsibility. While it may be argued that this assertion is too judgemental in any individual circumstances, the removal of the right to life of the unborn to enable others to exercise a lesser right of choice, will also remove society’s obligations of responsibility.</span>[/COLOR]

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[COLOR=#333333" face="Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]<span style="font-size: 13px;]Therefore, we now stand atop the slippery slope. The slope other nations have already travelled down!</span>[/COLOR]