Pro-life

Forgive me if I have already mentioned this and am repeating myself. Have been meaning to write it and can’t remember whether I have or not (another problem that comes with the passing years.) The pro-life organisation in Australia did take exception to my opinions and came back with even more emotional blackmail, this time too silly for words. Whoever wrote it states over-population is a myth and the solution (this is meant for people like me I suppose) is just to kill everybody! Well this is a new angle. I don’t recollect anyone mentioning the killing of “everybody!” The problem with those who believe in something so fanatically is that sooner or later logic goes flying out the window. As far as the subject of population is concerned this is just denial. Interesting snippet in the paper of a university graduate in the UK who is stacking shelves as he has applied for forty jobs requiring his qualifications and has got nowhere. Is there a single country in the world where the problem of high unemployment, sometimes as much as forty percent, doesn’t exist? It might seem facile to say there are just too many people chasing too few jobs when we know certain manufacturers no longer exist and that in other professions the computer has taken the place of any number of workers, making them redundant. I can’t help feeling though that if there weren’t too many people chasing what work there is, particularly in third world countries there would be fewer unemployed and problems with dissatisfied youth. There would also be fewer, in particular children to the age of seven, dying daily from starvation. Estimates put the figure at 7000 but still willy-nilly more and more are born every day only to suffer the same fate and that in my humble opinion is not pro-life. As a certain Sister Joan Chittiser puts it, “I think in many cases our morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born, but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. That’s not pro-life, that’s pro-birth.” So pro-life Australia don’t tell me population isn’t a problem. The world has lost half its rain-forest, the oceans have been polluted with a billion tons of non-biodegradable rubbish, some large cities are once more suffering from smog, waste piles up in mini-mountains and some animal species, even protected ones, are almost extinct as they are poached for food. People gotta eat. To increase the yield we now have GM crops and poisonous pesticides that have killed off insects and millions of bees, battery hens and cattle we dose on anti-biotics. So even if the world isn’t over-populated at the moment, with the increasing birth-rate it won’t be too long before it is. From 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050.I don’t know why I should worry about it as I won’t be around to see it so I won’t mention it again. But as far as the issue of abortion is concerned there are, as with everything, two sides to the question. While pro-life is thumping away in Australia, in Texas Democratic state senator Wendy Davis endured a twelve hour filibuster, quite an achievement, in an effort to stop a new law going trough limiting abortion after 20 weeks and stricter conditions that would close all but five clinics in the state. There are currently 42. Her brave attempt was hardly worth it though because immediately the Republicans started the whole process once more. I have no medical knowledge to expound on the limits that should be imposed but perhaps the Republicans are right in not allowing abortions after 20 weeks. However, stringent regulations that prohibit all but five clinics to operate in such a vast state could very well lead to quackery and the backstreet abortions of yesteryear with all the suffering, one is led to believe, that entailed.