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Keywords: Pro-Choice

  • RELIGION

    Nancy Pelosi and the problem of the pro-choice Catholic politician

    • Bill Uren
    • 08 December 2022
    20 Comments

    Nancy Pelosi recently announced her retirement as leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives, proclaiming that she was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a devout Catholic. Yet citing her support for pro-choice on abortion, the archbishop of her home archdiocese of San Francisco has forbidden her access to Holy Communion. So, the question remains: what sort of moral reasoning could Mrs Pelosi invoke to support her pro-choice stance?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    In the US midterm elections, questions abound

    • Jim McDermott
    • 15 November 2022
    5 Comments

    In recent weeks it had become a foregone conclusion that the Democrats were going to post big losses in the midterms; it’s just the way American politics seems to work. The party in power loses seats halfway through a term. What are we to make of the fact that that didn’t happen, or that we didn’t see anything the protests and violence that ensued after the 2020 election?  

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    America after Roe v Wade

    • Chris Middleton
    • 05 July 2022
    10 Comments

    The overruling of the Roe v Wade decision by the Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision marks a significant moment in the abortion debate, while highlighting the deep fissures in America’s body politic. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruling had been foreshadowed months ago, the shock has been real.

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  • RELIGION

    I am unashamedly pro-life, but let me tell you what that means

    • Beth Doherty
    • 19 May 2022
    4 Comments

    I have always considered myself pro-life. It’s not something I’ve felt a need to wear as a badge of honour, rather it has always been a default position. But terminology matters. Indeed, frequently, calling myself pro-life has drawn the derision or raised eyebrows of people around me, nuns and priests and radical ratbags alike, it has connotations.

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  • RELIGION

    The weaponised Eucharist

    • Chris Middleton
    • 01 July 2021
    86 Comments

    The debate among American bishops around whether President Biden and other Catholic politicians should be denied Holy Communion because of their policies on abortion is an important and unsettling one. Let me say I think it would be a tragedy if the bishops were to venture down this path.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lament of a pro-life feminist

    • Kate Moriarty
    • 10 March 2017
    51 Comments

    I'm what you might call a feminist outsider. I'm passionate about the rights of women. I believe every girl should have the opportunity to be educated, and that workplaces need to become more accommodating of families. I spend a worrying amount of time shouting 'You wouldn't say that if she were a man!' to commentators on the radio. I'd like to be called a feminist. But I don't think I'm allowed to be. You see, I also believe a baby is a person before she is born. And I believe that person has rights.

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  • MEDIA

    Death of a disability dynamo

    • Fatima Measham
    • 08 December 2014
    6 Comments

    Death loses its abstraction when a person like Stella Young dies. It becomes material. It makes itself manifest in the silence, which it somehow solidifies: the unwritten word, the unspoken retort, the unmade joke. 'Disability doesn't make you exceptional,' she told a TED audience in Sydney last April. 'But questioning what you think you know about it does.' Stella flipped what we thought we knew about many things.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pro-choice paradigm lacks compassion on Zoe's Law

    • Zac Alstin
    • 17 September 2013
    66 Comments

    'Zoe's Law' was named in honour of the unborn child killed when her mother was hit by an allegedly drug-affected driver. We have the curious idea that 'pro-choice' is synonymous with compassion, respect, inclusivity and empowerment, yet opponents of Zoe's Law are philosophically unable to support a compassionate response to Zoe's mother, warning instead that 'We cannot accept a foetus being considered as a 'child' in NSW law.'

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why we'll never agree about abortion

    • Lyn Bender
    • 09 November 2012
    35 Comments

    Abortion seems to be an inherently insoluble moral and human rights conundrum. The ethical debate consists of grappling with many untenable positions. The best course may be to face this complexity rather than seek to reduce it to a final solution. 

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  • MEDIA

    Feminism, Greer and Tankard Reist

    • Lyn Bender
    • 08 February 2012
    33 Comments

    Germaine Greer has said she did not want to be a high priestess of feminism. What may have been extracted from her views and the constant evolution of feminism has been diminished by being reduced to a formula such as that used to denounce Melinda Tankard Reist.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Moral madness of Melbourne abortion horror

    • Lyn Bender
    • 01 December 2011
    29 Comments

    Last week's medical error at Melbourne's Royal Women's Hospital threw into sharp relief Australians' 'split personality' in celebrating conception but turning a blind eye to the rights of the unborn. I am not writing from lofty heights. I had an abortion at age 30. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reflections on Gillard's atheism

    • John Warhurst
    • 17 October 2011
    10 Comments

    Gillard's atheism puts her in stark contrast to her immediate predecessors Kevin Rudd and John Howard. We consider several implications of Gillard's position, including her relations with church-state issues and community attitudes towards gay marriage and euthanasia. 

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