Abortion and Violence.

Victoria’s Royal Commission’s Inquiry into Domestic Violence is very important and timely and this societal violence needs to be stopped. Far too many children are being murdered. Too many women. Too many men. There is too much violence. Everywhere we turn there is one more murder. One more stabbing. One more violent assault. The home, the suburbs, the streets, schools, are now a war zone. Why?

We live in a society that is so comfortable we have it so easy. So why so much violence? And always I go back to loss of respect for life. Yes indeed we have it easy. We have all the commodities but at the cost of respect for another and above all for life.

Slowly respect for life has been eroded and this loss of respect began with the loss of respect for the life of the tiniest infant.

Those who cannot defend themselves. Abortion has become “normal.” Abortion means killing another. A little one and if we can kill a little one then as Mother Teresa would say “if a mother can kill her own child what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me, there is nothing between.”

Over one generation we have gone from abortion for difficulties to abortion on demand to abortion to full term, to infanticide. In less than 30 years. We are talking legal death of birthed babies!!! (allowing aborted babies born alive to die without assistance).We are talking about mothers taking their viable babies knowing that they would be killed in a cruel way. We are talking about fathers taking their sons or daughters to be killed intentionally.

And then we ask the Royal Commissioners to investigate domestic/family violence. I wonder if the Commissioners would ever think that an abortion could be the very start of violence between previously happy couples.

I wonder if the Commissioners would consider that the violence experienced by a child in an abortion is a similar or replicated version of violence committed during murder of an adult. Or do they think it’s different?

We now know that there are psychological sequelae to abortion. The woman experiences life long after effects whilst the male is also affected but differently, generally through his sense of impotence in the matter.

For the male who is affected it is often the sense of helplessness at being unable to do anything to protect his child and this anger is then turned inwards to self‐punish, by you guessed it, fighting, aggression.

Prior to the birth of the baby the father has absolutely no rights in respect of the child. He cannot do anything to protect the life of his child and if the mother of that child does not want to keep, or give birth to that child then there is no one who can prevent the abortion from happening.

No‐one, including the state, because the state has purchased into the argument by legislating that the life of that new individual whilst in utero is a nonentity, and
therefore dependent upon the whim of the host body.

Legislation has not decreed that the relationship between woman and infant is symbiotic but at the same time the infant is independent and deserving of the utmost respect. It has in fact decreed that the life or death of that infant is dependent upon the vagaries of the stronger of the two parties. The violence we are daily fed through all forms of media is symptomatic of the “just below the surface” violence within the community. There is a tension, which must be released and will not evaporate without leaving in its wake a disaster.

Just as we see a tension beneath the psychology of some men and women after abortion. A tension which explodes into violence. Both self‐harming and other harming violence.

Perhaps an explanation (mine) of the response to abortion may shed some light on this episode. Since the onset of the culture of the “pill” and “me‐ism” (sexual revolution) the woman has progressively taken control of her fertility and her body. And indeed to be able to understand her body and to guard and protect her body as inviolate is a good thing.

However, this is not what has happened. The woman has demanded control over her body in as far as her fertility is concerned, and has removed from her husband/partner any rights and responsibility towards an act which has resulted in a conception.

This, whilst ostensibly “good” as far as some men and women are concerned, has ultimately failed all. Today, whether he chooses or not, a man can walk away
from his responsibility towards a child he has engendered.

Conversely should he choose not to walk away from the responsibility it can be forcibly wrenched from him so that he cannot do anything to change the situation.

The removal of responsibility has not spelled equal rights, as has been suggested, but indeed unequal suffering. The woman suffers lifelong anguish. Yes it’s real. It happens even for those who blithely believe that it hasn’t affected them. The man suffers loss of something of his essence, of his fatherhood, of his fathering. Of his manhood. He forgets how to be man.

For the woman, in her very being there is a rupture unlike any other. There is a grief quite unlike any other. The kind of wrenching grief which is the result of guilt. The kind of grief which is the result of the intent behind the loss. The kind of grief which says, powerlessness, hopelessness, utter despair. That is the kind of grief which abortion leaves in its wake and is the legacy for the woman and man
(either short term or long term) who have acceded to the abortion experience.
For the state and nation which has decreed that the killing of its future citizens is lawful, there is to be other losses which cannot ever be recouped. For this state or nation the beginning of its end is in sight. Citizens begin their life as zygotes, embryos, foetuses, babies, young ones, adolescents, youth, and mature citizens.

A nation to be successful, progressive, depends on its citizens. A nation needs to be able to sustain itself and to replace itself. The birth of each child in every nation should be a celebration and an acknowledgement that a future is assured because our children are born. Abortion says otherwise. It says death. And again as Mother Teresa would say “it is the greatest destroyer of peace.”