Wednesday, October 22, 2008

An interesting new tack on abortion

The Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign is objecting to TV ads encouraging voters to consider election candidates’ positions on abortion. The ads, paid for by the group Right to Life and running in prime time, use the catchphrase “Abortion – It’s Just Not Right” and urge voters to tick the boxes of candidates who take an anti-abortion stance.

Wonaac spokeswoman Di Cleary duly turned up on Morning Report condemning the ads, noting that “typically, they don’t focus on men’s responsibilities in an unwanted pregnancy”.

I found this pretty rich, given that pro-abortion groups like Wonaac have done their utmost to render men invisible in the abortion process. Their position has always been that it’s solely a woman’s right to determine whether she should abort a baby; the father’s rights have never merited a millisecond’s consideration.

Now they seem to having a bet each way: saying that men should take responsibility for unplanned pregnancies, but that if the mother decides to abort then it's nothing to do with the father. Huh?

I'm 100 percent in favour of men accepting responsibility for the lives they help conceive. But groups like Wonaac encourage women to abort babies with no regard whatsoever for the views of fathers who want the pregnancy to proceed and are committed to being conscientious parents.

It’s an interesting change of tack, to say the least, for Wonaac suddenly to be insisting that fathers meet their responsibilities when in the past it’s behaved as if they don’t even exist.

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