On the campaign against late-term abortion:
Karin Diamond writes: Am I concerned about the rollback of abortion rights for Australian women? You bet I am — it’s gobsmacking, far-right, American Christian drivel and it’s not welcome here. If the Liberals and Nationals continue with this it will be electoral suicide. I’m a 68-year-old woman — never had to have an abortion but I understand that choice in the matter is an absolute right that should not — cannot — be taken away from women.
I have voted Liberal, Labor and independent (it all depends on the policies offered), but this would be the final straw for the Liberals for me — never again if you try this (as Crikey says) American slop. Dutton is so mistaken if he thinks no votes hinge on this.
Annette Barbetti writes: I am a practising Catholic who believes abortion is a mortal sin, but I do not believe that it should be treated as a crime, because of the danger that a woman who has an incomplete spontaneous miscarriage could be charged with having deliberately tried to abort the baby.
Andi writes: Pro-life is a misnomer. Those pushing to recriminalise abortion are pro-birth, even at the expense of the mother’s life in favour of a possibly non-viable baby.
Look at the statistics in Texas, USA: a dramatic increase in both infant and mother deaths due to abortion being illegal. There’s also evidence that violent men in Texas are using the laws to keep control of pregnant women who have left them by reporting them to authorities.
Bringing in forced birth by any government, state or federal, is basically government-sanctioned coercive control. The majority of states have outlawed this in cases of domestic violence.
There are no good reasons for making abortion illegal. Personal choice of religion or belief must remain personal and not be inflicted on Australia’s women.
On the NACC’s counter-intuitive secrecy:
Julia Bovard writes: To improve transparency perhaps NACC should list the complaints made to it? If that can be considered a breach of privacy, NACC should list complaints under categories. The complaints should state a lodgement date and of course a numerical lodgement number. It seems quite pointless to have no way the public can have any idea of what issues are pertinent, and no way of knowing for how long complaints have been submitted.
The NACC is not an intelligence authority subject to secrecy powers. It should be just part of a normal democratic process giving standard information prior to its investigation.
Peter Hannigan writes: NACC should make its motto public: “Nothing to see here. Move along.”
On the final weeks of the US election:
Lorraine Bates writes: America is not, and never has been, a democracy. They have no equivalent to our Australian Electoral Commission, each state has its own rules and many actively discourage people from registering to vote or voting. There’s also lots of gerrymandering.
Both politicians and citizens are delusional if they think there is any democracy in the country, but they keep spouting it.
Peter Murphy writes: “Traditional family values” for a lot of people means paternalistic, authoritarian, “father knows best” family structures. That’s probably the real reason why [Chinese-American voters like] Wu Yiping like Donald Trump; he may be an adulterer, but as long as he brings back the good old times where kids don’t talk back to dad, it’s all ok.
Ironically, there are a lot of Vietnamese people who like Trump because he’s seen as tough on China, including my father-in-law. (My uncle-in-law, who actually lives in America, has told him off on several occasions.)
Steve Brennan writes: From everything I’m reading, Harris has the lead with the popular vote. But we all know that doesn’t decide US elections. To quote one prominent Republican woman (sorry, I can’t remember her name), “women will crawl over broken glass” to vote Harris. [Editor’s note: It was former congresswoman Barbara Comstock.]
But the actual result will only be known after a very ugly, violent, tumultuous process. And we will only know what this really looks like from November 5. It definitely has all the ingredients to start a civil war… Let’s see what happens.
Marcia Church writes: Musk is now giving out $1 million per day in the hope of swaying people to vote for Trump from now until the close of the ballot. He’s begun laying out his plans publicly to get rid of bureaucracy when Trump is elected and Musk is employed to overturn government rules and regulations.
It’s beyond frightening reading The New York Times. Yesterday they had a lengthy article on the current troubles Musk has with government regulations, along with lawsuits and fines. This is despite the fact that the government, military, NASA and others are beholden to him with hundreds of contracts from satellites to rockets, internet connections, vehicles — you name it. That in itself is frightening, just how much control one man has, not only in the USA but in other countries as well.
Couple that with Trump and it becomes more than frightening. Trump has once again begun lying about ballot boxes being illegal and votes for him being switched out for the Democrats. In response, The New York Times ran an article complete with video showing how they’re bolted to the ground, have several surveillance cameras positioned around them etc… But it’s never enough to convince the MAGA fools.
