HOW DID WE GET INTO THIS SITUATION?

Abortion is viewed as an aspect of freedom, notably sexual freedom, and once people are ‘hooked' on it they will be reluctant to give it up. It is now an essential part of unfettered sexuality and a new life appearing only complicates sexual activity. It is essential to the final success of the sexual revolution, whose achievements up to date have been the turning away from marriage to ‘live in', or de facto relationships, and the acceptance of adultery, divorce and homosexuality.

Abortion has split society down the middle, exactly as it has done the medical profession. It has produced more bitter divisions and ill will than anything apart from war. More people have died from it than from all the modern wars put together. Families have been disrupted, marriages have ended. Can it be seen as one of the reasons for the generation gap – that silent conflict between parents and children, as teenagers realise instinctively that their child-rejecting parents do not really love the young? Is it a desire to be separated from their parents' materialistic society that makes teenagers want to live in jeans, bare feet, have an unkempt appearance and lose themselves in drugs?

From the days of antiquity, people have searched out methods of fertility and birth control. While a variety of methods and means have been utilised through the ages, abortion and child sacrifice have generally been held to be an extreme last resort , unlawful and ‘taboo' in all but pagan societies.

Western civilisation has firmly held to life-supportive principles as promoted by Hippocrates from 450 BC until the turn of this century. Since the early 1900's certain groups and individuals have been promoting death as a solution to social problems. The belief that every human life is of equal worth and is worthy of protection and loving care has come under increased attack. The sanctity of life ethic is being replaced by a quality of life ethic. Advocates of this new ethic maintain that some persons should be terminated because they are unwanted, unplanned, imperfect or are not properly productive.

The promotion and use of abortion clearly represents an implementation of this doctrine of using death to solve social problems. The decision to legalise this act of killing has opened a Pandora's box and presents us with an ominous future. Wherever and whenever the respect for human life is cheapened and diminished, there is an educational effect upon that culture and society. This has happened in Australia. In around 30 years the rate of abortion has escalated to the point where there is now one abortion for every three live births.

Abortion makes the greatest impact of all on the demographic structure of a country. The birth rates in all Western countries are at the lowest levels on record. We are reaching zero population growth. This is a biological impossibility because of the inexorable ageing of the population. It is merely a moment in the country's history when the falling curve of the birth rate crosses the rising death rate line on a graph. A corollary of this is zero economic growth. It makes a dying country.