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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 25. 25th September 1974

Difficult circumstances

Difficult circumstances

Dear Salient,

Surely the anti-abortion rally last Friday night showed that abortion cannot be taken as a form of birth control, even as a form reserved as a last resort.

Abortion stands at a gigantic distance from contraception. In abortion human life is killed. With contraception human organs are disturbed in their regular functioning with resultant effect on a person's personality.

The conflict over abortion is clearly between those who attach great importance to the fact that life begings at fertilization and those who confer personhood only when the foetus is loved or valued as capable of some kind of achievement.

The latter position is obviously very dangerous for us all, because your worth lies in someone else's acceptance of you and not in yourself as you are. Surely the question of when human life begins should be assessed genetically not in relation to other living beings necessarily more developed.

To think that human life, which so many have battled to safeguard in the past, and which in this case is so innocent and unprotected, is destroyed sometimes because of admittedly difficult circumstances but usually (if we go by overseas experience) because the baby is inconvenient or the mother doesn't want it — is horrible, mind-blowing.

I hope myself to maintain an attitude towards human life where I will willingly forego my life to preserve another's.

Jenny Firth