SANITY, NOT SENTIMENTALITY, IN THE EUTHANASIA DEBATE (Letter to Dom Post, May 27)

At last some sanity, as opposed to sentimentality, in the euthanasia debate (Court told Seales ‘can’t change law’, May 27). As Solicitor-General Michael Heron states, what Lecretia Seales is asking for is clearly either suicide or euthanasia.  

One would have thought Seales’ experience of failure to conceive with IVF might have taught her she is not the author of life. Neither is she the author of death.

THE DOM POST IS KOWTOWING TO 'THE RIGHT NOT TO BE OFFENDED' (Letter to Dom Post, May 20)

All children, says Jonathan Boston in reference to child poverty (How New Zealand can cut child poverty, May 19), should be able to participate fully in society.  

What about the children who can’t participate in society at all? Children who die every day in agony, ripped limb from limb before birth, in abortion facilities? Boston talks of strategies informed by ‘sound ethical principles’. A society which kills its most vulnerable citizens has no ethical principles and consequently no hope of real prosperity for children who survive the womb.

 

Boston wants ‘an integrated policy package’. How ‘integrated’ is policy which kills children before birth, then wants the best for them after birth? 

On the same page, under the headline Value of free speech immense, we read that our freedom to express ourselves is threatened by ‘a rising tide of offence-taking and indignation’. In persistently refusing to publish letters addressing the hypocrisy and double-speak around the issue of abortion, The Dominion Post is presumably kowtowing to what Joanna Norris of the NZ Media Freedom committee calls the argument that people have ‘the right not to be offended’. 

If that’s not the case, then you’ll publish this letter.

TEENAGERS NEED HELP BEFORE EXAMS, NOT DURING (Letter to Dom Post, April 13)

‘It has been revealed’, The Dominion Post says portentously (May 13), that ‘teenagers do not qualify for more time to sit exams if their ability is not what it should be’.  

Talk about shutting the door after the horse has bolted.  Next thing we know, the exams will be dumbed-down to suit their ability. If it’s not what it should be, clearly they need funding assistance to make it what it should be.

 

That is, they need assistance before the exams, not during.

MOTHERS FEED THEIR UNBORN WITH 'WOMB MILK' BEFORE THEY'RE ABORTED (Letter to Dom Post, April 8)

So ‘we’ll soon know how serious the Government is about looking after our most vulnerable children’ (Time for Nats to walk the talk on child poverty, May 8). Don’t make me laugh. Our most vulnerable children are the unborn.

 

And don’t try to tell me they’re not children. New research shows that during the first eleven weeks of life, before the umbilical cord develops, they’re fed by their mothers with secretions called ‘womb milk’, otherwise known as histiotrophe. But it’s while this is going on that they’re most likely to be killed by abortion.  

Unicef’s Deborah Morris-Travers asks for ‘a more inclusive approach to children’. That will be achieved only by allowing all children to live.

LECRETIA SEALES IS IN A PRIVILEGED POSITION (Letter to Dom Post, April 7)

In asking the High Court ‘to clarify whether a doctor would be committing a crime if he/she were to help her to die’ (April 7), surely Lecretia Seales realises she’s in a somewhat privileged position. 

She’s comparatively young and attractive. She can expect loads of sympathy. She’s a lawyer so she knows how to work the system. But if her case succeeds and the law is loosened – and she must know what’s happening in Holland - what about old, ugly, stupid people whom no one wants around any more?

 

Who will defend them against avaricious rellies and conniving doctors, if not the law?

PARENTAL PERMISSION REQUIRED FOR ASPIRIN BUT NOT ABORTION (Letter to Dom Post, May 6)

Parents, says Australian cyber-safety expert Brett Lee (School bans anonymous message app, May 6), have the right to know who their children are talking to and where they’re going. Well, of course.  

Except, that is, when they’re talking to school nurses or counsellors about going to an abortion clinic. Parents don’t have the right to know that. But after her abortion, if a teenager wants aspirin for the pain, then the school has to get the parent’s permission. For the aspirin, that is.

 I kid you not.