IVF CHILDREN

As the father of an IVF child, discussions of IVF are a bit emotional for me. My IVF son is now 18 years old, 6' tall, blond, blue-eyed and well-built. He has just finished the first year of a science degree specializing in mathematics at a major Australian university -- where he got maximum marks for all his mathematics subjects. I could spit on the feminists and "ethics" dictators who have condemned IVF. Below is a short excerpt from an article by an IVF mother about a meeting of some IVF parents and children

"As part of her trip to Australia, Linda Reed and her talented daughter agreed to take part in a forum with other IVF and ART (assisted reproductive technologies) children, who talked about how it felt to be among the first generation of children born through the new technology. The children were grateful that persistent efforts to derail IVF (by feminist groups and Treasury bean counters, among others) failed and they took the opportunity to say: "Mum and Dad, thanks for having me."

They put out a statement urging the Government not to place too many restrictions on IVF, even for patients who haven't got much chance of success, because cracking the tough cases will lead to more progress and joy.....

The children at the forum were inspiring for their talents, their wit, their joy at being alive, and the pride they felt in their parents for being medical pioneers and making it so much easier for parents like me, who came a decade or more later".

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ELSEWHERE

Saturday Night Live Joins the Religious Right: "SNL's opening sketch last night derided corporate and public repressions of Christmas. Quick example: "How Ya' Doin'" substitutes for Handel's "Hallelujah!" Selections from the 12/03 episode will appear eventually at this website. When a culturally leftist show mocks the Supreme Court and public and corporate practice, a teaching moment is taking place. Cultural conservatives are generally too heavy-handed to take advantage of the situation"

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch Turns Tables on Media : "The American media is up in arms over reports that the Pentagon hired a public relations firm to write positive news stories about the Iraq war and get them printed in the Iraqi press. But Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad, isn't letting journalists get away with their phony display of outrage. After the New York Times front-paged the "fake news" story Thursday under the headline: "U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers," Gen. Lynch defended the practice. "We don't lie. We don't need to lie," he told reporters in Baghdad. "We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact, not based on fiction." Sounds to us like Gen. Lynch was taking a none too subtle jab at the mainstream media's penchant for reporting - not just planted stories - but its own faked news reports. Perhaps the next time he's questioned about "planting" stories, he'll get even more specific, by reminding the military's accusers of their own sorry history".



How a noted Australian Leftist sees us: "In his memoir, Latham is deeply troubled by what he thinks is a loss of community. He says our suburbs have become soulless wastelands utterly devoid of humanity. Our families and communities have become engulfed by apathy and disengagement. We are empty, apathetic and disengaged. We are losing self-esteem, discontented, suffering from stress and depression, broken and empty. We are locked in a gulag of consumerism, insular, artificial, unhappy and voyeuristic..... Latham fell into the trap of believing that the pursuit of something better is a wholly selfish character trait. Australians are an extraordinarily generous people with a long and distinguished record of financial support for those in need, together with an unparalled record of voluntarism. Self-preservation is the natural human order of things, the protection of life, limb, flesh and blood. So is self-advancement and that of those closest to you. These are not selfish notions to be ridiculed and derided as the gross obsessions of the newly moneyed. People are products of their environment, their daily challenges and triumphs, their fears and failings".



An Australian Methodist minister who respects Bible teachings: "The upper house Christian Democrat, the Reverend Gordon Moyes, is often criticised for his beliefs, even within his own church, but yesterday, just before his farewell, he did not hold back. Asked by the Herald what was his greatest failure as superintendent for 27 years of the Uniting Church's largest and richest parish, Wesley Mission, he said it was his inability to convince the hierarchy that homosexuality had no place in the church. "Ministers in particular must live a holy and respectable life. There should be no room within the life of ministers in the church for sex, whether it be heterosexual or homosexual. "I regard that as pretty much a failure but I'll keep working at it. It's not a losing battle because the church must always correct itself and always has over the years."... Dr Moyes said he had made a pact with himself to retire at 65. He will now concentrate on "helping the unemployed, the poor, the homeless, the prisoners, the aged, the sick, the disabled" by taking the fight to Parliament, he said".

The federal anti-cigarette lighter police : "The TSA's internal studies show that carry-on-item screeners spend half of their screening time searching for cigarette lighters, a recently banned item, and that they open 1 out of every 4 bags to remove a pair of scissors, according to sources briefed by the agency .."

Before we point the finger at Singapore, we should look at Australia's body count: "Life is cheap in Australia, for all our talk. While Australians have again indulged in preaching at an Asian neighbour because an Australian heroin-runner was executed on Friday, one might ask what, exactly, is our higher moral ground? Ask the parents of Kurt Smith about our legal system's attitude to the sanctity of human life. Their son was kicked to death by four strangers while walking to a party on New Year's Eve 2002. So light were the sentences that three of these four killers are already out of prison or on the way out and the ringleader will be eligible for parole next year. Kurt was dead at 19, his life treated as worthless by the law. It wasn't even unusual, just towards the grotesque end of the sentencing spectrum". (There is a good comment on the execution by the Singapore High Commissioner in Australia here)

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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