User: Quizzical

I don't notice those who claim to be "pro choice" being in any great hurry to allow the foetus a choice.

So it's a bit of a dishonest title to award themselves, is it not?

========== In Reply To ========== 'Pro-Choice' doesn't mean a person is FOR abortion... It means they believe in the woman's right to choose!

(That's why it's written 'Pro-CHOICE'....)

I don't think a lot of women are FOR abortion! It seems to me like a really complicated decision to make.

Once we have answered the question "Why do we have music in church?" then the debate about what is best/worst, right/wrong or whatever in church music can be seen in its proper perspective.

As with so many things, I believe that there is no one "correct" answer.

There is a lot of good, sound theology tucked away in the pages of A&M - and as I learned to sing the great 19th century anthems from memory, so I also absorbed a lot of theology that has stood me in very good stead.

But at the same time, there is a place for chanted psalms, and other musical forms - including the contemporary. The important thing, though, is that the focus stays firmly in the right place. We should come away from church marvelling at the wonders of God, NOT the wonders of Graham Kendrick.

... is that there are only a very few, narrowly defined circumstances in which abortion is legal. The Abortion Act 1967, does NOT (and never did) give a woman an automatic right to choose to have an abortion.

And Parliament was given VERY EXPRESS ASSURANCES by the Minister introducing the bill that it WAS NOT INTENDED to confer such a right, and that it WOULD NOT confer such a right.

Therefore the question is predicated upon a false proposition.

OK. I'll give some arguments.

I voted "police only"; although to be frank, I'd sooner have voted "nobody at all" because I do not approve of the whole idea of a sex offenders' register one little bit.

We don't have a thieves' register; and arsonists' register; a murderers' register; a drunk-drivers' register or an offenses against the person offenders' register. We don't have a domestic violence register or a junkies' register. But for some reason we have singled out a single category of offences - sexual offences - and decided that criminals in this category must be treated differently. Recorded in a special register, which will continue to record the details of their offence long after they have served their sentence and repaid their debt to society.

Armed robbers come out of prison and, after a while, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act allows them to pretend that they never went inside, and the law connives at this in order to protect them from having their secret leak out. It's about giving them a "fresh start". Yet suddenly, it seems, sex offfenders are to be denied the "fresh start" that every other sort of offender is allowed.

Why?

Because of media-led hysteria about child molestation, that is why.

It is not good law-making and it is devoid of logic. Are sex offenders any more likely to be repeat offenders than thieves? And if they are, is the better solution to stick their names on a list so that everyone knows who and what they are, or to work with them to address the reasons for their offending and to seek to resolve them so that they will not re-offend?

And teh effects of the register? Vigilantism and unlawful hounding of people out of the communities in which they are trying to get a fresh start. By gangs of lawless thugs who seem to believe that every sex offender is a child molester (they are not ... a young man who, through drunken stupidity or naivity, thinks that a woman is consenting to sex when she is not might be convicted of rape and put on the sex offenders register. He is unlikely to make that mistake again, he is certainly not a child molester, but his life is at the same risk from the vigilantes as the most hardened recidivist child molester, merely because HIS NAME IS ON THE REGISTER).

Let the police have access if you must, in order to assist in their enquiries. But experience suggests, again, that this can do more harm than good. Remember the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad? They made up their minds who did it, then went looking for (and, if necessary, manufacturing) the "evidence" against their chosen suspect. But not every crime is committed by a repeat offender. Evcery sexual offender committed his first sex offence once upon a time. And if the police routinely start their investigations by consulting the sex offenders register to decide who their suspects are, they are going to miss an awful lot of first-time offenders somewhere down the line.

Keep it under wraps.

The courts, and the penal system, are there to extract punishment and revenge upon those who offend against the law. There is no case for encouraging those who might wish to do these things outside of the proper judicial channels by putting into their hands a powerful weapon to enabel them to identify people that they think ought to be punished in some way other than that which the law prescribes.

If they think the legal remedy is insufficient, then they shoudl be encouraging the legislators in Westminster to change the law. That is how we do things in a democratic society.

========== In Reply To ========== I am disappointed in this poll being very slow. What would be nice if people would back up there opion with sensible aegument as to why they voted the way they did

Gee.

What, you mean like, unless you know the reason why somebody is considering murder, you can't say why it is a good choice or a bad choice therefore we shoudl not have a law against all murders?

I like your thinking, baby!

========== In Reply To ========== First of all, I am religious but that does not in any way mean I am christian.

Being prochoice is not being anti-life. I simply beleive that it would be wrong for the government to make a blanket decision that eliminates options for women everywhere without having any idea what their situations are. Unless you know the reasons a woman is considering a abortion you can't say if it is a good or bad choice so it would be absurd to pass a law saying it can never be a choice for anyone!