Rubenerd

Not many tech posts today, getting up on my soap box. I arrived back in Adelaide just as the South Australian elections are starting to heat up. This post shows a letter response I sent to sent to sent to sent to sent to (sorry, got stuck in an infinite loop) Trevor Grace who sent me a leaflet in the mail for his AbortSA party.

Ruben Schade
Mawson Lakes, SA 5095
Australia, Earth

Dear Trevor Grace of AbortSA,

Regarding your 2010 South Australian state election leaflet

Despite a "No Junk Mail" sign on my mailbox, I recently received your leaflet for AbortSA. Suffice to say I could argue for women’s rights including the right to an abortion if…

• she’s been raped and/or subject to abuse
• pregnancy will endanger her life
• her birth control measures unintentionally failed
• or for any other reason a grown woman with full suffrage under the law who can make her own decisions deems necessary and who doesn’t need to justify to you

…but we clearly have different views and such an exercise would get us nowhere. What I will say sir is that what a woman does with her own body — or a man with his for that matter — is none of the State’s business.

I can tell you care deeply about this issue and I honestly and sincerely respect your convictions, but this debate belongs in the wider public discourse alongside discussions on education, safe sex and violence against women, not in a Parliament chamber. Legislating morality like this sir is a dangerous path to tread with grave ramifications. I need only point to elections with our brothers and sisters in America to demonstrate this, or Malaysia where I spent part of my life growing up.

I would also advise (nay, encourage) you to rethink your daft and questionable comparison between whaling and abortion. I don’t see how belittling the intelligence of your voters will allow you to enter public office. A more apt comparison would be women’s rights and the global emancipation movement, though I doubt that would gel with your party’s stated objectives. Perhaps best to leave comparisons out entirely.

I will be publishing this letter along with your leaflet on my website at rubenerd.com/trevor-grace-leaflet/ in which you’re free to post your own comments if you so desire.

Finally as a matter of disclosure, I am a 23 year old who has never got a women pregnant, though I’d love to be a dad one day if friendly and wickedly funny Ms. Right enters my life and we adopt. If the State permits of course.

Peace, health and happiness,
Ruben Schade

And here I was thinking Australia was above all this biased, scaremongering stuff in elections. Hah.