Menzies House

Wombs for rent, ten bucks a day

Knee-jerk reaction laws intended to placate minorities usually incurs collateral damage. But unintended consequences cannot and should not be excused when it comes to fulfilling irresponsible dreams for parenthood. Children are not puppies to be returned to the pet shop when they become inconvenient. Their minds and bodies are a lifetime commitment. GC.Ed.

One aspect of proposed same-sex marriage legislation is slowly percolating into the room like the smell that nobody admits to.
The fact is that homosexual males who want to be fathers need a young woman to be a surrogate mother.
Where will these women come from?
There is another kind of legislation or law at work here – the Law of Supply and Demand – a law that applied before the Egyptians, and which has never been repealed. And the answer to the question is – wherever the wombs are cheapest.
Of course, there are other aspects – there has to be good medical attention, state-of-the-art gynecological services.
Of course, of course.
And there is a place where the wombs are cheapest, where doctors are
available, where laws are elastic.
India.
They may have a s’house cricket team, but they have doctors experienced in IVF – and millions and millions of impoverished young women.
The surrogate motherhood industry in India is worth well over $2 billion
a year, and growing.

London Riots: No wonder these kids think stealing trainers is OK. Everyone makes excuses for them.

Teacher and UK blogger, Katherine Birbalsingh writes at the London Daily Telegraph:

The reason your house is not regularly robbed is not because you lock your doors. It is because most people don’t steal. Sure, locking is a deterrent used to deter those on the fringes of society, but the main reason you are not attacked on the street, shops are not constantly looted and burnt down, and we all don’t take things that don’t belong to us is because someone, when we were little, taught us the difference between right and wrong.

Put a child in front of an insect and he will take great delight in making it suffer until his mother or father tells him that causing pain is wrong. Children need to be brought up properly with parents who care enough about them to say no, with a school system that cares enough to admit when behaviour is out of control, with a community that recognises that we are ALL responsible for our children.

Motherhood and feminism

The attacks by left-wing feminists on Natalie Portman shows their contempt for the family unit, writes Monica O'Shea.

When Natalie Portman won her Oscar on Monday, she thanked her fiancé, Benjamin Millepied, for  providing her with “the most important role of my life."

This struck a chord with me, as it would have with many people watching the live telecast from LA. 

If you speak to any mother, or indeed father, they would rate giving birth to their children as one of their proudest moments in life.

So who could blame Natalie for relating to all mothers, and sharing a personal view that giving birth is her most important role in life? 

The left, it seems.

Where have our standards gone?

Australia's social standards are being eroded, writes Senator Cory Bernardi.

Evidence of our decaying values is presented with monotonous regularity in our daily papers and on our plasma screens. We can witness cruelty and hate in high definition via YouTube or see 'happy-slapping' on our mobile phone.

It has to make you wonder what our world is coming to.

Now I know that people have done impulsive and foolish things since the dawn of time. It's part of growing up and learning from good and bad experiences. 

Of expressive divorces and stolen childhoods (part two)

Ben-Peter Terpstra writes his second installment on the effect of expressive divorces on children and society. 

Adults-only libertarians and heartless feminists don’t like conservatives talking about children and divorce, for a number of reasons. On a personal level, the subject can open up old wounds, or expose them, if we’re being completely frank. Indeed it is dangerous to talk about professional libertarians who’ve abandoned or neglected their children. For boys, the pain of fatherlessness can’t be medicated away either, although many have tried with tragic results.  

Of expressive divorces and stolen childhoods

Ben-Peter Terpstra writes on the effect of expressive divorces on children and society.

No-fault divorces have (as predicted) scarred millions of children across the West. But don’t expect radical feminists and adults-only libertarians to say sorry. They’re never wrong. Or as Barbara Dafoe Whitehead put it in The Divorce Culture: Rethinking Our Commitments to Marriage and Family, “A culture of divorce soothes children with antidepressants, consoles them with storybooks on divorce, and watches over their lives from family court.”

One serious problem: “Our contemporary secular thinking about marriage is a blend of psychotherapy and politics, and its language is one of rights and needs.”

Shared Parenting – although not perfect, is there a need to change it?

Alby Schultz MP argues that there are serious flaws with existing shared parenting arrangements.

The concept of shared parenting by separated or divorced couples was a basis for family law reforms in 2006.