As from last week, Facebook fans can now add their unborn babies to the family connections on their page.

And they can also add a photo, name, and expected date of birth.

Facebook announced the new feature, saying that they decided to offer the new ‘Expected: Child’ option as: “a way for users to more accurately express their identity.” 

In doing so, they have — perhaps unintentionally — moved to recognise the identity of the child him/herself.

Unborn babies are already human beings.

It is great that parents should want to make that point.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard was and is a socialist.

She was big in the Australian Union of Students and the Socialist Forum as a 1980s university student.

Socialists believe in redistribution of wealth by government intervention.

Redistribution from people who work to those who govern.

That is what the Carbon Tax is about.

* * *

While JG and Mr Swan want the credit for Australia surviving the 2008 global financial troubles, everybody knows that what saved us was our coal and iron mining companies.

It would not be smart for the Gillard to try to destroy their profitability.

But she has to – Greens Party leader, Dr Bob Brown, insists on it.

She is in a dilemma.

She doesn’t need the miners to like her.

But she does need their taxes.

* * *

The present government’s desire for taxes knows no bounds.

People whose health is such that they would have received pensions in the past are now to be turned into taxpayers.

Likewise mothers staying at home to care for children are intolerable to the PM.

She refers to children — in particular a third child in the family — as “career-killers”.

Bringing up your own child with one-to-one 24/7 personal availability is apparently to be despised as a non-career.

The lady has a twisted world view.

* * *

Actually socialism could work, at least in theory . . . .

But human beings would have to be very different . . . .

Motivated exclusively by love for God and for his creatures . . . .

I read recently that in the USA, 70 percent of older people say they want to die at home, surrounded by loved ones etc.

But only 30 percent do so – most die in hospitals or nursing homes.

Why?

Sometimes a medical reason, unmanageable at home, arises — then there is no choice.

Often, however, there simply isn’t anybody with time available to spend on the old person as he/she becomes increasingly dependent.

Unfortunately.

* * *

A fortnight ago, Prime Minister Gillard said a speech, “I believe in the benefits and dignity of work. I believe in creating jobs and increasing workforce participation . . . .”

The punch-line soon arrived.

Yes, thanks to the nice Carbon Tax, she’ll be raising the tax-free threshold from $6,000 to $18,000.

Hooking married women into away-from-home jobs — using a tax-free $18000 bait.

What with the Carbon-Tax-induced sky-rocketing prices of electricity etc., most women are going to feel they have no choice.

We know how bad this is for their little children — dumped into institutional childcare from infancy, spending their waking hours wondering where Mum is.

We know about that . . . .

Less often discussed is the where-will-granny-pass-away connection.

* * *

If husbands received a wage on which a family could live and Mums stayed home, not only could children be parented by their parents . . . .

Granny could also die at peace.

(P.S. Such Mums could also live simpler, enviro-friendly, carbon-footprint-minimal lifestyles – growing their own vegetables, breast-feeding their own babies, walking more, driving less, doing  volunteer activities when time permits . . . .)

In England, a family-counselling charity has received permission to run a lottery in which the prize is a test-tube baby.

Included, if considered necessary, is donor sperm and/or a surrogate female to carry the baby to term in her uterus.

How bizarre, you say . . . trust those poms . . . not something we in human-dignity-respecting Australia would tolerate.

Bad news.

The organisers have had so much feedback from Australia on their website that they intend starting up the same thing here.

* * *

There will be opposition.

The CEO of “Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment” describes the proposal as “ethically murky”.

A spokesman for Sydney IVF calls it “disgraceful”.

Sydney IVF?

Doesn’t that ring a bell?

Back in 2006, wasn’t it they who were offering a sex-selection service? Perhaps they still do.

You can’t get much more disgraceful than that – unborn babies culled/exterminated simply for being not the desired gender.

Makes you feel queasy to think about it

* * *

The fact is that all IVF is “ethically murky”.

In Australia there are, at any one time, about 100,000 fertilised eggs kept frozen in the fridges of our 50-odd fertility clinics.

With current success rates, these will result in about 10,000 babies.

The other 90,000?

They will end up dead – either from being used for medical research experiments or being discarded after their use-by date.

Yet is not each and every embryo a genetically-complete and unique human being?

A child of God?

Is not the death of such a human being — insofar as it results from the intention of those responsible — an act of MURDER?

Not a popular thought.

But is it wrong, logic-wise?

Loree Rudd recently wrote to federal Labor MP’s opposing same-sex “marriage” — saying that if the party backs it she will quit.

She says marriage belongs only between a man and woman, and complains that the worldwide pro-homosexual movement has “fed propaganda” to lobby for change:

“I call them the global gay Gestapo . . . brainwashing people, particularly the young in the community, that this (homosexuality) is an optional extra in life,”

* * *

Loree has been criticised for those words:

 * Yes, there is no place here for using the word “gay”.

“Gay” means happy and full of fun. To drag it into this debate is to throw away yet another useful English word.

* Others criticise Loree for mentioning the “Gestapo” — as though brainwashing youth into normalising homosexual acts is as evil as killing prisoners in gas chambers.

Yes, better not to have mentioned the Gestapo — it gave her opponents an excuse to focus on just one word, and to avoid addressing the important point she was making.

We all know our youth is being fed biased information re homosexuality — as recently discussed on this blog site.  (18 May 2011)

* * *

The Catholic Church Catechism says we must treat all people, including those involved in homosexuality, as follows: “Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. …”

Therefore bullying, abuse (and, presumably, Gestapo-talk) cannot be excused.

But it  also says: “. . . under no circumstances can they [homosexual acts] be approved . . . homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”

* * *

So there we are:

Loree scores only about 4 out of 10 for her choice of words.

But more like 9 out of 10 for her courage and initiative.

Last weekend, police found and detained twenty 13 to 17-year olds at risk and unsupervised in inner Sydney between 10pm and 3am.

They phoned the parents to come and collect them. Ten refused.

Of the twenty, 17 were taken home by police or parents.

Three were accommodated at a youth refuge.

* * *

What about those parents unwilling to come?

Easy to criticise them.

Probably most had been out looking for and trying to collect those same brats a hundred times in recent months.

 . . . . kids who refuse to stay at home — once they’ve raided the fridge and stolen whatever  family property isn’t bolted to the floor.

Many of us parents did really have a go at controlling such young persons, and found it humanly impossible.

Perhaps one should keep chasing them and being nice until one drops dead . . . .

Or would it actually be kinder to tell them, “You’re always welcome home. This is where you belong. But never, never try coming without giving us 48 hours warning.”

* * *

There is no easy answer.

Ideally, prevention is the way.

But we’re stuck with a human nature tainted with Original Sin.

We inherit, and we ourselves pass on: weakness, ignorance, feral instincts and the desire to please other people rather than our Creator.

All of us, young and old, need to get motivated by the fear of God.

The Bible says, “Everyone must die once, and after that be judged by God.”

* * *

Don’t count on second chances . . . or on God being like the tooth fairy (all niceness, no justice) . . . or on Reincarnation (which is manifest nonsense) . . . .

No. We die once, and we take with us what we have turned ourselves into – to judgment and to eternity.

A sobering thought.

.