LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

ABORTION BILL

I WISH to correct a misapprehension in the otherwise fair coverage of the Rally for Life against the late-term abortion bill (TC, 27/9).

It was stated that the bill will allow abortion past 22 weeks “when a mother’s health or mental health is at risk.”

The actual wording of the bill is “the woman’s current and future physical, psychological and social circumstances” which is much broader, and encompasses a whole range of current and future possibilities, any of which may change for the better given time, treatment and practical support.

This scenario would also include the case which occurred in Victoria some years ago of a woman who insisted on an abortion with the threat to commit suicide because she was told her unborn child might be affected from dwarfism which was considered a disadvantage in her culture.

The medical fraternity duly acquiesced, only to find out the baby was normal.

Many other couples have had the experience of being told their unborn child had an abnormality only to find out otherwise after birth.

If passed, this bill would allow for the killing of unborn children equal in

age to or older than babies in our special care nurseries.

This is truly the “choice” that kills. DR DONNA PURCELL, Toowoomba SHARKS

TWO swimmers were bitten by sharks in the Whitsundays recently and just like in the movie Jaws, the response was swift, predictable and emotive.

It isn’t nice when people are bitten by sharks, I get that. It isn’t nice when your parachute fails to open either or when you accidentally cut your fingers off with the circular saw, or when some drunk driver kills your family in a horror road accident.

My point here is that all activities come with inherent risk.

The data will set you free-and helps with perspective. Sharks killed 72 Australians nationwide between 1958 and 2018 (0.8 persons per year). Sharks kill about eight Australians per decade on average. 3.3 Australians die every day on our nation’s roads.

The response from Queensland politicians was predictably ignorantthe drumlines hit the water and six sharks, five tigers and one blacktip were slaughtered. They were all shot, except one, that was despatched via a “quick and humane procedure” involving a spike being “inserted” through the animal’s brain. (Fisheries spokesperson).

Drumlines kill sharks but this is meaningless. Fisheries minister Mark Furner said, “by removing these large sharks we have made the area safer”.

It is of great concern to me that the Fisheries Minister clearly knows nothing about fish. These people assume that sharks exhibit high site fidelity.

Sharks are highly mobile species. The shark(s) that had a test bite in Cid Harbour were most likely 10s of kilometres away when the drumlines were set and the sharks caught and killed most likely had nothing to do with the previous events.

Some science. Baited hooks left for 12 hours in say a 1 km/hr current can create a “carrion windfall” detectable by tiger sharks in a 12km odour corridor which essentially changes their foraging behaviour and attracts them to the source of the odour. Brilliant! Let’s attract more sharks. Yes we have a shark problem. The problem is we are killing 90 million sharks globally per year. Killing apex predators often results in a mesopredator

release and concomitant trophic cascades.

Translation - humans kill too many sharks in the Caribbean, grouper population increases due to less predation, groupers eat all their prey namely parrotfish, parrotfish normally clean the algae from corals, result degraded coral reefs in the Caribbean dominated by algae.

Humans have to accept the inherent risk of swimming in an ecosystem that we do not belong in.

It is time to stop killing marine animals, who are just going about their business of survival because we want to play in their ecosystem.

The natural order does not warrant revenge.

GEOFF CASTLE, USQ researcher, Toowoomba NOT A ROBOT

I AM amused when I see a website say “I’m not a robot” with a checkbox to select. As if they can see if the operator is a machine or not.

There is artificial intelligence software around now that can select that checkbox and submit your information automatically.

Go figure.

DAVE FREDERICKS, Toowoomba