News: Chelsea Handler says she has no regrets about abortion

Chelsea Handler says she doesn’t regret abortion

The host of Chelsea Lately says she had an abortion when she was sixteen years old and doesn’t regret it for a moment. She said on The Rosie Show: “I was so delusional. I was like, ‘I’m ready for a baby.’ I was trying to argue with them and they were like, ‘You don’t understand. You’re throwing your entire life away. You’re not having a child right now’. I wouldn’t be a good mother. You should do whatever you want with your body and you shouldn’t let anyone tell you what to do.” We recently featured a powerful story of one woman’s abortion right here. It’s important to be open and honest.

Life balance? You’ve got to be joking.

Some 30 per cent of Australians work more than 45 hours per week and some 61 per cent of women say they are often or almost always rushed or pressed for time, compared with 47 per cent of men. Whichever way you look at it, Australians don’t seem to be getting the hang of the work life balance. But whose fault is that? round 37 per cent of workers say they are expected to put work ahead of their families or personal lives. Ouch. A new book, Time Bomb, looks at the gradual shift in work/life culture as it relates to harried Aussies. Working from home wasn’t necessarily a solution either. One woman quoted in the book said: “Since I’ve been able to work from home, I’ve probably been doing a bit more than what’s required.” Flexible hours, part-time work, telecommuting and technology have not lived up to their promise of liberating workers from the daily grind. Instead, they have allowed work to encroach on home life, leaving many workers at breaking point, said Professor Barbara Pocock, director of the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia, who wrote Time Bomb with colleagues Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams. Some suggestions for a better balance include increasing public transport efficiency (and therefore commute times) and regulating working hours better. What say you?

Obesity focus is pushing kids too far the other way

Children as young as nine have been hospitalised for extreme weight loss, an increasing phenomenon that doctors say can be traced back to ‘too much’ of a focus on anti-obesity campaigns. News.com.au reported: The phenomenon has been seen by Victoria’s three leading paediatric services, with doctors hospitalising children who have lost up to a third of their body weight over a few months in an irrational desire to stay thin. Royal Children’s Hospital chair of adolescent health Susan Sawyer said this eating disorder, affecting children at the upper end of the healthy weight range, was only starting to be documented. “When you’re older and overweight it’s a very simple message that weight loss is good for you,” Prof Sawyer said “The difficulty with young people is that even if they are moderately overweight, they are still growing height-wise and are at risk of over-interpreting public health messages of ‘low fat is good’ to suggest that ‘no fat is better’. For all intents and purposes, these adolescents have anorexia nervosa in terms of how unwell they are, the distorted body image and the amount of weight loss, but they are at a normal weight. This is very new.”

Australian girls tricked into marriages by families

Australian girls as young as 13 are being tricked into arranged marriages by their own families and sent oversees to marry the men chosen for them. Sometimes they are already related. Caroline Overington reported on case studies where the Family Court was forced to intervene after some of the girls alerted their teachers or Australian Federal Police. She wrote: “Social workers in migrant communities across Australia have spoken of weddings between Australian children and men overseas, with photographs of the elaborate ceremonies — including the girls, adorned with jewels and with wedding henna painted on their hands — turning up on Facebook and being shared among school students. Girls have spoken to teachers of being slapped across the face and hit on the back, of being harangued and threatened by family members if they try to refuse the marriages that have been arranged for them. The weddings are being arranged by parents or community leaders — perhaps to repay debts between ancient tribes, but more commonly to bring members of extended family to Australia or under the guise of “custom”. Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has vowed to criminalise the practice: “Criminalising forced marriage will send a strong message that the practice is not acceptable and help to deter the practice.” The federal government last year flagged an amendment to the criminal code that will ban the practice of arranging a forced marriage, with up to 15 years’ jail for those who try to organise it for children. The bill is set to face parliament this year.”

Bob Katter introduces us to his party … through dance

Federal MP, independent Bob Katter, has started his own political party – Bob Katter’s Australian Party – and held its first national conference. Immediately following the conference he and other party members held a flash mob outside Queensland parliament, as you do. They hired a Brisbane dance troupe to run them through the simple routine and plan to use an edited video of the dance to let the country know they’re here. “We have a message and it is one that people want to hear,” Mr Katter said. “[The video’s] a bit of fun, yes, but it is about reaching out and telling people we are here.”

And the world mourns Whitney Houston

The singer was found dead in her hotel room bath at the age of 48. Her daughter Bobbi Kristina was reportedly taken to hospital later that day after becoming grief stricken in the hotel lobby, apparently screaming: “What’s wrong with her, what’s wrong with her.” She clearly affected many, through her music or her public battle with drugs, but if you’d like to leave your thoughts – respectfully – we have a post here.