The pro-Life Alliance's schlock anti-abortion broadcast, featuring a dismembered fetus, is to be banned in the name of taste and decency. But since when have broadcasters had the right to decide what goes in a general election?

Whether corporate suits like it or not the world is as it is not as middle class sensibility demands. Abortions happen and when they do a fetus is destroyed. Like most surgical procedures it involves blood and stuff. Under the cover of 'taste and decency' the broadcasters are trying to determine what is an acceptable contribution to the election debate, and what is not.

The pro-Life Alliance is reactionary. Their politics, if policy, would constrain and diminish the lives of women. But by banning their message we are all robbed of deciding ourselves about an important and legitimate election issue. However gruesome the anti-abortion alliance's shock tactics it should be the voters that what goes in a general election.

Some pro-choice people have supported this ban on the basis that women may be traumatised or have their arms twisted into having a child they do not want. These kind of arguments are the most dangerous of all. They strike at the very heart of the idea that a woman can and should decide herself whether to carry a child or not. By censoring the anti-choice lobby the broadcasters have attacked the idea of freedom that should underpin the pro-choice argument.

In a bizarre turnaround religious fanatics and bigots can now assume the mantle of defenders of freedom and democracy. They can do this because in this election, censorship and not open political debate is what the broadcasters have in store for us.