D N A

ANDREW BOLT

Devil in the DNA Andrew Bolt
23mar05

HOW strange that Parliament's most famous Catholic, Tony Abbott, is now a symbol of the once-forgotten dangers of sin.I feel for the poor bloke, because the humiliating news that he isn't, after all, the father of the boy he gave away 27 years ago doesn't make life easier for him.
Indeed, it makes it worse -- and not just for Abbott, but for his ``son'' and his former girlfriend, Kath Donnelly, too.
What only weeks ago was being sold -- not least by Abbott -- as their happily-ever-after story has instantly become a biblical morality play instead. Abbott has already had to live for years with an uneasy conscience over the decision he made with Donnelly -- when both were teenagers -- to adopt out what he thought was their baby.
That decision stays made, whoever the baby's father is, and is fixed in Abbott's knowledge of himself. He walked from his duty to look after the son he was sure he'd sired, leaving him to the mercy of strangers.
Maybe this is why Abbott is a strong Catholic. Like all wise moralists, he knows how easy it is to sin, and how much we all need help.
When the boy he'd given up was revealed to be Daniel O'Connor, an ABC sound recordist who'd often stuck his mike in the Health Minister's face, Abbott had to face his failure again -- and did it publicly, which wasn't sensitive or smart.
It must have hurt to front up to the ABC's 7.30 Report, knowing that among the viewers were many thousands who loathed him, and to confess: ``I was a pretty callow kid, and I wasn't ready for responsibility, and I regret that I wasn't more ready for responsibility.''
A note to the jeerers, by the way: would you have given up your child -- or, worse, killed it in the womb -- had you faced what Abbott and Donnelly faced as mere 19-year-olds? Answer fairly, or drop those stones.
I guess a lot of people did make just that calculation, and it was remarkable how many journalists reported the reunion of Abbott with his son as a feel-good story in which no one had been hurt and everyone ended up very happy. Cue in swelling orchestra and sunset glow.
No one I know actually asked O'Connor whether he'd felt hurt to know he'd been put up for adoption. Nor, to my knowledge, was his adoptive dad, a gardener, asked if he was scared his son would now think less of him, knowing his ``real'' dad was a powerful politician.
Still, what's one more happy-tales deceit in an age when so many insist divorce doesn't hurt children, and one parent at home is just as good as two -- or better? That's how we've progressed over the past 30 years -- from Erica Jong writing of the ``zipless f..k'' to papers now spinning the myth of the ``zipless divorce''. Not to mention the ``zipless abortion'' -- and this ``zipless adoption'', too.
YET now this happy reunion story has collapsed -- destroyed by the grunt-sweaty reality of a DNA test which confirms that while Donnelly is O'Connor's mum, Abbott sure isn't his dad.
So now Abbott isn't just a man who'd given up his baby, but a cuckold, too. Worse, O'Connor -- whose search for his real parents started this melodrama of revelations -- may well feel more betrayed than ever, and perhaps most of all by his natural mother.
And Donnelly may seem to some a woman who, as a teenager, was not just careless with her birth control, but too careless with sex and its consequences.
``I don't know that I am a free-thinking, bare-footed hippie,'' she recently said, ``but I am an artist and I perhaps do think a little outside the square.'' Has there actually been much thinking in all this, inside or outside the square?
There will be gimlet-eyed progressives who will blame all this on the DNA test that blabbed what didn't need blabbing, causing far more misery than good.
How many other lives have been destroyed by the tattle of the DNA tale? We know some 5000 paternity tests are done in Australia each year, and up to a third find that daddy isn't the daddy, after all. I know of a couple of such cases, involving monstrous hurt -- with these foul tests poisoning the years of love and loyalty between a father and the children he spent years in raising. Agonising stuff.
Think, for instance, of Liam Magill, who lost a recent court case for damages from his estranged wife, having learned that two of their three children weren't his after all.
Maybe fond belief is better than knowledge when it comes to paternity -- particularly when the Australian Medical Association thinks some 200,000 families may include a dad who actually isn't, more fool him.
But let's not shoot the DNA test which tells us we've lost the thread. If these tests threaten so many families, it's because never have so many families had such reason to be suspicious of who's fathered who in their domestic zoo.
If DNA tests had to be invented, then this was just the time to invent them, since we're freer than ever to do what we think best -- freer to sleep around, freer to abort, freer to dump, freer to move on. Bye-bye, kids!
Freedom like this has sure been fun for the strong, I admit. It's also rescued people from life-squishing marriages and given many a second crack at happiness.
But there was a reason why many religions and many cultures made pre-marital sex taboo, and treated marriage as a sacred bond. As the DNA tests in part reveal, there's no telling what wild misery we can create, particularly for children, when we feel free to make up our moral rules.
Look at the Tony Abbott and Kath Donnelly of today, and at the son Donnelly gave away, and we can see the pain of our foolishness can emerge even decades later, and in ways we in our passion never imagined.
I know, the old moral codes weren't painless either. But there's one thing to say about a grim sermon on saving sex for marriage -- it's sure cheaper than any paternity test, and a lot less shaming, besides.
bolta@heraldsun.com.au see also Kath could it be mine?