It’s all going to be thrashed out on The Moral Maze this evening apparently, BBC Radio 4, but I probably won’t be listening, unless I remember.
Obv not, mere speculation but at least I’m showing my working.
Just seen this from Humanists UK:
This week the UK Government quietly removed ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’ from an international statement it organised to show solidarity among nations on human rights. This is deeply troubling…
The statement was first issued by the UK Government as part of an international conference on freedom of religion or belief in London earlier this month. A total of 22 countries signed it before abortion rights were removed. It now has only six signatories, including the UK, and Malta – which has an absolute ban on abortion in all circumstances , including rape, incest, and fatal foetal abnormalities.
The entire point of the international conference was to promote freedom of religion or belief for all . Freedom of religion or belief does not mean using religious beliefs to infringe upon the human rights of others. The fact that these rights were removed from an international statement, organised by the UK Government, on freedom of religion or belief, only serves to further this dangerous narrative.
The recent demise of Roe Vs Wade in the United States has demonstrated just how easily rights can be stripped away and how powerful religious groups can misappropriate freedom of religion or belief to their own pernicious ends. We’re calling on the UK Government to reverse the statement, and clarify that religion does not trump women’s basic human rights.
For once, GC, I agree with you.
This is totally appalling and I have noticed that women are having to stand up more and more to be listened to and their rights acknowledged and this is worldwide.
Why Britain should join in this appalling process I have no idea, but watch out women in UK, this could be the first step.
This step also totally clashes with the government’s stated intention to improve womens’ health.
I have asked my MP to investigate this.
1 Like
I suppose the obvious “reason” for making an amendment is that not everyone accepts the belief that a civilised society presupposes an unfettered right to abortion. Better to get broad agreement, even at the cost of omitting the Atheistic/Humanistic shibboleth of abortion on demand?
Unless you think there’s another reason?
Yup, make everyone have a baby and then make everyone stick them on the nearest hillside for a couple of days, God will recognise his own and save them, the unwanted ones can lump it. SO much better. Or perhaps just reread a modest proposal for more ideas.
What it must be like for young girls and women now that they can be branded criminals for having an abortion, across much of America…horror stories! What a mess!
The extract below is from techcrunch.com
A Nebraska detective was investigating “concerns that a juvenile female… had given birth prematurely supposedly to a stillborn child.”
He apparently did not believe that the child was stillborn, though an autopsy (after exhuming the body seemingly without reason) was consistent with the story, showing that the foetus had never had air in its lungs. But because it was in a plastic bag, he asked Meta to provide all the girl’s Facebook messages, photos and other data for “statements that might indicate whether the baby was stillborn or asphyxiated.”
This information was duly provided, and messages appear to show the girl discussing taking an abortifacient medication. Based on this information, police raided the family’s home, seizing six smartphones and seven laptops, with data like internet history and emails totalling 24 gigabytes. Among this trove the investigators hope to find the evidence of a teenager ordering abortion pills.
Now the 17-year-old is being tried as an adult for performing an abortion after week 20 of pregnancy, performing an abortion without a license, concealing a dead body, concealing the death of a person and false reporting.
It must be pointed out that at no point before they received the messages from Facebook was there any evidence of a crime beyond improperly disposing of a miscarried foetus. The detective’s asphyxiation theory, based solely on the presence of a plastic bag, was incompatible with the autopsy evidence, which supported the girl’s account. Generally speaking, it seems cruel and unusual to conduct a multi-day investigation into a miscarriage and panicked disposal of remains.
1 Like
Like something from dystopian fiction – the abortion rights of women in the UK have just been placed in the hands of a minister with a devoutly anti-abortion voting record.
Maria Caulfield MP, who has repeatedly voted and spoken against abortion in the House of Commons, and who attempted to block the legalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland in 2019, has unbelievably now been given ministerial responsibility for abortion access as Minister for Women in Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet.
1 Like
Outrageous 
1 Like
“Maria” is the clue.
1 Like
Therese Coffey as Minister for Health too. What ideology is behind this?
I don’t know if Hinduism is against abortion or whether this is the ERG in the shape of Rees Mogg threatening to withdraw support if their disgusting agenda is not followed.
We need to know what is behind this.
Exactly, and the most important words there are ‘unfettered right’ .
I briefly alluded in another, unconnected, thread to an ongoing fictional account in a radio serial. My distaste was prompted not by the abortion itself but by the totally unchallenged view that the only criterion for deciding whether to lose or keep the unwanted foetus was at the whim of the girl concerned, never mind the circumstances of health to mother or child. It was purely a case of turning up at the clinic and being asked ‘do you want to go ahead or not?’
I may be being unfair to the writers though as the father, while giving and promising much moral and financial support whatever her decision, is now in the depths of despair and giving up on his college studies to work full time to help his parents who have been blamed simply because they are his parents and are threatened with financial ruin by the father of his ‘normal’ girlfriend.
Could it possibly be that the writers are going to have the father admit at some point that he was horrified at the abortion of his child but felt that in current popular thought he had no right to an opinion? I hope they do. Even in fiction two sides to very important questions should not be denied.
1 Like
The mistake, surely, is to give a single person the remit - it’s an issue which tends to polarise so you’re either going to get someone strongly “for” or strongly “against”.
1 Like
Well, the original idea behind the Archers was to educate farmers, of course, and the BBC’s Charter says its mission is “to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain”.
It seems to have forgotten the “impartial” bit!
So far, maybe, maybe not. As I said, the writers have given a hint in what they have put in the mouth of the father.
PARIS — French lawmakers on Thursday backed a proposal to enshrine abortion rights in the country’s Constitution, in a move devised as a direct response to the [U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer.
But the bill, passed by the National Assembly, the lower and more powerful house of the French Parliament, will have to go through a complex legislative process, and face possible opposition in the Senate, before the Constitution could be amended, leaving ample time and opportunity for lawmakers or voters to ultimately reject it.
Still, Thursday’s vote was a symbolic milestone at a time when the right to abortion is increasingly challenged in France’s European neighbors.
“Nobody can predict the future,” Mathilde Panot, the head of the hard-left France Unbowed party, which backed the bill, told the National Assembly, adding that the proposal was meant “to ward off the fear that grips us when women’s rights are under attack elsewhere.”
“History is full of examples of fundamental freedoms that were taken for granted and yet were wiped out with a stroke of the pen by events, crises or groundswells,” the justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti, said on Thursday. “And this is even more true when it comes to women’s rights.”
3 Likes