Is this a case for Secularisation of the Political Sphere?

international | anti-capitalism | other press

Sunday March 30, 2008 12:50

by C Murray

Links to April 21-27th Campaign in the UK.

This morning's London Independent headlines with the news that a Christian
Evangelical Group had paid interns working in the offices of Ministers in
the run-up to the Human Fertilisation and Embrology Bill*. This contentious Bill
had sought to lump together the issues of Chimeric (human-animal) creation together
with a new amendment to reduce the 24 week abortion limit . The Group:

C.A.R.E.

Christian Action, Research and Education had access all areas in the Commons
and of course into research materials pertinent to the legislation. This prompts
one question- Tony Blair had brought some of the biggest US Companies to the
UK to work in the areas of genetic research (despite his personal Evangelicalism
and recent conversion).

So what are the Evangelicals so pissed off about?

(Abortion rights)/HFE.

Pro-Choice Movement UK

http://www.abortionrights.org.uk is running a week long campaign on the issue of the
24 week limit in the UK, to highlight the problems attendant on the campaigns in relation
to concerted efforts to reduce the 24 week limit.

Many Irish women use those abortion services in Britain and will hopefully sign the
petition at link and give their support to a campaign that finds issues of medical
abortion/chosen abortion and women's rights being interefered with by Rightists.

For Info on Fundamentalism (Christian/Muslim/or any literalist interpretation of bibles)

http://www.whrnet.org/fundamentalisms

I will add in a link to the Bill in toto when I source it...

The Group paid twelve research assistants who held meetings in the commons
full story http://www.independent.co.uk

Like many other first world economies the issues of embryology and genetic researches
become intimately inter-linked with women's rights issues, which necessarily confuses
the two issues. The attempt to reduce the 24 week limit is of course an amendment
that sneakily avoids the discussion on rights and politicises the whole area of women's
right to choose.

It's not a problem in Ireland where Evangelical Christianity is still reduced to a 500,000
Euro bus for Ian Paisley to go to Croagh Patrick and Boyne Sites to tell us all about
evangelical Protestantism. We just don't talk about abortion rights within the context
of an equal access medical system and export the problem to the UK.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86281
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86125

Gordon Brown allowed a free vote on the HFE after pressure from the Evangelical
Literalists at the RC Church in Rome. Its not good enough to sneak in amendments
that effect the human rights of women and girls as part of a Bill that has ethical
implications for genetic researches and productions. The issues are entirely separate.