Law For The Irresponsible

Despite the insistence by some neonatal consultants that significant numbers of children born before 24 weeks survive if they are treated at top specialist centres — as many as 42% — Health Minister Dawn Primarolo will today tell MPs on the Select Committee of Science & Technology that she sees no evidence for a change in the law on abortion.

Forty years ago, Lord David Steel was influenced by the reading of Alice Jenkins' polemic, Law for the Rich, highlighting how rich or educated women were getting round the abortion ban by claiming their life was threatened by the danger to their mental health, while "ordinary" women were left turning to backstreet abortion clinics or to self-induced abortions at home, resulting in the deaths of 30 to 50 women a year.

Today, a whole generation's experience of this shadowy alternative is limited to their viewing of films such as Vera Drake and abortion has almost become a way of life or an alternative to contraception, with almost a quarter of all pregnancies ending in an abortion — 193,737 were carried out in the UK last year, an increase of 3.9% on the year before, with almost a third (32%) performed on women who had already had at least one previous pregnancy terminated and 19-year-olds the most likely of any age group to have an abortion — and this despite the introduction of the morning-after pill.

Thus, the 1967 Abortion Act no longer seems to be about saving the lives of pregnant women dying at the hands of back street abortionists or by suicide but instead appears to have become a law for the irresponsible. Yet, at the end of the day, whether you have greater sympathy for the pro-choice or the pro-life lobby, as Lord Steel notes, abortion itself is not the problem. The problem is the unwanted pregnancy. However, sex education and availablility of contraception have done nothing to prevent this trend. Instead, we will only really be able to tackle the issue when we see a shift in culture away from today's individualistic society towards one in which each person acknowledges that they have a place in a network of relationships radiating out from the family to the wider community and that even their individual and private decisions have an impact on this network.

Teenagers Looking For Love?

Teenage Pregnancy Rates (%)A new report by Population Action International, A Measure of Survival, confirms that Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe. It also concludes that our maternity services are worse than those in Hungary, Slovakia and Cuba and ranks us just 17th out of 29 European countries on health services overall.

Anybody else remember the Government's Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, which not only failed to stem the rise in teenage pregnancies but has fuelled record levels of STIs and, where implemented most heavily, has resulted in the biggest increases in underage pregnancies? Anybody else think there might be a correlation with British children having the worst physical and emotional well-being and the worst relationships with family and friends among the world's wealthiest nations?

Free Lunches ... Or Just Free Cash?

When I heard Health secretary Alan Johnson announce the Government's proposal to pay expectant mothers a one-off, no-strings-attached payment of £200 from their 29th week of pregnancy, supposedly to encourage them to eat well, I thought it was such a silly idea that I didn't even think to blog about it. However, I see that Wat Tyler reckons the "Health in Pregnancy Grant" is really an attempt to get teenage mothers onto welfare:

As you will know, we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. Every year, some 80,000 under-18 year olds conceive, of whom somewhat over half go through to maternity. And the ones that do are overwhelmingly from the lowest socio-economic groups. They are four times more likely to get pregnant than the highest groups, and only around half as likely to have an abortion if they do. Which means well over half of teenage mothers are in the bottom third of society.

Now once those girls have their child, they cop a load of state welfare: indeed, in some parts of Britain it's a major career option. But before then, it's rather more difficult. Because of their youth, they don't qualify for the same level of welfare as say a pregnant 25 year old.

So what Al is really doing here is to extend state welfare to some very young girls who in all probability are currently wholly dependent on their own parents. At a cost of about £140m pa (700,000 births pa times £200 equals £140m pa) he aims to change that and make them dependent on the state.

Of course, such theories might be easier to dismiss if it wasn't for the fact that one in three households have already been made dependent on the state for at least half their income as a result of the sweeping changes made to pensions, taxes, and benefits by Gordon Brown over the last decade. Just as I have suggested previously, Mr Tyler also believes there is much we could learn from America, where President Clinton's 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act helped reduce the number of families receiving cash benefits from the state from a record 5.1 million families to just 1.9 million.

Saviour Siblings or Spare-part Kids?

First, prospective parents could attempt to have a baby by in vitro fertilisation.

Next, parents were permitted to screen test-tube embryos to seek a match for an existing child with a potentially terminal illness.

Now the parliamentary committee charged with reviewing the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill is proposing that parents should be allowed to create so-called "saviour siblings" in an attempt to treat older brothers and sisters with non-life-threatening conditions.

What do you think? Should we heed the transhumanists and embrace every technological chance to improve on the design of humans? Or is this just another example of the slippery slope, another step towards creating "designer babies"?

UN - Reform Or Dissolve?

First of all, here are the results of last week's Baby Sex Tests poll. As always, the results aren't necessarily representative of anything other than the opinions of people who read this blog and are willing to take a few seconds to contribute to the wider debate, but they are interesting nevertheless:

Would you use the new early pregnancy sex test?

Yes, definitely  0% (0 votes)

If it was free, but not for £189  14% (4 votes)

No, I'd wait for the 20 week scan  38% (11 votes)

No, I'd find out at the birth  31% (9 votes)

No, it shouldn't be allowed  17% (5 votes)

Total voters for this poll: 29

This week's poll (in the sidebar): Following the United Nations' election of Zimbabwe to head the Commission on Sustainable Development, what future should we seek for the UN and by what means?

Most people probably realise that the UN is as plagued by allegations of corruption as is the EU; however, while most appear to have woken up to how the vast majority of British legislation now comes out of the European Union, few still seem to realise that the United Nations is responsible for global tax schemes such as the international tax on airline travel and a new global carbon tax amounting to 15-20 pence a gallon on petrol. Yet these initiatives are surely equally unacceptable attacks on national sovereignty?

Earlier this year, America's former Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, suggested that reform of the United Nations had failed and called for an end to "assessed contributions" to the international body, arguing instead for a completely voluntary system to pay for UN activities.

Maybe readers think that, for all its problems, the UN remains a force for good in the world? Let us know what, if anything, you believe should be done about the UN — take the poll or leave a comment!

Baby Sex Tests

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Time For Change?

Ofsted's latest report, Time for change? Personal, social and health education, maintains:

There is no evidence that ‘abstinence-only’ education reduces teenage pregnancy or improves sexual health. There is also no evidence to support claims that teaching about contraception leads to increased sexual activity. Research suggests that education and strategies that promote abstinence but withhold information about contraception can place young people at a higher risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

What the report fails to mention is that the Government's £138 million Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, which includes making morning-after pills available to teenagers, has failed to stem the rise in teenage pregnancies, has had no effect on conception or abortion rates and, most damning of all, has been blamed for fuelling record levels of STIs. As reported earlier this year, latest figures for the rate of underage pregnancies showed the biggest single annual increase in ten years and areas that have promoted the government's strategy most heavily have experienced the biggest increases.

In today's "best of the blogosphere," Archbishop Cranmer notes that "the UK has the highest teenage birth rates in Western Europe - twice as high as in Germany, three times as high as in France and six times as high as in the Netherlands" and concludes:

"Cranmer simply wants to know why sex education has been divorced from talk of marriage and love. He wants to know what is wrong with promoting sexual abstinence and traditional family values. And he wants to know why the spiritual side of the sexual act, so eloquently communicated in Scripture, and pervasive throughout the New Testament, is not talked of at all."

We asked for a response from the government but no spokesman was available to comment...