Charlie’s White Paper

I’ve spent a while wondering whether I should blog on this. But the issue should not be avoided. Abortion is bad. I explain my position later, but for now let me rant a little.

I’ve just been watching Channel 4’s Dispatches - dreadful journalism. I know that documentary makers always put a spin on everything, it’s unavoidable, but David Modell deliberately put the worst possible spin on anything that anyone did.

For example. He kept asking questions until he got an answer he could spin. One of the interviewees said that Islam was from the Devil. And then he kept trying to get the same words into the mouth of another - Andrea Williams, claiming that she’d said them, despite the fact that she’d said it was a false religion. Eventually she turns her microphone off - wouldn’t you if someone was that rude. He can hardly claim that she didn’t co-operate with the documentary.

When talking to a political lobbyist, David Modell asked about the age of the earth, despite the fact that she’s not lobbying for anything to do with that. When she said I don’t know, he kept pushing until she gave a unclear answer and eventually gave up. He then used that to imply that all her other opinions are stupid.

Also, I’d like to know how many interviews he’s conducted that have included the question ‘Do you masterbate?’ It’s none of his business. Did no one explain to him the whole private places and public places in nursery? What would he do if asked the question? For that matter, would he really like to be filmed getting pooed on by a seagull. I bet he’d edit that out!

Politics, religion and journalism covering either, and especially both needs nuance. At no point did we actually discover the Lawyer’s Christian Fellowship’s views on abortion, it was implied but never asked.

My own view on abortion is that it’s bad and to be avoided. Whatever is said, it seems to me that the main reason for abortion is personal convenience. But if I am stupid enough to have sex outside of marriage or can’t be bothered to use a condom when I get my kicks, then I should face up to the consequences.

Whilst I am thus ‘anti-abortion’, I do think that abortion should be possible in some circumstances. From conception, that small bundle of cells should be treated as a person. They should be protected as such and the same rights should extend to them as to all other people under law.

But if it comes to a situation where the mother’s life is in danger, then I think it may be the right thing to do. When one person depends on the other and yet is endangering the other, then a difficult decision must be made. Sometimes a similar situation can occur with conjoined twins. One may have to die that the other might live. It’s is not desirable, it is not good, but it may be the best possible course of action.

Often, when a moral argument is introduced, it is ducked by connecting it with religion. But morality does not depend upon membership of a particular religion. The government should not enforce personal faith - as if it could. But it should govern our country in justice.

What is more injust than the death of one person to suit another’s convenience?

Government should protect the weak, which may mean locking up the dangerous, or protecting the vulnerable. It certainly does not mean that we should encourage state-funded murder.

Nearly seven million children have died since 1967. That’s five times the number of Britons to die in the two world wars. That’s unthinkable. A ’silent holocaust’.

If someone has had an abortion, it cannot be undone. There is nothing so bad that it puts you out of the reach of God’s love. But let’s protect the living, not continue to allow the helpless to suffer at the hands of the selfish.

Perhaps this video will act as a wake-up call.