Monday 25 February 2008

abortion amendments at best a distraction

The Daily Mail reports today that David Cameron, the Conservative leader, would like to vote to reduce the current 24-week deadline in what is the first Parliamentary vote on the issue since 1990. "If there is an opportunity in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, I will be voting to bring this limit down from 24 weeks.”

With all due respect to Mr Cameron and the Daily Mail, they are jumping the gun.

Or rather, they are watching the wrong hare – one that isn’t even running yet. Of prior importance is the HFE bill itself – a hare that is running, and on a disastrous course. It is a wholesale extension of the already deplorable law on embryology. The bill contains a plethora of measures that will lead to the abuse, manipulation and destruction of countless more embryonic human lives.

Talk about abortion amendments is, at best, a distraction which will prove helpful to the government which wants to maximise its majority at the Bill’s second reading.