Text for the day is Jackie Ashley’s Guardian column. Jackie argues that those who object to aspects of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill are acting from intrinsically “reactionary” motives: she warns that this Commons battle is a dry run for the general election. Modern Labour versus Luddite, anti-progressive Conservatives. Dave and his gang, she warns, are dangerous counter-revolutionaries pretending to be modernisers.
The Spectator has expressed deep reservations about this bill, both in its editorial column and John Patten’s recent article: we are especially exercised by the clause which would, in effect, abolish fatherhood from the lives of some children. I see the Government’s proposal as old-fashioned and our objection as authentically modern. Those who still cling to the outmoded, discredited vision of the Sixties are the real reactionaries in this argument: all the most recent research shows that children need fathers, or at least a father figure, if they are to have the best chance in life. This is not an attack on lone mothers, thousands of whom perform miracles of management and dedication in bringing up children alone. But it is an empirical fact, rather than a statement of religious doctrine, to say that the children do better with a father and a mother bringing them up.
Take the abortion argument: what is now driving the argument in favour of a lower time limit for the termination of pregnancies is not Catholicism, but science. The high-definition images of foetuses between 20 weeks and 24 weeks – clearly human beings, with facial expressions, capable of feeling pain, and, increasingly, of surviving outside the womb – have given many people pause for thought, and rightly so. To caricature these anxieties as “reactionary” is outrageous, and also preposterous.
But take heart. What we are watching is not a persuasive attack but the last desperate attempt of a fading Liberal-left oligarchy to smear the younger generation that will soon supplant it. Toffs, reactionaries, any insult will do. The main thing to observe (look at the polls) is that the attack is failing abysmally.
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