Lesbian mothers and ‘traditional’ families

Medical technology is an awesome thing. It can save lives, cure terrible diseases, rebuild bodies. It can prolong and improve the lives of the chronically ill and disabled beyond the wildest dreams of sufferers even fifty years ago. It can reattach limbs, restore sight, cure depression, return the manic to health and sanity.

But can it be used to give women control over whether and when they have children? Only if male doctors and MPs say so.

Whoever your parents are, they’re going to fuck you up to some extent. I make no apologies for assuming that gay women and single women are just as likely to make good parents as anyone else, if not more so, as children conceived via the arduous process of IVF are slightly more likely to be wanted and treasured infants. For the purposes of this post we shall assume that one’s sexual orientation has no bearing on one’s likelihood of raising an unfucked-up child, nor on one’s right to attempt to do so. With that one out the way, let’s tuck in to a tasty breakfast of radical feminism with a gin chaser.
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How MPs voted on abortion, and other points

A few things to note
- Two of the Emily’s List MPs, Celia Barlow and Kitty Ussher voted to reduce the limit to 22 weeks.

- George Osborne, Conservative MP and shadow chancellor, voted to keep the 24 week limit. Well done to him.

- A special thanks should be written to the MPs Evan Harris, Chris McCafferty, John Bercow and Dawn Primarolo for their unwavering support for 24 weeks.

- I have an article today on CIF on Christian fundamentalists and abortion.

- Tom Freeman reckons that a Tory majority of 38 week in the next election would make it possible for them to reduce the limit next time.
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It was Dorries wot lost it!

It came down to the crunch, and after everything, not even the 200 supporters Nadine Dorries said she had bothered to turn up to vote for a reduction in the abortion limit to 20 weeks. All the hype about the vote being close turned out to be bluster, with the amendment being rejected by a majority of 142, 190 votes for to 332 against. All the attempts by Dorries to turn to complete emotion, raising the issue of the baby boy she witnessed struggling to breathe once again during the debate, after saying that she hadn’t wanted to use it, have failed.

This was after she said that Labour MPs were supposedly on a three-line-whip to “attend” so that they knew which way they were to be expected to vote. Desperation doesn’t even begin to cover it.
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Crunch time for women’s rights today

Yesterday in Parliament, MPs voted for allowing scientists to create human-animal hybrid embryos to find cures for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Today there will be two free votes today:
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Emily Thornberry and 24 weeks

They’re voting on the 24-week time limit for abortion today: here’s Labour MP Emily Thornberry on the Labour party and the pro-choice lobby’s chances:

Leading Labour pro-choice MP Emily Thornberry is youngish (47), new to the national scene (first elected to parliament in 2005), able to talk a blue streak (she was a criminal lawyer), charismatic, and - at first interview, anyway - refreshingly disinterested in caution.

Truly disinterested, even: she says and does - apparently - anything. She freely describes some Labour colleagues as Neanderthals.

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What is Nadine Dorries MP’s real agenda? (pt 4)

1) Consistency is not really her strong point, Bookdrunk said yesterday when Unity blogged the amendments Tory MPs are proposing to the HFE Bill. There’s Mr Edward Leigh supporting amendments to reduc the limit to 12, 14 or 16 weeks and there’s Nadine Dorries supporting reducing the limit to 20 weeks and 16 weeks! Is she not conviced by her own arguments?

But you see, that isn’t her ultimate agenda and neither is it of these other mysogynist MPs.
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HF&E Abortion-related Amendments

Not 100% sure what delights Sunny has in store for everyone today…

(’Sunny delights’, GEDDIT!!! - Sorry, bit of a Glenda moment there, only to be expected when you’re monitoring Dorries)

…but in the mean time, the list of amendments to be debated on 20th May is mounting up, necessitating an update.

As far as the upper time limit for abortion goes, the current list (with sponsors) looks like this:
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Are lefties guilty of ignoring abortion rights?

Abortion, and of course the wider issue of reproductive rights, still seems to be an area that the left need to be pushed on.

Yeah they will often make the right noises, but they will make excuses for anti abortion men such as Galloway, and yet I can’t see them being quite so tolerant if someone was, ooh let’s say pro-war. But abortion is a women’s issue isn’t it, it’s not quite up there with the serious male leftie men and their real politics about war and arguing the toss over the finer obscure theoretical points of Marxism or who did what when to whom in 1983.

That’s not to say the majority of the left aren’t pro choice and I’m not going to bang on about Galloway as it’s pointless. Back to the subject, the left and pro choice, why should they get their finger out on this?

Much has been said on this, so I will try to focus on what I see as specific issues for the left, starting with the fact that working class women are those who lose out the most when abortion rights are restricted. Money has always helped procure such services from discreet private doctors.

Working class women, pre 1967, had to make do with the back street abortionists and the resultant risks to health, potentially fatal.
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Nadine Dorries MP and her hoax science

1) On March 19th Nadine Dorries MP published a blog-post titled The Hand of Hope, which featured this image of a small hand apparently coming out of a uterus. She said:

When the operation was over, baby Samuel, at 21 weeks gestation, put his hand through the incision in the uterus and grabbed hold of the surgeon’s finger, a gesture which was apparently met with a huge amount of emotion in the operating theatre. Dr Bruner said that it was the most emotional moment of his life and that for a moment he was just frozen, totally immobile.

Except, it was a hoax and Dr Bruner himself had said so. This was pointed out on several blogs including LC and Dorries wrote another post defending her actions with the view that the photographer, a born-again Christian, should be believed over the surgeon (who she had earlier quoted herself).

The Hand of Hope also makes an appearance on the pictures and video section of her new campaign. In other words, a member of parliament is actually perpetuating a hoax that has been debunked several times.

In many ways, this sums up her entire campaign.
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Who is funding Nadine Dorries MP’s campaign?

A week ago Nadine Dorries launched the 20 weeks Campaign through the Daily Mail, which wrote up this glowing story and dedicated its editorial comment strip to supporting it. The 20 Weeks website has Nadine Dorries MP’s picture on every page and she has promoted it relentlessly through her blog. So we can reasonably assume it is her campaign.

But who is behind this campaign? Is it just Ms Dorries? The website doesn’t say. On the Q&A page however it does have this question: Is this a religious campaign?. Answer: “No. There are people of all faiths and of no faith who support this campaign.”

But that’s about it. Shouldn’t we be told who is running a campaign fronted by a Conservative MP?
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A Protest for Science

Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, with parliamentary colleagues, at an event in support of the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill, which will protect and extend the right of scientists to perform crucial stem-cell research.

More about all this at the Coalition for Choice website.

The case against Nadine Dorries MP (pt 1)

Today on Liberal Conspiracy we have a treat for you. This week we officially launch our campaign: Coalition For Choice, to support the HFE Bill and develop an online advocacy group in favour of extending abortion rights over the longer term.

See the website for more about our aims.

To mark this launch we have a week of Nadine Dorries MP on Liberal Conspiracy! We will illustrate how this Conservative MP:
- has consistently misrepresented the arguments around abortion;
- is fronting campaigns by Christian groups without declaring so;
- is promoting hoaxes on her websites;
- has frequently and wrongly smeared reputable journalists and scientists;
- hides her true long-term intentions on the issue of abortion
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What about women’s rights, Mrs Dorries?

In the pages of the Daily Mail yesterday, anti-choice poster-girl Nadine Dorries MP was given a platform to put across her misogynist, reactionary views.

She and a claimed ‘coalition of 200′ MPs are calling for a reduction in the time limit on legal abortion from 24 to 20 weeks, despite a lack of evidence that fetuses can survive outside the womb before that point and despite the fact that most women are against further reductions in the time limit.
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