A friend of mine who has an interest in women's issues, contacted me this evening about a meeting she attended on women in Europe, during which the subject of abortion came up. Mary Honeyball MEP admitted that the climate has changed regarding abortion since European enlargement in 2004 with a growing bloc opposing abortion. She regarded this trend as 'very worrying' and gave the usual mantra about it basically being the fault of the Catholic Church.
Mary Honeyball and Myria Vassiliadou of the European Women's Lobby were quite open about their loathing of Anna Zaborska MEP and the hope that next year's elections would provide an opportunity to get her out of the chair of the EU women's committee.
Louise Hutchins of Abortion Rights brought up the campaign to impose the Abortion Act on the people of Northern Ireland. Mary Honeyball was apparently glad about the campaign, calling the situation in Northern Ireland 'extraordinary', 'bizarre' and 'quite wrong.' She is, however, working closely with Harriet Harman on the matter, which will be less than reassuring for the main political parties of Northern Ireland who uniformly oppose the extension of the Abortion Act. Later in the day, Myria Vassiliadou added that the Northern Ireland campaign could be pursued at the European level with letters to commissioners and questions being raised. The 'terrible situation' in Poland and Malta was also bemoaned.
One observation my friend made reminded me of Dr Sherley's comment about the 'vacation of reason' within the abortion lobby. Apparently, during one of the Q&A sessions, Mary Honeyball was asked about the rights of the unborn child and said that she couldn't think in terms of rights when it was not an unborn child it was 'not very much'. Whilst suggesting that abortion should be a last resort, she claimed that the basis of her thinking and argument was that the rights of the living were more important than something that had not yet come into existence [and yes, my friend was as confused as I am].
The junk science here is so ludicrous as to be hardly worth answering when science and technology have already done so many times over. If this is really the basis of the abortion lobby's thinking, it is in an even worse state of intellectual bankruptcy than many of us in the pro-life movement have imagined all these years.
