Firstly, something positive and heartening! The signs of the times are not all bad. Fr Tim Finnigan at The Hermeneutic of Continuity reports on a new fundamental law passed in Hungary which protects the institution of marriage (defined as being between a man and a woman) and the family as bedrocks of society and also protects the life of a foetus from conception. See his blog post which also links to his source, a report from C-Fam. Of course there has been opposition, for example from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, claiming that the protection of unborn life undermines women's reproductive health rights...More worringly, John Smeaton of SPUC reports on measures to thwart the work of pro-life pregnancy counsellors. His post centres around a system of voluntary registration for counsellors which is under consideration by a cross-party group of MPs and which would require advice centres to "meet minimum standards" and use "appropriately trained counsellors". This sounds well and good, but in practice, who would decide what constituted appropriate training and minimum standards? John Smeaton claims that it is likely to be the Department of Health with advice from pro-abortion counsellors. The MPs are divided over the issue of whether such counsellors would be obliged to declare any ethical stance, such as holding pro-life views, with Nadine Dorries holding that no-one should be able to offer crisis pregnancy counselling who had "any agenda whatsoever, be it religious or financial". There is also the issue of advertising by commercial post-conception advice centres, about which a new regulatory code has just been released (more on this in another post) which would require pro-life advisers - should they be able to afford to advertise at all - to declare that they do not offer or refer for abortions. Abortion-providing advice centres on the other hand are under no obligation to state that they do offer abortions.
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| Well worth attending |
