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melanie phillips

• 26 May 2011
  
  

  The liberal inquisition

  
  

  
  

  
  

  The profound illiberalism of the British so-called liberal has been on egregious display over the past day. The British government has a new advisory panel on sexual health, replacing its old Independent Advisory Group on the issue.

  Published in: Spectator

  
  

  The liberal inquisition

  THURSDAY, 26TH MAY 2011

  

  
  

  The profound illiberalism of the British so-called liberal has been on egregious display over the past day. The British government has a new advisory panel on sexual health, replacing its old Independent Advisory Group on the issue. It has appointed to this body the anti-abortion campaigning group Life, which favours an abstinence-based approach to sex education.

  Cue foaming hysteria. According to reports in theGuardian, it is an outrage that Life should have been appointed to such a body. People who are against abortion and believe in an abstinence approach to sex education by definition can apparently have no voice at all in public debate on this subject. That is after all an axiomatic fact, and it is therefore apparently utterly incomprehensible that Life has been invited on. The Guardian reports:

  Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary and shadow minister for women and equalities, said on Wednesday: ‘Many women will be alarmed to hear that an organisation that campaigns against abortion in all circumstances is now advising the government. Abortion is legal in this country but the appointment of this group raises a concern about whether that will continue to be supported by ministers in future.’

  Really? Abortion will remain legal in Britain unless Parliament votes to make it illegal again. What is the likelihood of that even being considered by Parliament? Nil.

  An equally tendentious head of steam has been rising over the fact that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service has not been invited onto this new body -- and instead replaced by Life. Yet as the Department of Health pointed it, at least in earlier editions of this story, the Brook sexual health charity which is similar to BPAS is a member of the panel – and the DoH wanted to ensure that a broad range of views was represented. As far as I can see, Life is in fact the only group on this advisory panel with a view which runs against the sexually permissive consensus. But of course, no alternative to this is to be permitted whatsoever. Thus the ‘liberal’ inquisition, as fanatical in its pursuit of absolute power and extinction of dissent as any medieval pope.

  
  
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