Argument heats up over LIFE’s inclusion in government sexual health group

Summary of story from The Independent, 26 May, 2011

The UK government yesterday announced that a group opposed to abortion is to advise it on sexual health matters (see WVoN story.

Feminist author Laurie Penny rips that decision to shreds in an opinion piece in today’s Independent .

Sparked by the inclusion of ‘anti-choice charity’ LIFE in a new government advisory group on sexual health, and the ‘disinvitation’ of Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV, Penny’s main concerns were:

• Every one of the nine ‘sex and relationship education providers’ represented on the council is a faith group endorsing either enforced abstinence, anti-abortion education, or both.
• Such moves are part of a sustained parliamentary attack on women’s sexual and reproductive rights – an attack driven by fundamentalist Christian lobbyists and ‘their tame MPs’.
• A recently proposed amendment to the law that would force women seeking an abortion to undergo counselling would, if passed, write into law the notion that women are psychologically incapable of making decisions about pregnancy (see WVoN story).
• The right of women to make decisions about their own bodies trumps all religious superstitions about the spiritual status of the foetus.
• It is morally unacceptable to force any person to endure the toil of pregnancy and the pain of labour against their will.
• The anti-abortion lobby is an influential and unscrupulous minority, high on a heady cocktail of sexism and superstition.
• British liberals need to grow a collective backbone to prevent that lobby ramming home its agenda.

The comments posted on the paper’s site in response to this piece were passionate and mixed.

Against numerous declarations of support for Penny’s view came many accusations of ‘hysteria’, the contention that abortion is not a feminist issue, reservations about Penny’s view of abortion as a form of birth control, claims that religion has nothing to do with ‘anti-choice’ groups’ stances and conflicting ‘scientific evidence’ as to the starting point of life.

If this microcosm of opinion is anything to go by, this debate is a long, long way from ever being resolved.