Hoping our politicians do the right thing

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,,2280895,00.html

Tomorrow the UK parliament votes on amendments to the abortion laws in this country. At the moment we have a 24-week threshold for abortion, and there are a bunch of motions to reduce that to 20 weeks and lower. I am pro-choice, vehemently so. I'm concerned by the arguments being made to reduce the limit, because they are pro-lifers that are dressing up their argument to try and sound scientific - scratch at the surface and then you see that a reduction to 20 weeks is just the start. The European average is 12 weeks we are told, and those Europeans obviously know what they're doing. Bullshit - how many pregnancies go undetected for 12 weeks? How many birth defects become evident afer 12 weeks? When a right wing MP refers to an abortion as "murder", and a foetus as "a life", then their personal agenda is clear - the mendacity in not being up front about that is a disgrace and borne entirely of a desire to keep women voting for her.

The UK has massive problems with teenage pregnancy - and consequently those kids often don't know they are pregnant until fairly late on. If the right wing really wanted to reduce the abortion rate, then they should invest their energy in comprehensive sex education that ignores the parents' wishes. Those teenagers and their children become a burden on the system, which costs us all money, so the incentive should be there for politicians to address the problem. They won't, because none of them are prepared to tell middle England "we need to teach your children to use contraception when they have sex", because middle England likes to believe that children are innocent and that telling them about contraception will take that innocence and make them want to have sex. Newsflash: most UK kids have lost their virginity by 16, many by 14.

Anyway, I digress. These votes are always emotive, but I find it a disgrace that politician's are willfully manipulating scientific data to suit their arguments for a reduction. Nothing has changed in our situation from 1990 when these laws were last amended, so there is no need for the current set of politicians to fuck about with those laws.