Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Paraguay
May we now hope for a pro-life and pro-family, as well as a pro-worker and anti-war, government? After all, ask most of the Western Catholic sympathisers with Liberation Theology and that, rather than Gramscian Marxism, is the answer they would give. Is the President-Elect of Paraguay not as pro-life and pro-family as he is pro-worker and anti-war? If not, then he should have made that clear a very long time ago.
Well even if he is a progressive pro-lifer, the small matter of his democratic mandate would not stop infuriated pro-choicers from flexing their muscles and insisting that he comply with their demands to legalise abortion and force doctors, if necessary, to provide abortion services or else. Look at what happened with Nicaragua. Sweden promptly threatened to withdraw international aid unless the will of the Swedish government, rather than that of the Nicaraguan people was respected on the matter. International aid as imperialism - its an old story and one pro-lifers are only belatedly wising up to. Look at what's happening in the international courts. Abortion can't be left to democratic politics; electorates have a naughty habit of not doing what their political masters tell them to do. Solution: take abortion out of the purview of democratic politics, stack womens and human rights committees with professional anti-natalists and leave the rest to the courts.
ReplyDeleteDoes it make for bad politics and does it drain people's faith in democratic politics? Yes and yes. And will the same professional politicians who cheerfully circumvent democratic politics when it suits them then complain about apathy on the one hand and dangerous extremism on the other? Of course they will.