Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Fathers made redundant

Last night's votes on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill were, for me, perhaps the most depressing outcome to a parliamentary debate since Labour MPs went back on their 2001 manifesto pledge not to introduce tuition fees.

I have blogged previously about the hybrid animal-human embryo issue, but to be absolutely honest, what really wound me up about the Bill was not this, but the fact that it effectively denied the importance of fathers in bringing up children.

I did not oppose this simply because I am a Christian, but because it cuts across everything in my own experience both as a father and as a son.

It is blindingly obvious to all sensible people - those not consumed by political correctness - that the absense of fathers and other male role models has been a major contributory factor to social breakdown in some of our most deprived communities.

If MPs - and we are talking all three main parties here - want to deny children the right to grow up with a father, that is their lookout. In one sense it is scarcely surprising, since they also voted last night to deny hundreds of children a year the right to any life at all.

Just don't ever let them tell you again that they are putting "the family" at the heart of policy, or that "the interests of the child" are paramount. Patently, they are not.

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