Abortion and the hypocisy of the hard Christian Right

 Firstly, cards on the table. I'm a bloke, I'm a Roman Catholic and I have three kids and wish I had three more, because they have made my life immeasurably better. However, I have to say that at times I'm almost embarrassed to say this, due to the image that the Christian right has inflicted on our community. In the UK if you say the words Roman Catholic, you tend to think of the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man who I feel no empathy at all with. I wasn't going to write this blog today, I tend to feel that female issues are best left to females to discuss, however when I saw this story, I simply felt that there was no way that any sane decent person should ignore such hypocrisy

Anti-abortion MP Jacob Rees-Mogg admits profiting from sale of abortion pills https://t.co/2CmgYDno8A

— TraceyM (@mystic_knot68) June 30, 2022

In short, Rees-Mogg is completely opposed to abortion for the highest of moral reasons until he sees an opportunity to make a quick buck from it. What did he say? “I don’t manage the funds and haven’t done so since I became an MP. But the funds have to be run in accordance with the requirements of the investors and not according to my religious beliefs". He lives in a strange world where morals don't matter when it comes to cash, but they do matter when you are telling other people what to do with their bodies.  We should call out the likes of Rees-Mogg when they behave in this way. We should do everything we possibly can to make the voters in his constituency aware that he is not a man of high principle and rigid morals. He is a man who is perfectly happy to profit from things which he's publicly said are wrong.

I'm not into lecturing anyone what they should do with their bodies. As a man,  I'll never be in a position where I have to make the difficult choice of whether to have an abortion, so how can I tell anyone else what to do. The Christian Right in the USA is evern more inconsistent and hypocrytical than Rees-Mogg. They would happily deny women the right to abortion on the grounds that every life is sacred, whilst supporting the death penalty and gun rights. In 2020 gun deaths became the biggest killer of young men in the USA, but the right to wander around with enough firepower to wipe out a class of children has recently been strengthened in the USA by so called Conservative judges. 

The worst hypocisy of all in relation to abortions is that is the same people who want to restrict abortions create the economic and social realities that make many see abortion as the solution to the problems caused by unplanned pregnancy. There are four main reasons women seek terminations.

1 - Medical reasons, their life is at risk from a continued pregnancy, such as an ectopic pregnancy

2 - Financial reasons, they simply cannot afford to have a child and give it a decent upbringing

3 - Social reasons, the pressures of our society, friends, family, partners makes them seek a termination which they may not necessarily want but feel they have no choice in. Often this is tied up with financial reasons, such as a partner or parents refuse to support a woman who wishes to have a baby.

4 - Personal choice.  They woman simply decides that she does not want to have the baby, for reasons of her own, that are none of our business.

The Hard Religious right would ban all terminations, from all four categories. This exposes more hypocrisy. In the case of medical reasons, and I include mental health, they are putting women at risk of death. Their case for the right to life, may result in the death of both mother and baby and there is no common sense or morality in this. It is a blinkered, absolutist view that is highly damaging.

As to financial reasons and social reasons. The hard right, with its views on personal financial responsibility, forces many women who would have babies to seek abortions, simply because they feel they have no option. In the UK we have child benefit to support children, but for many women, just being pregnant will incur costs. These do not start on the day the baby arrives, you need to be set up in accomodation long before the birth, have clothes, a cot, and all of the other things that a baby requires. For example, with the cost of living crisis, pregnant women may turn off their heating in winter, damaging their health. In the UK their are some benefits available, but to be honest many of these are a pittance pregnant women (from the 10th week) and children aged one to four get £4.25 a week children under one get £8.50 a week. How much healthy food would £4.25 buy? I am firmly of the opinion that if you want to stop women having abortions who are forced to by financial pressures, you remove the financial pressures that force them to. That to my mind gives women a real choice,f reed from social and financial pressures that the hard christian right are so keen to impose.

As to the personal choice that women make.  If you want to lessen the number of such terminations, the place you start is by scrapping another of the Holy Grail's of the Christian right and have proper sex education, access to contraception and good sexual counselling. If after you've done all of these things, a woman still decides she wants a termination, as far as a I am concerned that is a matter for her and her conscience. It's none of my business. What is my business is that if she cannot have one safe and legally, she may come to serious harm at a backstreet abortionist and as a human being, I cannot possibly be comfortable with this. I believe that in our society, we should provide the safest possible environment for every member of it.  

I was inspired to write this blog by the hypocrisy of Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man who lectures us on how abortion is immoral but is happy for his business to make a fortune from it for the "requirements of the investors". The world is full of men like Rees-Mogg who pretend to be pillars of society, but when it comes down to it, are just grubby profiteers, making a fortune from other peoples misery. I'd be more than happy if as a society, we moved to a point where no woman ever felt the need, as her own personal choice, to seek an abortion, but whilst the real world means women do, I do not see it as my business, or any other hypocrital, profiteering man to interfere with this. I don't feel at all comfortable pontificating on the subject, but if we sit on our hands when the likes of Rees Mogg is shown to be a hypocrite, then we are no better than him.

Jacob Rees Mogg says dead Grenfell residents lacked common sense

This wasn't the blog I was planning to write today. I had a pleasant, jaunty, upbeat one, about what a great night we had on Friday and how great our community is, after the Mill Hill Music Complex 40th Birthday party. And then a friend posted this article stating that Jacob Rees Mogg had claimed Grenfell residents lacked common sense for not scarpering when the building caught fire.

There is no limit to my contempt for these comments and my natural response was simply a stream of rather rude words. I'm a pacifist, but Rees-Mogg pushed this to the absolute limit with his comments. the crass insensitivity of the man has been laid bare and if Boris Johnson does not immediately sack him, then it is clear that he condones such a horrible statement. I would hope that no decent person would vote for any party that tolerates such people as Rees Mogg.

That was my emotional response. However, I was brought up by a father who was a trained air accident investigation officer. He impressed on me from an early age, never to get emotional when dealing with difficult situations, don't be guided by fear, anger or panic. Keep calm and rationally analyse the situation. Only last week, I blogged about Grenfell and how we are being mislead, and the culprits are literally getting away with murder. Now there is another guilty party to add to the list. Lets look at Mr Rees Mogg's statement with a calm head (difficult I know).

“The more one’s read over the weekend about the report and about the chances of people surviving, if you just ignore what you’re told and leave you are so much safer,” he said.

“And I think if either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building. It just seems the common sense thing to do. And it is such a tragedy that that didn’t happen.”

What Mr Rees Mogg is saying is that we should ignore the directions of the emergency services in emergency situations. The report has not said what the result of this would have been in the Grenfell situation. It may well be that some people who perished, would have survived, but it may have not had that effect at all. In a fire situation, what is required is an orderly evacuation. If you have a free for all with residents running down the stairs, ignoring the directions of fire officers making their way up to notify and evacuate the residents on upper floors, would this really have helped. Of course Rees Mogg comes from an 'I'm alright Jack' school of political thought. But if everyone had abandoned their flats, ran en masse into a smokey, crowded stairwell, as firemen were making their way up, who knows what this chaotic scene would have resulted in?

What we can be fairly sure of, is that next time, when there is a large scale emergency in the UK, some people will think of what Mr Rees Mogg has said and think "You know what, I'm going to ignore the police, the fire services, the army, etc  and do my own thing". What will be the net result? there will be chaos and people will die. Who will be to blame? Whilst Mr Rees Mogg's statement is grossly insensitive and repulsive, the real issue is the fact it is highly irresponsible.

When it comes down to it, we have to place our trust in the emergency services. Sadly they will occasionally get it wrong, but 99% of the time, they get it right and listening to what they say will ensure your safety. So put the crassness of Rees Mogg to one side, he is a dangerous fool for making such a statement.

I await a response from the Barnet Conservative MP's, Matthew Offord, Mike Freer and Theresa Villiers. If anyone could be described as lacking in common sense in the whole sorry Grenfell saga, it is the Conservative Council that allowed a building to turn into a death trap. Strangely it is the poor people who died, rather than his friends in power at the Council, that  the leader of the commons turned his fire on.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg and #Brexit - Am I missing something obvious?

When it comes to Jacob Rees-Mogg and Brexit, I am confused. In fact I'm confused and bemused. Let me explain, I've seen the following tweet being retweeted hundreds of times.

We're very happy to share that @Jacob_Rees_Mogg has pledged to #StandUp4Brexit

"@theresa_may rightly said that Brexit would mean Brexit. In her Lancaster House speech said she didn't want a solution that was 1/2 in 1/2 out. I'm backing the Lancaster House vision, not Chequers" pic.twitter.com/MyaurkImHh

— #StandUp4Brexit (@StandUp4Brexit) September 8, 2018

Lets look at a few points that no one who has been following #Brexit could possibly disagree with.

1. Theresa May's Chequers proposal does not form the basis of a workable Brexit for anyone, Remainers, Brexiteers, the EU or even those who haven't made their minds up. In the words of Monty Python "That Parrot is dead"

2.  The hard Brexiteers in the Tory Party have no confidence at all in Theresa May.

3. The Remainers in the Tory Party lack the Cojones to actually do anything to stand up to the Brexiteers.

4. Every survey has shown that 65-70% of Tory party members are hard Brexiteers.

5. There are easily enough Tory MP's who are hard Brexiteers to force a Leadership contest.

6. Jacob Rees-Mogg (like most across the political spectrum) believes that Brexit is the biggest issue facing Great Britain in the post war era and he has strong views on the direction it should proceed.

So put yourself in Mr Rees-Mogg's pyjamas as he surveys this mornings Daily Telegraph and sips his Earl Grey. Whatever you may think of him, he's not stupid. One can only imagine his horror as he sees Boris Johnson posturing for a leadership bid as the Knight in Shining Armour for the Brexiteer cause.  Rees-Mogg can be under no illusion as to what sort of administration Boris would run. Unlike Boris, for Rees-Mogg Brexit is not a fad, it is a lifelong obsession. It is not something to be bargained or bartered or played like an Ace of Diamonds in a Leadership bid. He must be all too aware that far from saving Brexit, Johnson is likely to be the man who buries it. He is a powderkeg, likely to take Brexit with him when he implodes.

Mr Rees-Mogg laid out his view on how we should proceed in a letter to Lord Adonis. I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of his preferred solution (which is a deal based on the deal Canada has with the EU). What is clear is that his proposed #Brexit is nothing like that which the leader of his party is proposing. One has to assume that Mr Rees-Mogg is ambitious and believes himself to be a man capable of great things. He has clearly and eloquently laid out what he believes the solution should be and how it can be delivered. He has outlined why he believes Project Fear to be nothing more than a bunch of lies to dupe the British public. He has outlined why he believes all the threats made by the EU are empty.

The only thing that he hasn't pronounced on in such an eloquent manner is why he hasn't thrown down the gauntlet, put his hat in the ring, rounded up the signatures from the hard Brexiteers in the Tory Party and made a bid for leadership. If he doesn't do it now, then the chance will be gone forever and a deal which he has conceded is as bad as remaining will be imposed on the UK. For all the many faults with Rees-Mogg's strategy, there is one thing that does commend it. He has actually said what he wants from the EU. The EU commission would at least know what they are dealing with.

The answer Tory friends have told me to explain his reticence is quite simple. He doesn't believe he can win given the fact that most Tory MP's are pro remain. To me, this is a cowardly excuse. As the majority of Tory MP's are sitting in staunchly Brexit constituencies, with staunchly Brexit party committees, a true leader would spell out in black and white exactly what should happen if MP's defy the views of their association. Given that 52% of voters backed #Brexit, if Rees-Mogg really had the courage of his convictions, then the threat of a bit of Corbynite local party democracy would more than likely do the trick, given that it is clear Tory Remainers lack Cojones. There are some very big financial heavy hitters who are staunchly Brexit that he could call on to fund such a guerrilla campaign.

So we are left with three possible reasons why Rees-Mogg is sitting on his hands and watching the world collapse around him. The first is that he lacks the bottle to actually take the dagger and do what is needed to become leader. For this to be true, he must know that his colleagues don't rate him and think he isn't up to the job and would simply face him down. The second is that Rees-Mogg lacks the ability to actually organise himself well enough to launch a bid. In other words, he's all talk and he knows it. His Father, William Rees-Mogg was the editor of The Times. Could it be that the Rees-Mogg's are all words and no action. Then there is the third option. Maybe Rees-Mogg knows full well that Brexit will be an absolute disaster however it is implemented. Maybe, he knows that he will always have a job and lots of telly and radio gigs as a Brexiteer. If he is completely outside the process, he will always be able to sit back and bang on about how everyone else has failed the country.

I've no idea which of the three options is true. What I do know is that if Mr Rees-Mogg doesn't man up and make a bid for the Leadership in the next month, he is either not up to Leadership or he knows damn well that he is proposing something dangerous and dishonest. When it comes to Mr Rees-Mogg, it really is as simple as that.