2 B or not C of E

So I went to this excellent talk last night about the future of the Church for the next few years (Was originally going to be 10 but then got changed to 10-20 years) at the Blue Lion in Hardwick... nevermind!

The bloke doing the speaking was lovely, buggered if'n I can remember his name, he was taking over a Church after spending some time teaching priests - or so I gathered. He talked at some length about how the Church was actually growing in the context of the wider world but shrinking within Western Europe. Thing was, it was a proper C of E thing. Lovely for being so too, I think.

I love the C of E, I really do, it's the Church that our society needs and wants, it'll fall over if someone blows hard at it and get lost in committee for years over silly arguments and will absolutely refuse to take a stand... except that now it's getting involved in the whole nasty abortion question... a mistake in my opinion, a rather nasty mistake too!

Now don't get me wrong, I'm as averse to killing things as the next man (I'm a vegetarian after all... though I've got to make an exception to fish!) but if some 13 year old lass has been raped by her Dad and was too scared to see a medic until it was near 24 weeks then I'd be all for her not having to bear a possibly monstrous mewling infant that'll remind her of a crappy period forever more. Get the kid adopted, I hear you say? Well there are all sorts of consequences to breaking that genetic taboo, that's why it's a taboo after all...

There are all sorts of valid reasons for not changing the legislation, not least of which is that if there is a requirement for late abortions then someone will provide them, I'd prefer them to be done in a hospital rather than in an alley somewhere with a rusty knitting needle.

I just came across this while checking the 24 weeks thing I said above: "British Conservative Party leader Michael Howard said he would push to change the abortion restriction from the current 24 months gestation limit down to 20 weeks if elected Prime Minister in the next election.". Now, don't get me wrong but are they really saying that we can abort our children some year and a quarter after they are born ? A perfect reason to not vote conservative in my opinion.