UK, IVF, Abortion …

UK Parliamentarians have begun voting on a series of amendments to ”The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill”.  The results thus far:

MPs pushed back the boundaries of science last night when they voted to allow the creation of hybrid embryos, which have a combination of human and animal DNA, as well as “saviour siblings” to save sick children.

A late plea by Gordon Brown - to allow “an inherently moral endeavour” by scientists seeking cures for diseases - paid off as MPs backed some of the most controversial parts of the government’s human fertilisation and embryology bill.

In a series of votes, during a debate lasting nearly seven hours, MPs overwhelmingly rejected attempts by backbench Tory MPs to reject hybrid embryos and saviour siblings.

The House will vote today on the issues of access to IVF for lesbian couples by removing the requirement for a “need for a father” for children conceived by IVF and whether to cut the upper time limit of 24 weeks on abortions.

Yesterday, Jackie Ashley at comment is free wrote about the controversy surrounding the voting in the context of the unpopularity of Gordon Brown’s Labour Government and the consequences of a possible shift to Tory governance:

Nobody can defend the way this battle is being fought. With only a week’s notice of the abortion vote, there has been little public debate. Now a final decision seems to hang on which amendments are selected, and in which order. Parliamentary ambushes are not the way to resolve genuine differences of belief. The Catholic church is urging its people, after Sunday mass, to write letters in their own handwriting to influence MPs. “Letters from constituents in their own words are taken very seriously by MPs,” says a round robin to all parishes; so “a key aim ought to be to get as many people as possible to write to the local MP”. Well, that’s a bit more subtle than the usual postcard the church used to distribute, but MPs should not be fooled - this is a “write-in” campaign, not a genuine expression of public opinion. And even those Labour MPs who are scared by the polls should realise that abortion is not, in fact, a make-or-break issue for most voters.

However, if the reactionary arguments are successful, throwing out vital medical advances and criminalising frightened, often young, women, then it will mark a real turning point. Whatever you think of the New Labour years, it has been a decade of social liberalism, when racism, homophobia and anti-science voodoo became steadily less respectable. Perhaps we have come to take that shift, that advance, for granted. Maybe too many of the commentators who shrug at the likelihood of Labour being heavily defeated at the next election, and complacently suggest it won’t make much of a difference, should think again.

If Cameron and his party return to rule the country, it is about more than the revival of Old Etonian noblesse oblige. They are Conservatives because they are conservative. There is nothing terribly complicated or surprising about this. Whether it is the increasingly finger-wagging attitude to family structures, or the readiness to take lectures from the churches, the Tories would certainly try to turn back the progressive currents of the Blair-Brown years.

more at comment is free

Seems UK is in almost the opposite situation as the US.  They’re tired of the broken promises of Labour and considering replacing the governing party with Tories whose agenda is likely comparable to that of John McCain.  Let’s hope that doesn’t happen …