There are days when I despair of members of our elected legislature and today is one of them. The reason for this sinking feeling lies in a seemingly innocuous passage of a commentary by Giles Fraser on the Church of England’s failure to secure enough votes in the […]

Yesterday’s short post on the tragic and wholly preventable death of Savita Halappanavar provoked a comment that neatly sums up the direction that the anti-abortion lobby’s is going in it’s efforts to find a suitable bullshit excuse to defend the indefensible. The Irish law makes provision for cases […]

If you download this Powerpoint presentation, which was produced by Dr Peter Saunders of the Christian Medical Fellowship in conjunction with what was then (2007) the ‘Alive and Kicking’ anti-abortion campaign, you find a slide – number 47 – with the following title: What about abortion to save […]

Today’s the big day when 140 million Americans, or thereabout, get to choose their next President while the rest of world looks on with bated breath and thinks ‘ FFS, please make it Obama’. The result, so the press and pundits are telling us, will be close. So […]

I’ve had a couple of comments  on yesterday’s article about the slogan ‘ATOS kills‘ which rather serve to illustrate the problems you invariable run into when you try to inject  a bit of evidence and reason into a narrative based largely, if not entirely, on anecdotes and emotive […]

I suspect I’m going to make myself rather unpopular in some quarters with this, but I’m afraid that may commitment to good science trumps any political opinions I might have every time, so in for a penny, in for a pound. Political Scrapbook is running yet another ‘man/woman […]

You can always rely on ConHome to offer Nadine Dorries a platform from which to exercise her butthurt. Nadine Dorries MP: Anna Soubry MP has failed vulnerable women by dropping consultation on independent abortion counselling Despite being called every name under the sun and having my motives questioned […]

Over at the Journal of Medical Ethics blog, Iain Brassington has picked up on what he describes as ‘slightly peculiar’ post by Peter Saunders in which he poses ten questions that the media doesn’t – allegedly – ask about abortion. Iain’s posted his own answers here, and just […]

I’ll keep the preamble to a minimum – what follows is a foll-on fisk of Nadine Dorries’ speech in the Westminster Hall debate on induced abortion, so let’s get on with the show. David Crausby is in the Chair, I’ve skipped the ritual sucking up to the Chair […]

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the Information Commissioner has issued a new ruling in relation to the publication of information relating to MPs’ expenses claims: The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), which oversees expenses payments, has been told it must disclose the receipts handed in by MPs to […]