The test of society
Sir: As I read your last editorial (‘Here’s what we call progress’, 24 May) and Rod Liddle’s piece (‘One day, abortions will appal us all’, 24 May) upon how future generations may look back on the current abortion law with incredulity, I remembered a quotation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ‘The test of society is what it does for its children.’ For nearly 40 years children’s interests have taken a back seat to the ‘woman’s right to choose’, the economics necessary to support ‘Life Plans’, the denigration of the nuclear family, the institutional care of the under-fives and a determination to see education as little more than a platform for economic advancement.
No Labour candidate will be selected unless they are ‘on message’ about such things, and that is both weakening of their party and the general polity, as the recent vote indicated, with the outcome being less than representative of the mood of the country.
If we are truly seeing the opportunity emerging to confront the sterility of New Labour’s theoretical underpinnings, it seems to me essential that we take the wisdom of one victim of an immoral slaughter and apply it to averting the current one. Nothing would begin our liberation from the dead hand of political correctness faster than a determined and direct challenge to the article of faith that the current abortion settlement is untouchable.
Martin Sewell
Gravesend, Kent
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