Tony Blair has led Britain into an 'ethical abyss', says SPUC head

BY FREDDY GRAY
THE LEADER of one of Britain's leading pro-life groups has launched a scathing attack on the moral legacy of Tony Blair's Government.
John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), told the Catholic news agency Zenit that New Labour had "plunged Britain into an ethical abyss" by persistently undermining the value of human life and the family. He said: "There is virtually no area of pm-life or profamily ethical concern which has not been made worse by the Blair Government."
Reflecting on the Prime Minister's impending retirement, Mr Smeaton claimed Tony Blair who is understood to be on the verge of a conversion to Catholicism — had overseen the implementation of "anti-life evils" throughout his time in 10 Downing Street.
He said: "Two of the first things Tony Blair did in office were to establish a strategy on teenage pregnancy and to revive proposals to change the law on end-of-life treatment. The former involves supplying abortion and birth control drugs and devices to schoolgirls as young as 11 without parents' knowledge or consent: the latter has led to a law, the Mental Capacity Act 2005, which allows, and in certain circumstances requires, doctors to starve and to dehydrate to death vulnerable patients."
Mr Smeaton said that the Government had not only inflicted its "moral Stalinism" on Britain, but had also negatively influenced the European Union and promoted the destruction of life in the developing world.
"The Blair Government exports abortion-on-demand to the developing world under the guise of the Millennium Development Goals and it has increased funding for population control agencies, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Population Fund, [which are] complicit in China's one-child policy."
Mr Smeaton claimed that the Government — assisted by "the so-called quality media such as the Times and the BBC" — was hoodwinking the public on issues such as euthanasia and embryonic stem-cell research.
"The Government of the day appears to have an infinite capacity to manipulate the terms of bioethical debate," he said. Only the Church, he concluded, could resolve Britain's ethical quandary.
"The answer lies in Rome and in the appointment of courageous bishops," he said. "If the. Catholic Church begins to provide an unambiguous lead in defence of life and the family and, in particular, on the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative aspects of sexual intercourse, the work of lay secular movements like the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children which have been working for over four decades will bear fruit and things will improve." Mr Smeaton also said that the recent row over the right of gay couples to adopt children was a clear example of how "Britain has lost its moral compass".
His concerns were echoed by Bishop Philip Tartaglia of Paisley, who said that the Government's recent equality laws regarding gay adoption suggested that something "sinister" was afoot in the United Kingdom.
"For the first time in the modern era in this country, the Catholic Church is facing the prospect of being forced to act against her faith and against her convictions, or else face legal challenge and possible prosecution," he said.
"This is a deeply disturbing turn of events and it is not yet clear what kind of precedent this may set for other areas of the pastoral and social activity of the Catholic Church."
The bishop encouraged Catholics to defend their values "by all legitimate democratic means". He said: "Regulations deriving from equality legislation are unacceptable if they damage religious freedom and the right of conscience."