Blair in the cathedral and the “universal right to abortion”

Last night Mr Tony Blair, the former British prime minister recently received into the Catholic church, gave a talk at Westminster Cathedral, the primary Catholic cathedral in England and Wales.

The Times has the former PM describing the UN's Millennium Development Goals as the litmus test of the world's values. Mr Blair's Faith foundation, to be launched later this year, has these targets at the heart of its mission. However, the Millennium Development Goals were interpreted by the Blair government as supporting a universal right to abortion.

I have written again to Mr Blair to ask him if he will to reply to my letter of 11 January.

Amongst various other matters mentioned in my letter, I want to know whether he now repudiates his government’s commitment to the promotion of abortion on demand as a universal fundamental human right.

An SPUC colleague who was in the cathedral yesterday tells me that Mr Blair hedged everything "like a typical politician". The BBC quotes him as saying: "There is nothing I look back on now and say that as a result of my religious journey I would have done things very differently but that is expressly not to say that I got everything right." Old habits die hard.

As I said in my post of 4^th February, Tony Blair has reportedly got his eye on becoming president of the EU Council. While there’s a possibility of him running for public office in any part of the world, citizens have a right and a duty to challenge him on his political record on pro-life matters. As a Catholic myself, I do not believe that politicians should be protected from public scrutiny simply by being received into the Catholic church.