Blair Faith Foundation initiative has deep pro-abortion roots

I have discovered that the Tony Blair Faith Foundation’s Faith Act Fellowship initiative, on which I reported last week, has deep pro-abortion roots.

The Faiths Act Fellowship is an initiative of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and is coordinated by Interfaith Youth Core.

Among Interfaith Youth Core's funders are:

• the Argosy Foundation , which has funded Medical Students for Choice , which “stands up in the face of opposition, working to destigmatize abortion provision among medical students and residents, and to persuade medical schools and residency programs to include abortion as a part of the reproductive health services curriculum”;
• Ashoka , which promoted, through its fellowship system, a right to abortion in Mexico;
• the Carnegie Corporation of New York , which includes abortion in its promotion of responsible parenthood;
• the George Family Foundation, which has given money to Planned Parenthood, one of the world’s leading promoters of abortion;
• the Hunt Alternatives Fund , whose grant-making includes the promotion of abortion under sexual and reproductive health, rights and services;
• the Nathan Cummings Foundation, which gave money to the Chicago Abortion Fund; and
• the Rockefeller Foundation, which is a funder of some of the world’s leading pro-abortion organisations.

In my blog last week, I pointed out that The Faiths Act Fellowship works with World Vision, which is calling for abortion on demand to be legalised in the world's poorest nations. For Tony Blair's government also, abortion on demand was central to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

I’m concerned, therefore, to see that World Youth Alliance (WYA) advertises in their newsletter this month as follows:


“Opportunity: The Faiths Act Fellowship
On September 25, a partnership was launched between the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and Interfaith Youth Core, to engage exceptional young people whose leadership motivated by faith will result in real impact on the lives of others. For more information, contact Eboo Patel at info@tonyblairfaithfoundation.org.”

According to their website, the World Youth Alliance “is a global coalition of young people committed to promoting the dignity of the person and building solidarity among youth from developed and developing nations”. If that’s the case, they should be steering well clear of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and its collaborator the Interfaith Youth Core. I am writing to them to express my concerns.

Obama-Blair agenda "unprecedented form of political-legal terrorism", says priest-expert

Monsignor Michel Schooyans* is one of the Vatican's leading scholars. In a masterly analysis of Barack Obama and Tony Blair, he explains with devestating insight their anti-life/anti-family agenda to undermine both law and religion respectively. His anaylsis gives significant intellectual weight to the warnings of the pro-life/pro-family movement about the Obama-Blair threat (e.g. see my blogs of 8 May and 9 April). He was speaking at the plenary assembly of the pontifical academy of social sciences was held on the theme "Catholic social teaching and human rights."

I extract below some key points from Mgr Schooyans's anaylsis:

"President Obama can count on support for these programs from Tony Blair and his wife Cherie Booth ... This plan cannot be realized except at the price of the sacrifice of religious freedom, of the imposition of a 'politically correct' interpretation of the Sacred Scriptiures, and of the sabotage of the natural foundations of law ...

"The fresh "convert" [Blair] does not hesitate to explain to the pope not only what he must do, but also what he must believe! ... So now we are back in the time of Hobbes, if not of Cromwell: it is civil power that defines what one must believe ...

"The rights of man as understood in the realist tradition are here put to the sword. Everything is relative ...

"In the case of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, this is also a matter of promoting one and only one religious confession, which a universal, global political power would impose on the entire world ...

"What the analysis of Barack Obama's decisions and Tony Blair's project reveals is that an alliance is coming between two converging intentions, one aimed at subjugating law and the other at subjugating religion ... [W]e are witnessing the emergence of an unprecedented form of political-legal terrorism ...

"[I]t is the Church's duty to appeal to all men and women of good will to unite for the purpose of creating a single front to defend the life of every human being. The first attitude required of all, according to the responsibilities of each one, is conscientious objection, which Obama is trying to circumscribe ... "

In Sandro Magister's report covering Monsignor Schooyan's address he writes: "Michel Schooyans, a Belgian priest, is professor emeritus of the Catholic University of Louvain. He is a leading specialist in anthropology, political philosophy, bioethics, and demographics. He is a member of three pontifical academies: the one for social sciences, the one for life, and the one named after St. Thomas Aquinas. One of his books, published in 2006, is entitled 'Le terrorisme à visage humaine [The human face of terrorism],' and has many points in common with the address he gave at the Vatican last May 1. His latest publication in Italy, printed by Cantagalli in 2008, is entitled 'La profezia di Paolo VI [The prophecy of Paul VI],' and is a vigorous defense of the encyclical 'Humanae Vitae.'"

Tony Blair reinforces his pro-abortion links

Tony Blair (pictured) has now teamed up with one of Canada's best-known pro-abortion figures. Belinda Stronach (also pictured), a prominent businesswoman and former MP, has joined her foundation with Mr Blair's Faith Foundation in order to promote the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The British government under Tony Blair interpreted the MDGs as including a universal right to abortion on demand. When an MP, Belinda Stronach said that women's groups should only receive government funding if they are pro-abortion. The Blair-Stronach partnership will also promote the Faith Acts Fellowship, which the Tony Blair Faith Foundation runs in partnership with the InterFaith Youth Core. The InterFaith Youth Core is bankrolled by major pro-abortion foundations.

How much more evidence do religious leaders need about the close-knit ties of Mr & Mrs Blair to the culture of death before they realise they must act to block the Blairs' infiltration of faith communities?

Tony Blair continues to avoid the questions

Tony Blair’s office has replied to me (see my 4^th April blog Blair in the cathedral and the “universal right to abortion” ).

In my original letter to Mr Blair I asked him if, in the light of his reception into the Catholic church, he would tell us if he now repudiates:

• voting for abortion up to birth three times
• personally endorsing his government policy of supplying abortion and birth control drugs and devices to schoolgirls as young as 11 without parental knowledge or consent
• his government’s commitment to the promotion of abortion on demand as a universal fundamental human right
• personally championing destructive experiments on human embryos
• his government introducing legislation which has led to a law which allows, and in certain circumstances requires, doctors to starve and dehydrate to death vulnerable patients;

He has refused, point blank, to comment on, still less to repudiate, these positions.

Here is the reply in italics, interspersed with my comments on it:

9^th April 2008

Dear Mr Smeaton

Thank you for writing about the important issue of pro-life.

Mr Blair recognises that this is a subject of great concern to many people around the world and on which a variety of deeply held convictions are held.

This kind of statement from a public figure all too often prefaces a letter which does not answer the questions raised.

However the Foundation inevitably has to focus on a limited number of issues, especially as it develops its thinking and builds up its resources.

I didn’t write to Mr Blair’s Foundation or to Mr Blair about his Foundation. I wrote to Mr Blair, at his office, to ask him whether he repudiates his anti-life record in parliament and government.

It plans to concentrate initially on the following four areas: how the different faiths might work more closely together to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals;

I did ask Mr Blair about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), specifically how the Labour government under his premiership (and under his successor) interprets the MDGs to include a right to abortion. Why can’t Mr Blair comment on that aspect of the MDGs, if the MDGs is one of the focuses of his Foundation?

educational projects, especially producing good material for school children here and abroad; an annual course at Yale University on faith and globalisation, with links to other institutions;

Can Mr Blair tell us whether this educational material and his course will teach students that almost all world religions not only recognise the intrinsic value and sanctity of human life but condemn, in general, abortion and euthanasia?

and support for The Co-Exist Foundation's plans to establish Abraham House, a meeting place for the Abrahamic faiths in central London. This means that, at the moment, the Foundation will not be able to address the issue of pro-life, weighty though it is.

Again, I didn’t ask the Foundation to address pro-life issues – I asked Mr Blair to address them.

Nor, I am afraid, will Mr Blair be able to enter into correspondence on his personal beliefs on this or indeed other issues.

I did not ask Mr Blair to enter into correspondence on his personal beliefs. I asked him, a public figure, about his public record on matters of current public policy – under which hundreds of thousands of unborn British people, and unborn people in developing countries, are killed every year. As I have mentioned before, as a Catholic myself, I do not believe that public figures can be allowed to protect themselves from public scrutiny simply by being received into the Catholic church.

I am very sorry to have to send you what you will probably find a disappointing reply

Yes, no reply at all is pretty disappointing.

but I hope that the above explains the reasons for it.

The letter singularly fails to explain the reasons for such a non-reply.

Tony Blair's memoirs reveal that dishonesty was the dark heart of his anti-life/anti-family premiership

Tony Blair's memoirs, entitled A Journey, have been published today and we have a copy at SPUC HQ. Here are some key points from it:

• "Politicians are obliged from time to time to conceal the full truth, to bend it and even distort it".
• On Hans Kung, the theologian and notorious dissenter from Catholic teaching on abortion, euthanasia, contraception and much else: "My Oxford friend, Pete Thomson, always sung the praises, rightly, of the inestimable Hans Kung ... a distinguished scholar and author [of] great works."
• repeated references to his support for the homosexual agenda*, such as: "Just before Christmas [2005] the Civil Partnership Act came into force ... I was really proud of that."
• On illicit affairs by politicians: "I tended to look upon such things with a fairly worldly eye".

Mr Blair also writes:

"[Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein shared] a common set of attitudes: indifference to human life; the justification of mass killing..."

At no point does Mr Blair express the slightest regret for his lengthy record of support in parliament and government for abortion, abortifacient birth control and euthanasia - in other words,

"indifference to human life; the justification of mass killing".

Indeed, Mr Blair has refused to repudiate his record. He and his wife Cherie have continued their campaign against Catholic pro-life/pro-family teaching. 

Yet of most interest is Mr Blair's wordly-wise admission that he "conceal[ed] the full truth", "ben[t] and even distort[ed] it". Here are a few key examples of that:

Teenage pregnancy
In 1998 Mr Blair's government launched its teenage pregnancy strategy, and Mr Blair himself wrote the forward to one of its key documents (Teenage Pregnancy, Social Exclusion Unit, 1999). Yet, as The Telegraph pointed out so cogently last week, that strategy was based on the falsehood that greater provision of sex education, abortion and contraception lowers teenage pregnancy rates. Well before Mr Blair was forced to retire as prime minister in 2007, it was clear that the strategy was a failure; yet the Labour government continued pumping millions of taxpayers' pounds into the strategy up to and beyond Mr Blair's departure from office.

Embryonic stem cell research
As prime minister Mr Blair made clear his ardent support for destructive embryo research [2000, 2004, 2006], speaking of his ambition that Britain will become an international centre for embryonic stem cell research. Yet over two decades of destructive embryo research, including years of embryonic stem cell research, have provided none of the cures or treatments which its advocates claimed it would.

Euthanasia by omission
In 2005 Mr Blair's government steered through parliament the Mental Capacity Act. Mr Blair himself, with the active assistance of the Catholic bishops' conference of England and Wales, successfully misled parliament and the public into believing that the Act did not entail euthanasia.

I could add many other similar examples, which readers can find referenced on this blog.

* The late Pope John Paul II, the great pro-life champion, taught in paragraph 97 of his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

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Tony Blair is a fitting icon for the 21st century

Yesterday I reported that the media were applauding news of a new blood test which will promote the genocide of the disabled.

How very appropriate, then, that we should learn in today's news that Tony Blair (pictured), the former British prime minister, who has devoted so much of his political career to building the culture of death in Britain and overseas, has been named by the US National Constitution Centre as the winner of its prestigious Liberty Medal for 2010.

After all, it was undoubtedly in the name of "liberty":

• that Tony Blair voted in 1990 for abortion up to birth three times during Parliamentary debates on what became the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 - a provision which applies specifically to disabled babies
• that he personally championed destructive experiments on human embryos
• that his government enacted legislation which allows, and in certain circumstances requires, doctors to starve and dehydrate to death vulnerable patients

- all of them policies and legislation he has refused to repudiate since becoming a Catholic.

It's also unquestionably in the name of "liberty" that Tony Blair, whilst in Parliament supported laws, policies and practices which mean that additional rules now apply  bringing down the force of the law upon:

• doctors who refuse to refer women to other doctors for abortion
• doctors who refuse to starve and dehydrate to death vulnerable patients
• and adoption agencies who refuse to hand over children to homosexual couples

What a fitting icon Tony Blair is for the age in which we live! It's in this context that we should congratulate him for winning the Liberty Medal for 2010.

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Tony Blair Foundation collaborates with worldwide attacks on the unborn

I have been in Toronto in recent days attending two international pro-life meetings addressing several immediate threats to unborn children:

• in the US
• in Britain
• in Northern Ireland
• in the Republic of Ireland through the pro-abortion lobby's action in the European Court of Human Rights
• in Kenya
• in the Philippines
• and through the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

At Canada's Campaign Life Coalition's international conference, I met John-Henry Westen (pictured right) and his LifeSiteNews team. I explained how Tony Blair, recently received into the Catholic Church, and his Faith Foundation was undermining Catholic teaching on the dignity and inviolability of human life. In a disturbing development, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation has teamed up with the Faiths Act Fellowship to promote the Millennium Development Goals. The Faiths Act Fellowship works with World Vision which is calling for abortion on demand to be legalised in the world's poorest nations - which was also, for Tony Blair's government, central to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, as I have previously pointed out.

At the International Right to Life Federation board meeting, Mr Bill Saunders, senior fellow and director of the Family Research Council's Center for Human Life and Bioethics (pictured left), said that, if Senator Barack Obama is elected US president, it will be Armageddon. Mr Obama's first action, if elected, would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which is more radical and far-reaching than the infamous Roe v. Wade supreme court decision which in 1973 legalised abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy throughout the US. If Roe v. Wade were revoked, the Freedom of Choice Act would overturn every state law against abortion. All of Mr Obama's appointments at the UN would be pro-abortion. At least two supreme court justices will be appointed during the next presidential term. If Senator John McCain is elected, whoever he picks will be better than the incumbents. If Senator Obama is elected, his choices will be worse.

Blair's Catholicism questioned in Guardian column

Hugh O'Shaughnessy rightly reminded Guardian readers last Thursday that there is a very serious question as to whether Tony Blair is a Catholic.

Mr O'Shaughnessy's article cites Monsignor Michel Schooyans, one of the Vatican's leading scholars. Earlier this year, Monsignor Schooyans presented a masterly analysis of the political agenda of Barack Obama and Tony Blair at the plenary assembly of the pontifical academy of social sciences in Rome. He pointed out that Obama and Blair, with their anti-life, anti-family agenda, are seeking to undermine both law and religion respectively.

Given Tony Blair's well-known continued desire for high political office, it's important that the public and the Church keep in mind that, since being received into the Catholic Church, Tony Blair has been, very publicly, seeking to undermine the faith he purports to hold.

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US pro-lifers likened to “Saudi extremists” by panellists at American launch of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation

Last week saw the American launch of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, an international organisation founded by the former prime minister to ‘promote respect and understanding between the major religions’. At the much-publicised event, two of the panellists showed their respect and understanding of believers by comparing pro-life Americans to “Saudi extremists”. According to an op-ed in the Washington Post, Mr Blair distanced himself from the comment whilst talking to a journalist afterwards with the promise that that ‘could not be what they intended.’

I would have more faith in Tony Blair’s reported promise if he had repudiated his own extreme voting record on abortion, destructive research on human embryos and other such matters.

Some Catholic commentators have suggested that it’s “extreme” to expect him to repudiate his voting record on life issues. But as I’ve blogged in another context, if Tony Blair had voted for laws permitting the killing of Catholics or Jews or people from ethnic minorities or lethal experimentation on them, would Catholics be right to expect him publicly to renounce such laws and to repudiate his role in passing such legislation before being received into the Church?

Anti-life Tony Blair's enduring political ambition is dangerous

Today’s Guardian (Tony Blair for President of Europe? Interview suggests he wants the job) explains why pro-lifers must keep pressing Tony Blair, the UK’s former Prime Minister and one of the world’s leading architects of the culture of death, on his refusal to repudiate the anti-life laws and policies he has steadfastly pursued throughout his political career.

He should not be allowed to shield himself from political scrutiny simply by being received into the Catholic Church and/or by virtue of his invitation to speak in Westminster Cathedral.

Since leaving office he has compounded his anti-life political record by reinforcing his pro-abortion links and I have recently challenged Cherie Blair, his wife, on her long track record in supporting anti-life and anti-family causes.

Tony Blair’s political ambition is dangerous and reception into the Catholic Church is proving no guarantee of a Pauline conversion. In fact thus far, the contrary seems to be case.

Cherie Blair is a danger for women and unborn children in the developing world

The Telegraph reports that Cherie Blair:

"has been asked by Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, to examine how the United Kingdom can help women in poor countries get involved in business and public life ... Westminster insiders suggested that the appointment could be a first step towards becoming a peer ... Three years ago, [she] set up the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women ... "Mrs Blair said that ... '[T]here are so many barriers faced by women and girls in the developing world that they are often unable to participate in economic or political life and struggle to get access to health care...'."

Mrs Blair's new role, and the possibility of a peerage, poses a fresh danger for women and unborn children in the developing world.

Mrs Blair is notorious for claiming that her career success would not have been possible if not for contraception. Also, in December 2009 she claimed that:

"Controlling our fertility has been one of the key reasons why women have been able to progress".

On her website, in the section "About this site", Mrs Blair writes:

"This website is dedicated to the issues that concern me, to helping improve the position of women throughout the world by sharing information and by safeguarding and promoting human rights. At the heart of the website is the Women of the World section."

On a page in the Women of the World section, Mrs Blair says:

"The [United Nations] Convention [on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) ... is the only human rights treaty which affirms the reproductive rights of women".

"Reproductive rights" is a term commonly used to include abortion on demand.

The page ends by linking to the CEDAW committee, which is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the CEDAW convention. The CEDAW committee uses the CEDAW convention to bully countries into allowing abortion, even though the convention doesn't mention abortion. The CEDAW committee issued a report calling upon the UK government to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland.

In July 2003, Mrs Blair endorsed the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the world’s leading promoter and provider of abortion, by hosting a private reception at 10 Downing Street (the prime minister’s residence) for IPPF’s “Lust for Life” fundraising campaign. At the annual Labour party conference in September 2005, Mrs Blair celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Family Planning Association (fpa), the UK branch of IPPF, helping to cut a special birthday cake (and pictured here jokingly offering a condom to the camera-man.) Both IPPF and FPA endorsed the failed campaign to remove the Holy See from the United Nations.

Cherie Blair has tried disingenuously to distance herself from abortion. Pro-lifers, especially Catholics, should be under no illusions about her and her husband Tony and their continuing campaign to undermine the right to life, and the dignity of the family upon which the protection of the right to life depends. As a report in The Daily Mail last week said so well, Tony Blair is a "morally dispossessed" collaborator with those who have little respect for the sanctity of human life - and the same can be said of Cherie Blair. I will be watching her closely in her new role.

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Labour leader Ed Miliband continues Tony Blair's homosexual agenda

Ed Miliband, the newly-elected leader of the British Labour party, has confirmed in his first speech as leader that he will continue the homosexual* rights agenda of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Mr Miliband said:

"The old way of thinking [before Blair-Brown's New Labour] said that you couldn't change attitudes towards gay men and lesbians. Let me tell you that last month I was privileged to be in this great city [Manchester], at [the homosexual] Pride [march], to see not just thousands of people marching but thousands of people lining the street in support. We should be proud that our commitment to equality means we have couples forming civil partnerships across the country and celebrating with their family and friends."

Mr Miliband's comments mirror very closely the repeated references made by Tony Blair, in his recently-published memoirs and elsewhere, to his own "pride" in promoting the homosexual rights agenda as prime minister.

Also, the Christian Institute reports that Mr Miliband told homosexual news website PinkNews:

“I want to see heterosexual and same-sex partnerships put on an equal basis and a Labour Party that I lead will campaign to make gay marriage happen.”

Mr Miliband's voting record also shows that he supports Mr Blair's legacy of destructive and abusive research on embryonic children. As far as SPUC is aware, Mr Miliband has never once voted pro-life or pro-family. (It should be noted that both the other two main party leaders, prime minister David Cameron and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, also support abortion, destructive embryo research and the homosexual rights agenda.)

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008

• voted for the Second and Third Readings of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill
• voted against an unsuccessful amendment to create a ban on creating, keeping or using the new types of animal-human embryos permitted by the Bill (‘human admixed embryos’)
• voted against an (unsuccessful) amendment to create a ban on licensing the creation of full hybrid embryos which are 50% human and 50% animal, but allows all other ‘human admixed embryos’
• voted against an (unsuccessful) amendment to prevented human embryos with added animal DNA from being classified as ‘human admixed embryos’
• voted against an amendment to remove the ability to licence the creation of ‘saviour siblings’ to provide cells or tissue for a sick brother or sister
• voted against an (unsuccessful) amendment to narrow the term "other tissue" to other ‘regenerative’ tissue, in the context of saviour siblings
• voted against an (unsuccessful) amendment to reinstate the requirement for doctors to consider the child’s need for a father before a woman is given fertility treatment. The amendment also added the requirement to consider the need of a child for a mother
• voted against an (unsuccessful) amendment to require doctors to consider the need of a child for ‘supportive parenting and a father or male role model’ before a woman is given fertility treatment
• voted against several (unsuccessful) amendments to lower the 24-week upper time-limit on abortions done for social reasons
• voted against an (unsuccessful) amendment which sought to improve support and informed consent for mothers who may be pregnant a disabled child
• voted against (unsuccessful) amendments which sought to address a loopholes which could potentially allow so-called reproductive cloning
• voted against an (unsuccessful) amendment to close an animal-human hybrids loophole

Sexual ethics (information courtesy of The Christian Institute)

• voted for the Sexual Orientation Regulations, which (among other things) effectively stopped the Catholic Church from providing adoption services.
• voted against a free speech amendment to a proposed offence of 'homophobic hatred'

* The late Pope John Paul II, the great pro-life champion, taught in paragraph 97 of his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

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Blairs attack papal teaching on culture of life

This week Tony and Cherie Blair have launched a high profile attack on two fundamental aspects of papal teaching on building a culture of life.

In an interview in the Church of England newspaper, Tony Blair, received into the Catholic Church in December 2007, underlines his continued belief in "gay rights".

And Cherie Blair, a fellow Catholic, filmed in the final part of the Channel 4 series "Christianity", said: "I'm a feminist… how could I have done all the things I have done if I hadn't used contraception?" - an attack on Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's encyclical on the regulation of birth, recently praised in the highest terms by Pope Benedict as "guiding us along the path to the future".

According to the Christian Institute: "During Mr Blair’s premiership a raft of gay rights legislation was brought in" ensuring the promotion of homosexuality in schools and elsewhere, legalizing joint adoption by homosexual couples, giving legal recognition to homosexual relationships with the Civil Partnership Act 2004 which "extended all the legal rights and privileges of marriage to homosexual couples".

In Evangelium Vitae paragraph 97, Pope John Paul II taught that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

And Pope Benedict made a similar point in his address to members of the Roman Curia last Christmas when he said:

"Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian creed, the Church cannot and must not limit herself to passing on to the faithful the message of salvation alone. She has a responsibility towards creation, and must also publicly assert this responsibility. In so doing, she must not only defend earth, water and air as gifts of creation belonging to all. She must also protect man from self-destruction. What is needed is something like a human ecology, correctly understood.

"If the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and demands that this order of creation be respected, this is not some antiquated metaphysics. What is involved here is faith in the Creator and a readiness to listen to the “language” of creation. To disregard this would be the self-destruction of man himself, and hence the destruction of God’s own work."

During this speech, Pope Benedict refers to Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae as a guide to the future. He says:

"An integral part of the Church proclamation must be a witness to the Creator Spirit present in nature as a whole, and, in a special way, in the human person, created in God’s image.

"From this perspective, we should go back to the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sex as a consumer good, the future against the exclusive claims of the present, and human nature against its manipulation."

And Pope Benedict’s address on 10th May last year, also underlined the unchanging teaching of the Church on birth control. He writes:

“What was true yesterday is true also today. The truth expressed in Humanae Vitae does not change; on the contrary, precisely in the light of the new scientific discoveries, its teaching becomes more timely and elicits reflection on the intrinsic value it possesses.”

I have blogged before on how the prophetic teaching in Humanae Vitae has been fulfilled in the culture of death - in British laws and British government policies at home and overseas. The objective data is convincing to people of all faiths and none.

Tony Blair, who has refused to repudiate the anti-life laws and policies he steadfastly pursued throughout his political career, was received into the Catholic Church in December 2007. Cherie Blair, also a Catholic, endorses the work of CEDAW committee (as well as other radical pro-abortion groups) - and specifically its work on "reproductive rights". The CEDAW committee is notorious among pro-lifers for using the CEDAW convention to bully countries into allowing abortion, even though the convention doesn't mention abortion.

I hope and pray, for the sake of the millions of babies and other vulnerable human beings who have been killed, and mothers and families injured, as a result of these laws and policies, and for the sake of countless young people whose health and happiness are being destroyed, as a result of these laws and policies, that there will be a spirited response on the part of leading Catholic and pastors to the Blairs' attack on papal teaching on these fundamental issues. Catholics in public life cannot be allowed continually to undermine the faith to which they belong, especially on matters relating to the sanctity of human life.

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.

Political leaders must not whitewash anti-life Ted Kennedy

Following the death on Tuesday of Edward "Ted" Kennedy, the American senator with one of the worst anti-life records, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, said:

"Senator Kennedy was a figure who inspired admiration, respect and devotion, not just in America but around the world. He was a true public servant committed to the values of fairness, justice and opportunity ... [He was] a great and good man."

One has come to expect this sort of white-washing from Mr Blair, in which the deaths of countless unborn children through abortion and destructive embryo research are ignored in the name of vague ideas of social justice for those fortunate enough to be born. After all, Tony Blair has attempted to whitewash his own anti-life political record, firstly by being received into the Catholic Church and then by refusing to repudiate his record. Catholics in positions of leadership and influence do the unborn and other Catholics a disservice when they invite or otherwise honour people like Tony Blair and Ted Kennedy. That is why I am disappointed that Jim Dobbin, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group (APPPLG), signed in March a parliamentary motion which read:

"[The] House [of Commons] recognises the contribution [Senator Kennedy] has made over 46 years in the US Senate to advancing the cause of human rights, universal healthcare and a more just society; and acknowledges that his contribution to public service has established him as one of the finest and most effective US senators in the history of that august body."

The pro-life movement will never make any political or other progress as long as leading Catholics treat the sanctity of human life as just another controversial issue, or an optional extra, or a personal opinion, or a private religious belief. Until the inalienable right to life of every human being, recognised by international human rights law, is irrevocably enshrined and fully implemented everywhere, the right to life is the main political issue. If one's right to life is not secured, then one's rights to healthcare, welfare, education or anything else are nebulous. That is why SPUC is supporting a new petition to the UN General Assembly launched by Amnesty for Babies. Please visit the Amnesty for Babies website today to see how you can help.

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Pro-lifers must defend the Pope from the Blairs' campaign

On 5 March, I blogged about how Tony & Cherie Blair had launched high profile attacks on two fundamental aspects of papal teaching on building a culture of life. Just over a month later, the Blairs have made a similar attack on Pope Benedict on the same issues. Tony Blair, in an interview with Attitude, a homosexual magazine, has said that the Catholic Church must change its "entrenched attitudes" to homosexuality. And Cherie has told the Times of Malta that she was "rather saddened" by the Pope's comments in Africa that the promotion of condom use threatened to worsen the spread of HIV.

What this repeat joint attack suggests is that the Blairs are using their continuous high-profile media exposure to undermine the Catholic faith to which they subscribe. In his Attitude interview, Tony said: "For all religions, the challenge is how do you extract the essential values of the faith from a vast accumulation of doctrine and practice?" Considering the support that both Tony & Cherie have given to pro-abortion campaigns, will the Blairs now soon be campaigning openly for the Catholic Church to ditch its teaching against abortion?

A clue to the answer to that question can be found if we ask another question a la Cicero: Cui bono? Who benefits from the Blairs' campaign against Catholic teaching? The answer is clearly the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and other abortion promoters, which are endorsed by Cherie Blair, and the pro-abortion groups with which Tony Blair and his Faith Foundation have established such close links, continuing the pro-abortion policies he pursued as an MP and as Prime Minister. The culture which has resulted from a rejection of traditional sexual ethics has in turn created a culture of death. As I've mentioned before, it is IPPF which has led the attacks on the Pope -whose comments on condoms and AIDS is bad for their "big business".

For the sake of unborn babies, women and young people, pro-lifers of all faiths and none must rally together to defend the Pope, from the Blairs' campaign. As the late Pope John Paul II taught in Evangelium Vitae (para. 97), it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

Zero tolerance for pro-life dissent is on the cards in Europe and must be resisted

These are very dangerous times for families, unborn children and other vulnerable people in Europe. I blogged in September on how the rights articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are under threat in the continent. Pro-life and pro-family campaigners must expect to see the publication of documents, funded by the European Union, which promote abortion, euthanasia and other anti-life and anti-family practices - with a special emphasis on zero tolerance for dissent.

• Last week the United Nations published a report promoting the legalization worldwide of immediate access to abortion services
• Prominent Catholic figures such as Cherie Blair, the wife of Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, endorses the radical pro-abortion agenda of the United Nations - and Tony Blair, who refuses to repudiate his political record on pro-life matters despite his reception into the Catholic Church, has founded the Tony Blair Faith Foundation which has deep pro-abortion roots as I reported in October; strongly pro-abortion US vice-president, Joe Biden, is also a Catholic who uses his position to misrepresent church teaching on abortion as "a personal and private matter" of religious faith
• Morten Kjaerum, the first director of the EU Agency for Fundamental Human Rights, was a member of the EU Network of Independent Experts which published a Legal Opinion challenging the right of medical professionals to conscientiously object to certain practices such as abortion and seeking, without any foundation, to promote the "right" to abortion. The objective of the Agency is to provide EU member states and institutions assistance and expertise on fundamental rights.
• The EU Network's Legal Opinion (to which I refer above), prepared at the request of the EU Commission on the right to conscientious objection, links rights relating to sexual orientation to other supposed rights, including the “right” to abortion and the “right” to euthanasia and assisted suicide. The document quotes, in part, the Diversity and Equality Guidelines of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales in a generally approving way. The bishops’ guidelines and the EU experts’ document clearly agree that, subject to limited and narrow exceptions, Catholic organisations must ensure that no job applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment than another on the grounds of sexual orientation.
• UK Fundamental Rights Reports (FRALEX) has won a contract to advise the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. According to Public Interest Law Network (PILN), in its February edition, most of the previous members of the radically pro-abortion/anti-life/anti-family EU Network of Independent Experts combined to bid successfully for the FRALEX contract.
• Professor Michael O'Flaherty (pictured above) is joint co-director of the Human Rights Law Centre which forms part of FRALEX. He was rapporteur to the meeting which produced the infamous Yogyakarta principles which, amonst other things, called on States to "ensure that all sexual and reproductive health, education, prevention, care and treatment programmes and services respect the diversity of sexual orientations and gender identities, and are equally available to all without discrimination"; according to the World Health Organisation's definition "sexual and reproductive health" services includes the provision of abortion on demand
• EU "experts" like Professor Michael O'Flaherty and the FRALEX team will doubtless be gleefully awaiting Barack Obama keeping his pledge to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). Michael Moses, a lawyer for the American Catholic bishops, has warned that FOCA would force all Catholic hospitals and medical professionals to provide abortions, with no opt-outs or rights of conscientious objection.

As I've mentioned before, we need to build a powerful, peaceful resistance movement to anti-life policies pursued by governments. Silence, or worse still, complicity with anti-life and anti-family policies are not only not an option - they must be vigorously opposed by those most intimately concerned and most directly threatened: mothers and fathers throughout Europe and their families.

UK government names anti-life Tony Blair as candidate for EU president

Baroness (Glenys) Kinnock, the anti-life minister for Europe, has announced that the British government is backing Tony Blair to be president of the European Union (EU), a role which would be created if the Lisbon treaty is passed.

Pro-life/pro-family supporters must make it clear to their political representatives that Mr Blair's nomination is totally unacceptable. People in the UK can contact their MP via http://www.spuc.org.uk/mps Click here for my previous blogs on Tony & Cherie Blair and their anti-life/anti-family record. In particular, click here for a masterly analysis of the Obama-Blair anti-life/anti-family agenda to undermine both law and religion respectively.

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Please say an extra prayer today that US voters reject Obama

I have written about Senator Obama's extremist anti-life credentials before on this blog (7 July, 27 July, 31 July, 29 August, 30 August, 1 September and 7 October). National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) have produced an easy-to-read guide comparing the stances on abortion of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Senator Obama has promised that his first act as president will be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). Michael Moses, a lawyer for the American Catholic bishops, has warned that FOCA would force all Catholic hospitals and medical professionals to provide abortions, with no opt-outs or rights of conscientious objection.

On this last point, one is reminded of legislation and policies introduced by Tony Blair and his government: under his government's Mental Capacity Act, for example, doctors who refuse on clinical or other ethical grounds to implement an advance refusal of treatment face litigation and possibly criminal conviction; and Tony Blair personally endorsed his government's policy of providing schoolchildren under the age of 16 with abortions and birth control drugs and devices without parental knowledge or consent.

A reader reminded me today of an illuminating letter earlier this year in The Independent from Stephen Dorril, Sir Oswald Mosley's biographer, who wrote: "I thought I was being irrational in my total dislike of Barack Obama, but now realise, having read Dominic Lawson's excellent analysis of the Obama cult (26 February), that there are others who are also very wary of a populist politician who seems to be veering towards fascism." He goes on to compare him with Tony Blair. It's worth a read. I wish it could be widely read and understood on the other side of the Atlantic. Please say an extra prayer today that US voters reject Obama - for America's and for all our sakes.

Pope Benedict and bishop of Motherwell united in defence of life

In the opening address of his visit to Australia for World Youth Day, Pope Benedict XVI (pictured right) has said:

"The concerns for non-violence, sustainable development, justice and peace, and care for our environment are of vital importance for humanity. They cannot, however, be understood apart from a profound reflection upon the innate dignity of every human life from conception to natural death: a dignity conferred by God himself and thus inviolable."

Back on the other side of the globe, Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell, Scotland (pictured left) has said in a letter to the press:

"Protecting innocent infants in the womb, supporting pregnant, frightened young women and working to secure a better standard of living and greater opportunities for the poor and marginalised are not mutually exclusive ideals. Indeed, a nation that condemns to abortion our beautiful and blameless unborn babies betrays itself as morally, ethically and politically untrustworthy and disinclined to give due care and attention to the poorest and weakest members of our society. ... Britain has among the highest abortion rates, the highest rates of family breakdown and the worst social problems in modern Europe. Do not tell me these things are not connected."

I have blogged about Tony Blair, recently received in the Catholic Church, and his refusal to repudiate the strongly pro-abortion, pro-human embryo research and pro-euthanasia by neglect policies he and his government pursued. I have also blogged about Progressio and its partnerships with organizations which campaign for legalised abortion and against the Holy See's observer status at the United Nations.

Both Tony Blair and Progressio claim that their "concerns for non-violence, sustainable development, justice and peace, and care for our environment" are motivated by their Catholic faith.

I would like to invite readers of my blog to join me in writing to Tony Blair and writing to Progressio to ask them how they square their positions with those of Pope Benedict and the bishop of Motherwell. We are encouraged to do so by Pope John Paul II who said in Evangelium Vitae (95):

"We need to begin with the renewal of a culture of life within Christian communities themselves. Too often it happens that believers, even those who take an active part in the life of the Church, end up by separating their Christian faith from its ethical requirements concerning life, and thus fall into moral subjectivism and certain objectionable ways of acting. With great openness and courage, we need to question how widespread is the culture of life today among individual Christians, families, groups and communities in our Dioceses. With equal clarity and determination we must identify the steps we are called to take in order to serve life in all its truth. At the same time, we need to promote a serious and in-depth exchange about basic issues of human life with everyone, including non-believers, in intellectual circles, in the various professional spheres and at the level of people's everyday life."