Tuesday 20 May 2008

Voting tonight

Have just got back from the Chamber, sitting in on some of the debate about the abortion time limit. We start voting at 10.11 and there could be as many as 10 votes, which would take us up to nearly 1am. (I had to get up at 5.45am today, after about 5 hours sleep; this is not good). Listened to Nadine Dorries' speech. Some of it was undeniably moving, when she talked about her experience as a nurse assisting with botched late terminations, conjuring up an image of holding a baby in her arms as it gasped for breath and then died. It would be quite easy to be swayed by such emotive arguments.

But we all believe it would be better if there were far fewer abortions carried out, far fewer late terminations, far fewer unwanted pregnancies in the first place. None of us regards it as a casual decision, a mere technical procedure... I was going to say more, but Anne Widdecombe is being very shrill and I'm having trouble concentrating. And the first vote is about to happen.

2 comments:

Chris Paul said...

Do MPs tend to believe a word uttered by Nadine Dorries Kerry? It may be moving, but if it's fiction does that actually count?

Kerry said...

She certainly gets quite a bit of attention - but as to how many new MPs she managed to convert to her cause, I'm not sure.

Would be interesting to see how many people changed their mind during the course of the debate. My own impression is that it's the scientists (e.g. Ian Gibson and Doug Naysmith are both trained geneticists and have a huge amount of knowledge at their disposal) who are listened to most carefully on such parliamentary occasions.