
blogs


COVID-19 is exposing UK health inequalities
Recent figures from theDepartment of Health and Social Care (DHSC) show the UK death toll from COVID-19…

God, ethics and COVID-19
‘Oh – and by the way, I’ve recommended you for chairing the Covid Ethics Committee. Hope that’s…

From the mouths of children…
In the old fairy tale of The Emperor's New Clothes, a tailor tells a king that he has invented a wonderful…

COVID-19: an opportunity for sharing Christ with a world searching for answers
Christians are called to be representatives of Christ, not just in their homes but also within their…

The Nightingale Legacy
With the news just over a week ago that the London Nightingale Hospital was to be 'mothballed' as no…

Social care and COVID-19: crisis or opportunity?
If a week is a long time in politics in normal times, then at the moment two years can feel like a geological…

Coping with loneliness in lockdown
Over the past few weeks, the world has changed drastically. What was once considered normal, such as…

Palliative care and COVID-19
I didn’t pay much attention to them at first. The news stories about Wuhan and the Facebook posts from…

Coping with loss of control
We are used to a sense of control over our lives and our day to day decisions. I can choose when to…

Some biblical answers to suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, people and physicians around the world are facing trials of many…

Uncertainty: our new normality
We’ve heard a lot about how Covid-19 affects the lungs, often catastrophically. But what about the…
The importance and credibility of Jesus’ resurrection
Nearly one in four ‘Christians’ do not believe in the story of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, according to a recent ComRes poll. But actually, as Ludwig Kennedy once claimed in a radio debate with Lord Rees-Mogg, ‘Christianity stands or falls on the claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.’ The Apostle Paul put […]
Egg freezing is not all it’s cracked up to be
A Daily Telegraph article recently asked: ‘Motherhood on ice: has the egg-freezing generation of working women been misled?’ That’s an easy question to answer: Yes! The massively profitable egg-freezing industry has an appallingly low ‘success’ rate, yet still tempts thousands of women to take this route because they know their ‘biological clock’ is running down. […]
‘Wrongful Births’: The NHS spends millions in compensation… for babies being born
A recent response by the Government to a Parliamentary question on so-called ‘wrongful birth’ cases has revealed some startling findings. Although perhaps ‘shocking’ may be a more appropriate word. Government figures show that the NHS has paid out more than £114 million since 1995 on 156 successful claims for damages from parents wanting compensation for the birth of a […]
Organ donation- how can we increase numbers without compromising our ethics?
We are facing an organ donation crisis. The need for organ transplants is currently outstripping the supply of donated organs. This can be seen plainly from the statistics, where, in the period 2015/16, 4,605 total organ transplants were undertaken in the UK, but 6,463 were still on the active waiting list by the end of […]
Time for new partnerships: the added value of Christian organisations in preventative health
Your health is your true wealth, or so the saying goes. The relationship between health and wealth is quite well established. It continues to be an intractable issue in overcoming health inequalities. But while financial wealth has an undeniable impact, social and spiritual ‘wealth’ are also being discovered to be integral to health. Who knew?! […]
My Feral Heart: finally, a positive portrayal of Down’s syndrome
“We’re not so different, you and me” is the theme of My Feral Heart, a poignant British independent film about a young man with Down’s syndrome. Though filmed in a grey and overcast English village and a grey and overcast and damp English countryside and the slightly chaotic life of a care home, it projects […]
Lord Shinkwin’s Abortion (Disability Equality) Bill
In May 2016, Lord Shinkwin, brought his Abortion (Disability Equality) Bill to the House of Lords. Lord Shinkwin, who himself has osteogenesis imperfecta, has been a life peer since 2015 and prior to this spent a number of years in the voluntary sector, working for charities such as RNID, Cancer Research UK and the Royal […]
Diana Johnson’s radical abortion bill narrowly passes first hurdle but is unlikely to become law
You can listen to my Premier Radio interview on this bill here. Today, Monday 13 March 2017, Diana Johnson’s radical Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill, which seeks to remove all legal restrictions on abortion, passed narrowly by 172 votes 142. As this was a Ten Minute Rule Bill it is very unlikely that it […]
My speech to the New Zealand Parliament Health Select Committee on Assisted Suicide
I have just given oral evidence on behalf of Care Not Killing to the New Zealand Parliament’s Health Select Committee on assisted suicide. The committee has received a petition requesting, ‘That the House of Representatives investigate fully public attitudes towards the introduction of legislation which would permit medically-assisted dying in the event of a terminal illness or an […]
Increasing survival of extremely premature babies again raises questions about upper abortion limits
The increasing survival of extremely premature babies is again raising serious questions about the 24 week upper limit for social abortion. On 6 March, Inside Out on BBC One in the East Midlands related how new treatments – including some trialled in Nottingham and Leicester – are helping to limit disabilities and boost life expectancy in premature […]
Activists’ attempt to legalise abortion on demand up until birth is both unnecessary and unwanted
A campaign by activists to legalise abortion on demand up until birth hots up again this month, with the first reading of a Ten Minute Rule Bill on 13 March. Labour MP Diana Johnson is introducing a ‘Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Ten Minute Rule Bill. The bill aims ‘to regulate the termination of pregnancies […]
End of Life Issues. What can we expect in 2017?
Things have been quieter than usual on the end of life front in the UK since the overwhelming defeat of Rob Marris’s and Patrick Harvie’s assisted suicide bills in 2015 in the Westminster and Scottish Parliament’s respectively. But there is new activity in the UK and plenty happening abroad. What can we expect this year? […]