Tuesday, September 1, 2009

End contraception ban: Britain's Cherie Blair

British human rights lawyer, Cherie Blair has called on the Church to reconsider its opposition to artificial contraception because it may be holding back women's careers.

Ms Blair is wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

She told an audience at Edinburgh International Book Festival she believed the church should be "more positive" about permitting women to use artificial birth control as a means of regulating their fertility, UK's The Herald reports.

A devout Catholic who encouraged her husband, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, to convert from Anglicanism after he left office in 2007, Mrs Blair has previously revealed that she uses contraception and that the couple's nine-year-old son Leo was conceived at Balmoral after she neglected to pack contraceptives for a stay with the Queen.

Promoting her new book Speaking for Myself, she said: "If you look at what progress women have made in the world, one of the reasons they have been able to make progress is because they have been able to control their fertility.

"I personally don't think there is anything wrong with that, and indeed without being able to control that I wouldn't have been able to achieve the things that I've been able to do.

"I think it's a really important issue and I would prefer it if the Catholic Church took a more positive attitude towards contraception because I think there's a lot of difference between preventing a life coming about and actually extinguishing a life when it has come about."

The Catholic Church in Scotland said Ms Blair was wrong to suggest oral contraception did not "extinguish" life. A spokesman said: "That is exactly what the morning-after pill does, while the conventional pill can potentially do the same."

2 comments:

swissmiss said...

"...I would prefer it if the Catholic Church took a more positive attitude towards contraception..."
Read: "...I would prefer it if the Catholic Church adopted my perspective towards contraception..."

belinda said...

I want to blog about this...
It's plain and simple treason.