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."

• End contraception ban: Britain's Cherie Blair

• Blair: end Church's hard line on birth control

Tony Blair tells the Pope: you're wrong on homosexuality

(L'Osservatore Romano/AP)

The Pope greets Tony Blair during a private audience with him and his wife Cherie at the Vatican

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

Tony Blair has challenged the “entrenched” attitudes of the Pope on homosexuality, and argued that it is time for him to “rethink” his views.

Speaking to the gay magazine Attitude, the former Prime Minister, himself now a Roman Catholic, said that he wanted to urge religious figures everywhere to reinterpret their religious texts to see them as metaphorical, not literal, and suggested that in time this would make all religious groups accept gay people as equals.

Asked about the Pope’s stance, Mr Blair blamed generational differences and said: “We need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith...”

• Link
  

Blair Converts To Catholicism

Former prime minister Tony Blair has converted to Roman Catholicism after years of speculation over his faith.

Mr Blair was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor during Mass in the chapel at Archbishop's House in Westminster on Friday night.

The Cardinal said: "I am very glad to welcome Tony Blair into the Catholic Church.

"For a long time he has been a regular worshipper at Mass with his family, and in recent months he has been following a programme of formation to prepare for his reception into full communion.

"My prayers are with him, his wife and family at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together."

Mr Blair's wife Cherie was already a practising Roman Catholic.

• Link to original
• Flashback: Pope Has "Frank" Conversation With Tony Blair