Crime of love
Government threatens parents, seeks to protect abortion industry
The Scottish Government has announced that it will support a Bill to criminalise parental smacking, the Christian Institute reported on 6 September.1 The proposal mirrors a plan for Wales announced last year by First Minister Carwyn Jones. The Christian Institute has rightly warned that such proposals are a huge threat to families. It commented: “Even the mere suspicion of parental smacking could see children removed from their parents and questioned by government officials.”
It’s important that Christians and others speak out now against this massive state intrusion into family life. The Christian Institutehas stated: “Smacking is not child abuse. It is one of many ways for parents to discipline their children and an important one which should not be illegal. There is a clear difference between child abuse and loving parental discipline. Banning smacking would involve massive state intrusion into family life. It would turn thousands of loving mothers and fathers into criminals overnight, diverting resources away from tackling genuine cases of child abuse. The present law should be left as it is. Unreasonable physical punishment is already treated as assault but ordinary parental smacking is rightly allowed.” (My emphasis added.) Loving parenting should not come under scrutiny from state officials.
The Christian Institute is right, this is part of the deliberate, increasing intrusion by the State into family life and the increasing weakening of parental authority. If the proposals to ban parental smacking are passed into law in Scotland and Wales, it will only be a matter of time before the same happens in England and before even further measures to limit parental authority are legalised. This is the “thin end of the wedge” so if we want to stop the State controlling our children’s upbringing we need to act now.
If you live in the UK, write to the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales, protesting against the proposals to criminalise parental smacking. Below are very useful arguments provided by the Christian Institute, which you can use. Write to: The First Minister of Wales, The Rt. Hon. Carwyn Jones AM. His Email address is: Carwyn.Jones@gov.wales Write also to The First Minister of Scotland, The Rt. Hon. Nicola Sturgeon MSP at her Email address: firstminister@gov.scot Pray that there will not be a legal ban on parental smacking anywhere in the UK and phone the Christian Institute on: 0191 281 5664 to support their campaign on this issue.
The ban – why so wrong?
– Banning smacking will overwhelm police and social workers with trivial reports so that real cases of child abuse are missed.
– Loving parents should not be criminalised. A smacking ban would turn thousands of parents into criminals overnight while doing little to stop bad parents abusing children.
– It should be the role of parents rather than the Government’s to decide whether or not to smack their children. The state should not be using the criminal law to regulate how parents bring up their children.
– The public strongly opposes a ban on smacking. A ComRespoll in Wales earlier this year found that 76% of adults were against criminalising smacking, while only 11% were in favour.2
– Smacking is not child abuse. There is a clear difference between child abuse and loving parental discipline.
Some say “children should have the same protection as adults”. But children are not adults. For obvious reasons, children are not allowed to drive, marry or own a firearms licence. Children are dependent on their parents to teach them right from wrong and physical discipline is a loving way of doing so.
It’s bad for children, families and society when children are not properly disciplined. Most adults were smacked when they were children – polls asking about this routinely show over 80%. They do not resort to violence to solve their problems, nor do they think their parents were child abusers.
The Bible is clear that properly disciplining a child is essential, even if this requires some physical punishment. For example, Proverbs 29:15, “A rod and a reprimand impart wisdom, but a child left undisciplined disgraces its mother.”
All such discipline should be motivated by love, above all, and physical punishment should only be used within strict limits. It is an act of love for a child to be properly disciplined because having discipline is an essential strength that the child will need to succeed in life and to overcome difficulties.
Help for the death lobby
Rupa Huq, the MP for Ealing Central and Acton, told a fringe event at the Labour Party Conference that she is planning to table an amendment to new domestic violence legislation which would create “buffer zones” around abortion clinics.3 The abortion lobby has long been campaigning to prevent pro-life groups offering help to women outside clinics, SPUC (The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children 4) reported in late September.
Pro-Life groups such as the Good Counsel Network 5 have held peaceful vigils outside the Abortion Clinic, the Marie Stopes Centre, in Ealing 6 for about twenty years, where people pray and offer support to women who want to keep their babies. In recent years, a Pro-Abortion group called “Sister Supporter” 7 have been holding countervigils, and have launched a petition calling on the council to “protect the space around the clinic”.
Rupa told Labour conference delegates at a fringe event examining safety for women and girls: “We have a Marie Stopes clinic in Ealing and for as long as I can remember, there has been a constant phoney vigil outside the clinic, with people stopping women going into the clinic to access services,” she said.
“So we have had a counter protest, called Sister Support recently, and now there is a kind of stand-off on the pavement. I want to table an amendment to the domestic violence bill – one of the few things that survived and made it into the Queen’s Speech – to create a safe zone, around these clinics, because the pavement should be a safe space.”
Despite the accusations of harassment and of stopping people accessing the clinic, it is not thought that anyone has ever been arrested for harassment at the clinic. Clare McCulloughof The Good Counsel Network said in response to the Sister Supporter petition: “We offer alternatives and support to the many women we meet outside Marie Stopes who are under pressure to abort. Hundreds of women accept our support. We provide a range of support to women including moral support, housing, financial assistance, a safe place to hide, domestic violence solutions, obtaining legal and medical advice.
Sister Support do their best to obstruct women in hearing about our support, shouting at them not to take our leaflets and sometimes snatching the leaflets out of their hands. They offer no support or help to these women except to rush them into Marie Stopes as fast as possible.
Marie Stopes also take the leaflets from women entering their centre and sometimes tell them they are not allowed to enter with our leaflets. Though they may disagree with our leaflets a substantial part of the leaflet is simply offering help, support, babysitting etc to women under pressure. How is taking these leaflets facilitating choice? We do not intimidate women. If we did, no-one would take our leaflets or our help.”
Cynical
Alithea Williams of SPUC described Ms Ruq’s announcement as a “cynical publicity stunt”. “The bill Rupa Huq is referring to hasn’t even been published in draft, so it looks like she was just seizing an opportunity to push the abortion agenda. Nonetheless, exploiting a bill on domestic violence to try and stop women (some of whom will themselves be victims of abuse) even being offered help for themselves and their babies is completely inappropriate. Is she really equating people who hit their partners with praying peacefully and offering leaflets? This isn’t about protecting women – if there was any harassment by pro-lifers happening outside clinics, they would be arrested under existing legislation. Moves like this simply seek to shut down any opposition to abortion.”
On average over 500 unborn babies are murdered by abortion in the UK every day and so far more than 8 million babies have been killed by abortion in our nationsince the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act. This is a crucial issue rapidly stoking up God’s judgement against the UK and causing grave damage to our nation’s future.
God considers the shedding of innocent blood to be detestable (Proverbs 6:16, 17). Yet most UK Evangelical Christians do nothing to oppose the widespread abortion all around us.
To help campaign against abortion and the attempt to criminalis Pro-Life vigils outside Abortion clinics, phone SPUC on 020 7091 7091. Do consider receiving the newsletter of SPUC’s evangelical sub-division, SPUC Evangelicals. Phone SPUC to arrange this. Also consider requesting that the Chairman of SPUC Evangelicals, Peter Smith (Telephone:07801 306011), speak at your church on the Bible and pro-life issues.
Pray for a complete ban on abortion in the UK soon and that Pro-Life vigils outside Abortion clinics will never be criminalised.
1 https://tinyurl.com/yclk6w8c
2 https://tinyurl.com/ycpdg58w
3 https://tinyurl.com/ybzj4qje
5 https://tinyurl.com/yb8rvrhm