“The number of children that you have is a choice and what we’re saying is that if people are living on benefits, then they make choices but they also have to have responsibility for those choices,” he said.
“It’s not going to be the role of the state to finance those choices.” He added: “You can have children but if you are going to ask for support that is more than the average wage that people earn, then we’re saying no, the state shouldn’t support that. That’s not fair on working people who have to pay the taxes to pay those benefits.”
I find it very hard to imagine that Jeremy Hunt is talking about natural family planning. It is an alien practise even in marital culture, except for a minority of loyal Catholics, to the United Kingdom, in which artificial contraception has become the certified norm and in which, on average, 200,000 babies are aborted every year. He needs to be clearer about the 'choices' of which he is talking.
If he is saying that the State will not 'fund' children who are born into poor families on benefits then is he saying that the State will fund those children to be aborted? Is he saying that the State will fund the sterilisation of people too poor to have children. Is he saying that in fact the State would consider forcing the poor to undergo both of these barbaric practises? Whatever his words were intended to mean, the Optimum Population Trust are over the moon that a Government minister should say such things.
5 comments:
It ought to be self-evident that the normal state of affairs is that a couple can support themselves and their children at a decent standard of living on the wages of a single working adult.
If that is not the case, which it rarely is, these smartarse politicians should get off their high horses, ask why and sort the problem out. That is why we elect them.
In the Middle Ages, failing politicians were treated appropriately.
Forced sterilisation like:
Sunday, 26 January 2003
"Roma, or Gypsy, women in Slovakia claim they are being subjected to forced sterilisation, according to a new report to be launched in Brussels this week. Research by human rights organisations has found evidence strongly suggesting that many hundreds of Roma women could have been sterilised against their will."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/gypsy-women-forced-into-sterilisation-603692.html
I thought he was merely saying: the maximum a family can receive on benefits is £25k, equivalent to the national mean wage. It's up to them how many children they have, but if they can't afford to have them they shouldn't, and they should exercise prudence in the choices they make. That sounds like "responsible parenthood" to me.
I very much doubt that that is what he is really talking about.
For my part, I doubt very much that the Culture Secretary was advocating sterilisation, and he probably wasn't thinking of abortion either. His focus was more on choices and consequences.
Here's an article from today on the same subject:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/mary-kenny-debate-rages-about-how-many-children-is-too-many-2373559.html
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