Human Rights - for whom?

"Tough on crime; tough on the causes of crime!"  That, if memory serves me well, was one of the meaningless mantras spouted by former-PM, Mr Tony Bliar (still not a typo!).

I would like to think that, as a disciple of Jesus, I would uphold the basic human rights of anyone - although it would appear that many folk consider their 'human rights' to be synonymous with 'whatever they want'!  However, the Human Rights legislation introduced by the Bliar government (did no-one at the time notice that Mrs Cherry Bliar - who, in my opinion, is just as obnoxiously greedy as her husband - was/is a QC who was an advocate of that legislation, and who has made a fortune in legal fees out of it?) is something with which this country could do without.

A failed asylum-seeker (i.e. his case for seeking asylum in this country was regarded as ineffective) mows down a 12-year-old girl, while he was banned from driving (and was uninsured), and flees the scene of his crime. A man who, it is reported, had run up a series of motoring offences and was convicted a second time for driving while banned three years after killing this young girl. A man who also had a string of criminal convictions including drugs possession, property damage, harassment and burglary.

He later turns himself in - the only positive aspect of the situation - and is jailed for four months!   And now, two senior immigration judges declare that he may remain in this country because, in the intervening period, he has fathered a couple of children, and to deport him would infringe his human rights!

I would like those two judges to visit the father of the young girl, for whose death this man was totally responsible - even 'though it was he who, apparently, had to make the excruciatingly difficult decision to turn off her life-support system - and explain to him the extent of his human rights, and those of his dead daughter.  Along with many others, I often wonder how these judges, whose lives are spent in a world that is obviously different from that of the vast majority of the British public, can bear to even look at themselves in the mirror each morning.  As Dickens' Mr Bumble would point out: " "If the law supposes that ... the law is a [sic] ass—a [sic] idiot." (Oliver Twist).

Perhaps Mr David Cameron would also like to visit the father!  In a pre-election pledge, the current P.M. wrote to him, promising reforms that would ensure “that rights are better balanced against responsibilities”. He said the Human Rights Act would be replaced by a British Bill of Rights.  However, like the promise of a referendum on the EU, this appears to have become a casualty of actual government - or perhaps it was sacrificed to appease the pre-EU, lefty Liberal Democrats?!

But if the human rights of a 12-year-old are not considered worthy of consideration by the British legal system, then the human rights of those as yet unborn is considered as unimportant by European law.  A woman who had to travel from the Republic of Ireland - and she isn't even Irish; she is Lithuanian! - is considered to have had her human rights violated because she was unable to have an abortion in the Republic.  The European Court of Human Rights, sitting in Strasbourg, has criticised the Irish government for failing to implement legislation that would have permitted the abortion to take place because the mother's own life was at risk.  It may astonish some to know that, given a straightforward choice between the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child, I would be prepared to sanction the abortion.  However - and it is a big 'however' - such situations are, thankfully, rare in the extreme.  In fact, according to the newspaper reports to which I have access, this woman's life was not in danger!  She was concerned - even afraid - that her pregnancy would bring about a relapse of cancer; and that there might be a risk to the unborn child if she went to full term.  That, I would contend, is a long way from her life being at risk!  I would also want to ask her why, if she had such fears, she had not taken adequate contraceptive precautions to ensure that she didn't become pregnant?

It used to be said that, in civilisations such as the Roman Empire, or the Aztecs of South America, human life was cheap.  It would appear that we have not really moved very far forward - at least as far as the human rights of some are concrened!

Whatever happened to just saying 'No'?!

Of course, the heading is a bit one-sided - but I didn't want it to be too long. The other half of the equation, as it were, is: "and to not asking in the first place?!"

The reference, not surprisingly, is to sex, and is in the light of news today that a survey of teenage girls in (I suspect, only) England and Wales, shows that one in eight has been pregnant by the time they have reached 18 years of age, with 3% claiming to have been pregnant at least three times.

The figures may relate, directly, only to England and Wales, but it is an apparent statistical fact that the U.K. as a whole has the highest teenage pregnancy rates in western Europe - even if they seem to have fallen to their lowest level for two decades.

The inevitable response from some is "... to maintain investment in young people's contraceptive and sexual health services." (Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group); and to "... continue doing what we know works to improve teenage pregnancy: improving access to sexual health services, good quality sex and relationships education in all schools, and supporting parents to talk to theor children." ('sexual health' charity, Brook).

Sadly, after many decades of following these policies, we still have the situation reported above. To give credit to some of the young girls involved, almost half of them went to full term with their pregnancies - but more than a third had abortions: little human lives snuffed out because a girl couldn't (or wouldn't!) say 'No' to a boy who was, in most cases, merely wanting to satisfy his own hormone-induced urges.

It all comes back to two old-fashioned ideas: purity and respect. Some girls don't seem to realise that they can only lose their virginity once; some boys have no respect for the girl whom they are dating, and see her simply as an object to be (ab)used. The end result is not only the statistics released by this Dept. of Ed. study, but also an ever-increasing incidence of sexually-transmitted diseases that have a longer-term effect on the recipients than most young people seem to realise; many girls who have abortions being less able to conceive in later adulthood; and, of coure, even in the cases of the girls who do have their children, another generation of youngsters with no wholesome male role model in their lives.

There is a lot to be said for the old-fashioned maxim of "Chastity before marriage; fidelity within it". Paul puts it like this: "Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body." (I Cor 6:18-19; NLT).

I have a cutting at home that contains some frightening statistics. I can't recall the exact figures, but the article shows how many sexual partners the average 'liberated' person really has. Not just the girl I was with last night - but every boy with whom she had previously had sex; and every girl with whom they had previously had sex; and so on, and so on! And it's not just the physical act that is involved. It's that passing on of chlamydia, genital herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, and I don't know what else, that spreads such infections like wildfire.

The Bible may be old-fashioned to many, today. But its healthy attitude to sex (which was, after all, invented by God!) - that it be between one man and one woman, within the bond of a committed relationship - would, if followed, see a marked reduction in some of those horrifying statistics that we seem to now take for granted.