Thursday, January 12, 2012

dorries seems to be the hardest word

I'm afraid that unless you got on your bike and went and sought them out yourself you've missed the 2011 Bad Faith Awards. This, you'll no doubt remember, is the award given out by New Humanist magazine to the person who has done the most to thwart and damage the cause of reason and progress during the year, most probably via some form of religious loonery.

To be honest I'm not sure the 2011 list of nominees was as creative as in previous years - two US Republican presidential candidates (Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann) and Melanie Phillips seems like a few too many obvious targets - but the runaway winner was the richly deserving Conservative MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries.

Anyone whose clearly stated religiously-motivated views on things like sex education in schools and abortion would ensure (were they ever to be implemented, which thankfully seems unlikely) a generation grew up badly informed about sex, and therefore more likely to experience unplanned pregnancy, and then in turn would ensure that a proportion of those same people died because they were unable to get access to abortion services when they urgently needed them, seems to me eminently worthy of treatment far harsher than ridicule in a magazine.

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