Forced Sterilisations Could Only Happen In Countries Like China, Right...?

Think again.

There is that matter of a little piece of legislation which was passed five years ago.

The Mental Capacity Act, 2005. The bit most people remember is that it means that doctors or other carers have the right to withdraw treatment on your behalf if you are deemed to be unable to make that decision for yourself through dementia or other reasons.

Less well known is the fact that the MCA also allows doctors to impose treatments "for your own good" if, through dementia or other reasons you are considered incapable of making the choice for yourself.

"Other reasons," it seems, include having a severe phobia of hospitals and needles. A woman with cancer was  forced to have treatment against her will, the phobia being considered as rendering her "unfit" to make that decision for herself. And, take note, the courts can force you to have treatment which is still experimental in nature.

The Daily Telegraph reported the case of a woman who was considered by her local council to be incapable of understanding what bringing up a child would involve because her IQ was too low. The council, having taken two of her children and given them up for adoption, decided that she should be forced to use contraception. Luckily for the woman, the judge considered their grounds for application to use coercive methods to be faulty: because they had said she didn't know what parenting entailed, it was successfully argued that many first-time mothers would be categorised as unfit to care for their children.

Unluckily for the woman in question, the judge agreed that she lacked the capacity to decide for herself whether or not to use contraception, thus paving the way for the council to have another stab at forcing the woman to have contraceptive treatment.

Of course, the view as to what makes a person incapable of deciding whether or not they should receive a particular medical treatment (or not) is rather open to interpretation. Although the woman's IQ was reported as being 53, and that of her husband was said to be 65, she is attending college and doing voluntary work. The "average" IQ is 100.

Many people will quietly assume that, with such a low IQ, this woman is incapable of looking after a child, and so should be forced to use contraception, and it will cause barely a murmur in the national press.

We need to wake up. This is eugenics. There is no other word for it. This is what they did in Nazi Germany.

How long, in this country where belief in God is already presented as being somewhat irrational, will it be before councils decide that one's religious views render a person incapable of deciding whether or not to contracept, or to abort?

The Good Council Network is alerting people to the dangers inherent in this legislation, and is asking us to pray and fast in order to obtain the judgement to work against all threats to the dignity and the sanctity of human life in a way that is both moral and effective. I urge you to do the same.