The Guardian seems to do a great disservice to female writers. Instead of employing journalists of integrity it pays airhead hacks like Zoë Williams to write the most banal and trivial gossip about their middle class lifestyles, who have as much sensitivity in their small minds as does a pebble.

This woman has a couple of preoccupations, one of which is abortion. It isn’t enough for her just to be pro choice, you have to be in favour of unlimited abortion up until birth. Reducing the time limit, to her is just ‘a new way of saying you are anti abortion’. Never mind the people who are strongly pro choice yet are still not opposed to reducing the limit be a couple of weeks (Britain’s being among the highest in Europe). In an edition of the paper earlier this year she spoke of a ‘mawkish sentimentality over the foetus. Not only this but she manages to offend and alienate even the supporters of a liberalisation in the law (see link). A fanatic if ever there was one.

A few good responses to that article:

FinnChow
November 10, 2006 10:49 AM
I agree with Evan Harris 100%. I fear that it won't be enough for Zoe Williams though. Until we're all laughing and joking about abortion and treating it as though it were no different from having a tooth removed, I don't think she's going to be happy.

solarsentinel
November 10, 2006 12:02 PM
Evan said, Ms Williams laments the lack of open debate in Parliament about liberalising a 39-year-old rule. But if the response of the pro-choice lobby is to attack their allies, then it is hardly surprising that politicians are not willing to go there.
Free choice is only possible to the extent that one appreciates the nature and consequences of one’s actions.
The quickest and most effective way to remove someone’s freedom of choice is to lie to them.
In a parliamentary democracy, lying is frowned upon, so the next best way to remove someone’s freedom of choice is to keep the truth from them.
This is hard to do when there is open debate, since open discussion of facts educates and informs people’s choices.
If the pro-choice lobby are pressuring politicians into keeping quiet then they are undermining everybody’s freedom of choice, but most importantly, the freedom of choice of women who cannot make an informed choice without all of the facts.
That makes the pro-choice lobby hypocrites, and those who are really interested in freedom of choice should not listen to them, but should make up their own minds …. after listening to the debate.
When you deify something like free choice, it gets corrupted.

Goodgirl
November 10, 2006 11:07 AM
I have always wondered why a woman miscarries a baby at five weeks, but aborts a foetus at 24! What is the difference? - therein lies the moral issue in abortion. No matter where ons stands on it, there, but for a mishap (whether by abortion or miscarriage), is a human being. Pro-choice ignore this completely, along with the pain of many women who have had abortions lawfully. I am definitely pro-life, but neutral about the legal position, because whatever the law says, as humans we always have a choice to make and/or exercise, (whether legally or not). E.g. I have a choice to beat up a person that I do not like, or even to kill them, but the law prevents me from doing so. Therefore abortion being legal does not remove the dilemma of the effect of the act on the foetus, and whether or not it (foetus) requires protection from harm just as I, a fully formed and visible human being, do. For every woman proud of her abortion, there are 8 who are not. This is an issue that just will not go away, as medical science pushes the frontiers even further.

People like Ms Williams and the 'abortion rights' group she supports have an audacity labelling their opponents as 'anti choice'. Indeed they are the ones who oppose an informed choice. They oppose a public inquiry, blatantly ignoring the existence of women who are not so proud of their abortions. They knowingly lie and mislead, denying any medical facts that are not so favourable to their support for unrestricted abortion. Indeed they will not be happy until we are all laughing and joking about foeticide.

Leaving that aside her witterings about genealogy and the derision of those who are interested in tracking their ancestry as being on a par with those who view ‘animal porn’ sum up the bigotry and shallowness of this loathsome individual. Earlier this year she made infantile comments about the eating of ready meals (what the Americans call ‘TV dinners’) as being a result of ‘social progress’ – namely her beloved and oh so bourgeois ‘feminism’. Glad that one shallow person is so content and smug in a shallow capitalist society where people have no time to prepare a proper meal.

Journalists were once supposed to be public servants. The smug and privileged Williams, on the other hand, is nothing but a public menace.