Resolution promoting abortion, undermining conscience and perverting sex education gets short shrift at European Parliament

The European Union voted last week to deny acceptance of a draft report which would have established abortion as a human right, and simultaneously squelched conscientious objection as well as established a perversion of sexual education for children.  

In a resounding victory for common sense, following a short but lively debate in the European Parliament, a majority of MEPs voted to refer the highly controversial resolution on the Estrela report back to the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality.

The resolution on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights was presented by Portuguese MEP Edite Estrela (pictured) but her report is said to be the work of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in Brussels.

The fact that it has been referred back to committee implies, that a revised report cannot not be presented until early next year, thus, limiting the time available to the Parliament to deal with it, prior to the next European elections. In other words, this rejection may well be a fatal blow stopping the report’s progress.

The Estrela report  bemoaned the fact that many physicians even in Europe, refuse to participate in abortions:

‘There are cases reported from Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Ireland and Italy where nearly 70 per cent of all gynaecologists and 40 per cent of all anaesthesiologists conscientiously object to providing abortion services… These barriers clearly contradict human rights standards and international medical standards.’

It also recommended that member states:

‘regulate and monitor the use of conscientious objection so as to ensure that reproductive health care is guaranteed as an individual’s right, while access to lawful services is ensured and appropriate and affordable referrals systems are in place’.

In addition to the war on rights of conscience, the defeated measure sought to establish abortion as a human right:  ‘[as a human rights concern, abortion should be made legal, safe and accessible to all’.

And finally, the report recommended that member-states ensure compulsory sex education consistent with the recommendations of the report by the WHO in 2010.  More information about the content of the sexuality standards is available here. I quote:   

‘(The European Parliament) calls on Member States to ensure compulsory, age-appropriate and gender-sensitive sexuality and relationship education, provided in a mixed-sex setting, for all children and adolescents (both in and out of school).’

The standards for sex education referred to include these:

‘ Children aged 0-4 should be informed about: “enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s own body”, “early childhood masturbation”, “different family relationships”, “the right to explore gender identities”, “the right to explore nakedness and the body, to be curious”, etc. and they should develop “curiosity regarding own and others‘ bodies” and “a positive attitude towards different lifestyles”.’

‘Children aged 4-6 should be informed about “enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s own body”, “early childhood masturbation”, “same-sex relationships”, “sexual feelings (closeness, enjoyment, excitement) as a part of all human feelings ”,“different kinds of (family) relationship”, “different concepts of a family”, and should develop “respect” for those different lifestyles and concepts.’

‘Children aged 6-9 should go on learning about “enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s own body (masturbation/self-stimulation)”, but they also should be informed about “different methods of conception” and “the basic idea of contraception (it is possible to plan and decide about your family)”.’

‘Children aged 9-12 should be informed about “first sexual experience”, “orgasm”, “masturbation”, and should learn to “make a conscious decision to have sexual experiences or not” and “use condoms and contraceptives effectively”.’

The standards differentiate between ‘minimum’ and ‘optional’ achievements, but masturbation at age 0-4 is mandatory. In short, this is a programme for sexual initiation beginning at toddler age, and one seriously has to ask oneself whether this kind of sexual education is not in fact a form of systematic and structured child abuse, albeit under a pretext of ‘education’ or ‘skill development’.

There is a conspicuous absence of any genuinely moral attitudes towards sexuality that should be transmitted to the child: no reference to chastity, no reference to conjugal fidelity, only a vague sense that ‘everything is ok if it feels good, is consensual, and doesn’t entail an unwanted pregnancy’.

That attitude, however, appears to be compulsory in the sense that it would appear to be in violation of these ‘Standards’ if parents attempted to transmit to their children any genuine (and in particular Christian) moral values related to sexuality.

We can be hugely thankful to those who were alert to this measure and lobbied so effectively to defeat it. It was a rare victory but a reminder that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. For now, at least, children both born and unborn, have been protected from a great deal of harm.

I’m grateful to both AAPLOG and Patrick Buckley for this report

How to protect your kids from internet pornography

I have just posted a blog on the report from a committee of MPs which makes recommendations about new measures to protect children from internet pornography.

Most of these are targeted at the ISP industry (and not a moment too soon!) but the real need is for parents to take steps themselves.

If you are interested about how practically to do it here is some advice from a Christian medical colleague (and computer whizz!) that I have gleaned today.

How to protect your kids (and yourself!)

Because of the proliferation of connectable devices having software just on a PC is inadequate - the entire home network needs internet filtering.

The best way to achieve this is for the ISP to do it. Out of the 4 main British ISPs (Virginmedia, Talktalk, BT and Sky) only Talktalk can do this at present.

The main system I use is ‘Covenant Eyes’. This is accountability software that I use with a friend. It monitors internet use and alerts your accountability partner if you are accessing inappropriate websites. Once installed it cannot be removed without your accountability partner being alerted. You probably know about this already but the website gives full details. It would be a brilliant thing to do with teenagers. Although there is little need for this if the OpenDNS service is used (see below), it has the advantage of monitoring a device whether it is used at home or elsewhere - OpenDNS only covers your home network.

Second, most mobile phone networks have the ability to turn on web filtering for smartphone use at a network account level. So as long as your kids have mobile phones on your account you can block the inappropriate use of mobile devices through the 3G network.

Third, and this is the really clever way of doing it, a home user can achieve network-wide site filtering by using a service called OpenDNS. A brief, simple explanation of what a DNS Server does can be found at the end of this post.

To set this up you have to create an account on OpenDNS.com, tell OpenDNS about the IP address your ISP has given your ADSL or cable modem, and then edit the settings in your router so you use OpenDNS's DNS Servers rather than your ISP's. They provide good instructions on how to do this, but it's a little technical. The service is free. (There is a more feature-rich service that you have to pay for but for most home networks the free bit is all you need).

As long as you keep the usernames and passwords for both your router and your OpenDNS accounts completely secret there is generally no way past this, even for your bright computer-savvy kids.

Check out www.opendns.com.

What a DNS server does (the technical stuff!)

Every networked device has a unique numerical address - an "Internet Protocol" (IP) address. It is a set of 4 numbers (between 0 and 255) separated by dots. The PC I am typing this on has the IP address "10.0.0.106". My PC at work is "172.22.255.42". When devices communicate over the network they talk to each other using these numerical IP addresses - but they are not very human-friendly! So each device also has a name - my PC is called "Saturn". At some point the IP address and the name need linking, so when I look at my network and see a PC on it called "Saturn" the software knows "Saturn" = IP address 10.0.0.106, and vice versa. This name to IP address translation is done through a database called "DNS" - "Domain Name Service". Every device has to know the address of the computers on their network that hold the DNS database (there's usually 2 - one main one and one backup). A computer holding the DNS is known as a DNS Server. With me so far? Good!

Now, this is also true on the Internet, with the condition that every device connected directly to the internet has to have a worldwide unique IP address. So the computer called "microsoft.com" (that responds when you type"www.microsoft.com" into your web browser) has the IP address "207.46.232.182" - no other computer exposed on the Internet can ever have this address. When you type "www.microsoft.com" into your browser your Internet router that connects you to the Internet realises no device inside your home network has this name so it sends out a request to your ISP's DNS servers which will respond with "the IP address you need is 207.46.232.182". Your router can then find this address on the Internet and you can see the Microsoft website. Every ISP provides all their users with the IP addresses of two DNS server so your router knows were to send the request for name to IP address translation to. For example, VirginMedia provides a primary DNS Server IP address of 194.168.4.100, and a secondary IP address of 194.168.8.100. Everyone using VirginMedia as an ISP will have these 2 IP addresses in the setup of their router so the network knows how to change website names into IP addresses.

A DNS server contains a huge database of website names and IP addresses - billions probably. Every single request to view a website that comes out of any device connected to your home network will go through the DNS server. Here comes the clever bit...

You don't have to use the DNS servers provided by your ISP. For example Google has a couple of public ones that you can use - their IP addresses are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Program those IP addresses into your router instead of the ones provided by your ISP and all your IP address requests will go through Google's DNS servers.

A company called "OpenDNS" provides 2 DNS server addresses for public use. They have built into them the ability to block certain website addresses from being passed back to your network. There is a massive classification database available that classifies millions and millions of websites into certain categories - hate, racist, violence, porn etc. The OpenDNS servers use this classification to allow you to filter website requests. So if I type "www.playboy.com" into my browser, VirginMedia's DNS servers would return "67.215.65.130" and off I go into the Playboy website. OpenDNS (assuming I have an account with them and have set up the filtering to block porn) will refuse to return an address and say the site is blocked. As you will now understand, any device connected to my network (smartphone, PC, laptop, PS3, XBox etc be they mine or guests in my home) will get the same response - "blocked".

MPs call for better protection of children against porn

A cross-party parliamentary has concluded that the government and internet service providers need to do more to stop children accessing pornography and websites showing extreme violence.

The inquiry called on the government to back moves for stronger filters of adult content and also recommended that the government appoint an internet safety tsar.

Their report, according to the Daily Mail, said that six out of ten children download adult material because their parents have not installed filters. The use of protective filters in homes has fallen from 49 per cent to 39 per cent in the last three years.

They concluded that parents were often outsmarted by their web-savvy children and felt unconfident in updating and downloading content filters. Many parents were ‘oblivious’ to the type of material available on the internet and were often shocked when they realised the content that children were accessing.

Claire Perry, the Tory MP who chaired the Independent Parliamentary Inquiry on Online Child Protection, said: ‘While parents should be responsible for their children’s online safety, in practice, people find it difficult to put content filters on the plethora of internet-enabled devices in their homes.It’s time that Britain’s internet service providers, who make more than £3billion a year from selling internet access services, took on more of the responsibility to keep children safe.’

The inquiry called for internet service providers to offer ‘one-click filtering’ for all devices within a year. This would block out adult content for all domestic broadband users and stop them accessing pornography on mobiles and iPads as well as PCs and laptops.

All the big four UK ISPs, BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin, have agreed to offer all new subscribers the option to install parental controls.

TalkTalk is the only major UK ISP so far to have implemented a network level filtering system which offers parental controls for all devices that are connected via the home broadband service.

For those who wish to protect their children from pornography I have posted some advice on the best way of doing it from a Christian doctor colleague friend on this blog.

There is also an excellent article on a Christian approach to the issue in CMF’s journal Triple Helix. The main points are as follows:

'The ready availability of sexual images on the internet has led to an explosion in pornography use and addiction and Christians are not immune from the pressures. By offering stimulation without consequences and intimacy without responsibility, pornography brings unreal and damaging expectations into relationships. Furthermore, by encouraging unfaithful thoughts, the use of porn clearly violates God's commandments and undermines marriage. Warnings from the Old Testament prophets are chillingly relevant today. Christians need to recognise the risks of pornography, seek God's forgiveness for involvement and embrace practical measures that will help them resist the temptation to get involved.'

I was surprised to learn at a church seminar last night that the biggest users of pornography are actually men in the 35-55 age group with salaries over £45,000.

In terms of practical advice (adapted from Christian Viewpoint for Men) I’d recommend the following:

•Place the highest level of filter on your internet.
•Only view the internet in an open place.
•Find an accountability partner to discuss your progress with honestly.
•Install a programme that sends your weekly website hits to your accountability partner (Covenant Eyes is particularly recommended)