Back Towards The Locus

I don’t write frequently on the subject of abortion – either the philosophical debate or the campaigning of both sides – because I don’t have a fully-formed opinion, and so past attempts have been a little dishonest. Putting this dishonesty into the shade, however, is Nadine Dorries MP.

While attempting to reduce the legal limit she has promoted false information and dishonestly smeared those that oppose her (in one case, accusing a blogger of being a paedophile). She has made no attempt to address the concerns of those who’ve drawn attention to this.

Anyway, an attempt to liberalise abortion laws has failed and Nadine, naturally enough, is pretty happy about it. But what’s this…

“If the MP dubbed by some of the media as “Dr Death”, Evan Harris had got his way, would the country have been a better place tomorrow?”

Balls to “some of the media“: there’s only one article that has called Evan Harris “Dr Death”. A hit piece in the Daily Fail, it claimed that…

“…he has been nicknamed Dr Death around the corridors of Westminster because of his enthusiasm for abortion and voluntary euthanasia.”

So, it’s not the media that has dubbed him “Dr Death”, it’s politicians.

But which politician might have told the Fail this?

The Labour MP Dr Ian Gibson was quoted in the article, but he was against the reduction of the time limit, so it would hardly have been him. The only other quoted MPs were “a Labour MP” – only to say that Harris is “way to the Left of us” – and….Nadine Dorries.

There are two possibilities here…

• The “Labour MP” informed the Fail that politicians have dubbed Evan Harris “Dr Death”. It’s plausible that Nadine was never aware of this nickname, only skim-read the article and posted it on her site without the most cursory research.
• Nadine informed the Fail that politicians have dubbed Evan Harris “Dr Death”. This would mean that she’s either lying in trying to palm it off on “the media” or has the memory of a concussed goldfish.

Either way, Nadine should apologise. Here ends today’s diktat.