Sexual Health

Learning of the day: it was not Voltaire who said (or wrote)  "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" but his biographer, Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who used it as a summation of Voltaire's views on freedom of speech - at least that's what Wikipedia tells me. I was looking it up following the news that the Life organisation, which is opposed to abortion in all circumstances, has been invited to join the government's Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV.

 I am deeply opposed to the anti-abortion / sexual abstinence lobby on both moral and ethical grounds and also the evidence that promotion of sexual abstinence just does not work. But I will support Life's freedom of speech and membership of the Advisry Group as we all need to listen to all opinions, and there is a danger that pushing some views underground will lead to some of the civil unrest and criminal acts we have seen in the United States.