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The Church of England has been criticized for failing to speak out on abortion. Its new stance comes after it emerged that most women oppose efforts to liberalize the law.
Society is ‘broken,’ according to Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He has warned that middle-class parents damage children by pressuring them to over achieve and to take too many extracurricular activities. He urged parents who both work to put their children before their careers.
Dr. Williams said in an interview, “Two working parents can be fine if they know how to structure the time their children need. It’s no so much the fact of working, it’s the all-consuming nature of a lot of work expectations.”
“Children live crowded lives. We’re not making their lives easier by pressurizing them, whether it’s the claustrophobia of gang culture or the claustrophobia of intense achievement in middle-class areas.”
The Archbishop also called for tighter abortion laws as he signaled a tougher stance on moral issues by the Church of England.
Dr. Williams said Britain was a ‘broken society’ that could be fixed only with urgent action by the government and the Church to restore a sense of moral integrity.
He added, “The nation generally is getting more unhappy about the high level of abortion here.
People are not happy about abortion as a back-stop to contraception. It’s not like having a tooth out.”
The Church of England has been criticized for failing to speak out on abortion. Its new stance comes after it emerged that most women oppose efforts to liberalize the law.
A survey showed seven out of ten British citizens want to see the time limit at which abortion is allowed from the 24-week limit to the European average of 12 weeks.
The poll, carried out on behalf of the anti-abortion group, Life, also revealed that six out of ten people are against plans to make it easier to get abortion early in pregnancy by cutting the number of doctors who must give their approval from two to one.
It also found that nine out of ten women want doctors to be legally obliged to offer counseling and alternatives to abortion for pregnant women seeking a termination.
Last year the number of abortions in Britain topped 200,000. Which means that one in four pregnancies ends in termination.
Dr. Williams also called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to impose tough constraints on medical experiments on human embryos, adding that he is against euthanasia both ‘morally and religiously’.
