Tolerance and diversity are magnificent as long as you are a sandal-wearing , muesli-eating newstatesman reader. However, if you are a pro-life Catholic ... By the way Life strongly believe in sex education.

So much for privacy, dignity and autonomy.
This does seem to fly in the face of all our concerns about the control of personal data..even the Information Commissioner has been raising these same concerns about being careful to find out how one's data may be used by other concerns - dodgy data bases and unkempt lists, for example.

One wonders how the individual can continue to thrive if one's important personal decisions are to be made without any kind of privacy.

Everyone is entitled to make decisions in private and having listened to Mr.Obama's speech earlier today -I just think if it's all hands on deck with regard to us here in the UK and the USA -then surely the first job is to sort out the position of this so-called security state and all it might effectively entail - in the face of our rights as individuals to be let alone as we think about what our choices may be in any event.

But I think the basic bone of contention between conflicting opinions about abortion seems to be about what time during the process of pregnancy do we consider a woman to actually consist of two people and not one..I mean - it seems some think the pregnant woman is no longer one person in her own individual capacity and that the state is in charge of the child within her and that she must yield accordingly because eg the baby comes first - an excuse which, depending on the quality of the advisor/counsellor might be really designed to make one feel unimportant in one's own right as a fully sentient human being.

However as far as I understand the individual legal position of an unborn baby remains unborn, so to speak until the time of actual, dareIsay natural labour begins.

And where is the outcry from "Liberty" or the Labour party??
Not only this government is rolling back the State and letting religious groups fill the gap, there is hardly any opposition to it.
Soon education will be in the hands of nuns and priests and social welfare in the hands of the Salvation army. Wait.. it is happening now.
we are regressing back to the Middle ages when the poor, the young and the sick were at the mercy of the Church.
I fought for the right to legal abortion. To see this happening makes me very sick.

@chrissie the point of comprehensive sex education is that you are taught everything including abstinence.

Daniele, the reason there is no outcry from Labour is because they were at the forefront of giving religious groups a bigger say in the way we are governed. Frank Field is a Labour MP, after all. And Labour were not shy of introducing plenty of controls over sexual freedom and expression.

The real question is why are the Lib Dems sitting back and allowing this sort of thing to go unchallenged? Oh, wait... we all know the answer to that.

It seems that as far as sex, sexuality, sexual freedom and control of our own bodies are concerned, there is no political party we can rely on.

Orange Booker, the reason the anti-choice pro-abstinence groups shouldn't have a say in the debate on sexual health, is the same reason the BNP and the EDL shouldn't have a say in the debate on anti-racism.

These groups oppose sex education, abortion provision, contraceptive access, and any sex education that goes further than "Nice girls don't do it till they're married."

Allowing the EDL and the BNP a seat at the table to explain how they think England should be white-dominated would be profoundly illiberal. Allowing anti-choice pro-abstinence groups a seat at the table to explain why they think women shouldn't be allowed to decide how many children to have, and girls shouldn't expect to enjoy sex, is as profoundly illiberal. The people who only want to attack the rights and wellbeing of others shouldn't be allowed a government platform to do so.

@Yonmei

Firstly, I'm not sure the comparison between pro-life/anti-abortion groups and the BNP/EDL is necessarily appropriate. The latter have an agenda based on hate fear and ignorance that seeks to exclude. The former (by and large) have a positive message about the value and sanctity of human life. I just happen to think (a) this is misguided/unrealistic and (b) they have no mandate to impose thier views on wider society.

Secondly, I know some people (mainly in my family) who are very pro-life and I have robost debates with them where I argue that ultimately women should have the ultimate say over their bodies. However even their views concerning abortion, contraception and sex education are far more nuanced and sophisticated than the caricature you've drawn in your post (not that it is completely wrong mind).

Finally, I think the abstinence argument is one that deserves to be aired and judged on its merits and not rejected outright. There is no reason a successful strategy to tackle unwanted teenage pregnancies and the spread of STDs could not combine a number of views and approaches.

I had a pretty "worldly" sex education at my catholic school. Some friends who went to a secular state school were taught how to orally apply a condom (with a banana serving as a prop). What I'm getting at is that I don't see there being a sex education defecit, and yet we have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies and STDs in western europe. Some "abstinence" might be useful. This does not mean some creepy "silver ring thing" type scheme as in the US or telling girls they are wrong to enjoy sex aka "slut shaming", but encouraging boys and girls to wait a bit longer and/or be more discerning as regards sexual partners.

Ultimately "abstinence" is a loaded term with negative connotations (as you've demonstrated). Maybe "esteem focus" would be a better term. What I mean is that given the current state of failure, I don't see why alternatives should be dismissed out of hand.