r/WelcomeToGilead

A bit of weekend positivity and good emotions thread, friends!

Sending hugs to those who need hugs🤗

I braced for suspicion. Instead, I found curiosity. People didn’t seem bothered that I was there to write about them. Quite the opposite. They were eager to tell their stories.

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Reform UK’s candidate in the Makerfield by-election claimed women have abortions for “vanity reasons” and so they can “shag who they want”. He says women lie about being raped to justify having abortions.

Self-declared sexist Robert Kenyon posted, “Abortion is the cowardly act of murdering a defenceless baby and not having to face up to it cause a Dr did it. They don’t want babies? Use contreception!” (his typos).

Why are Reform UK obsessed with women’s bodies?

The likes of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage once took an entirely pragmatic approach to abortion rights. Today, they are both deeply hostile to the right to choose.

Farage says it is “utterly ludicrous” to allow abortion up to 24 weeks and the law is “totally out of date”.

Back in 2022, Reform MP Danny Kruger said he disagreed with MPs who “think that women have an absolute right to bodily autonomy in this matter” “Whereas I think in the case of abortion that right is qualified by the fact that another body is involved,” he said.

James Orr, academic and Reform UK’s head of policy, is a fervent opponent of abortion rights in all cases.

He claims, “Britain has one of the most extreme abortion regimes in the world, 24 weeks, we’re up there with North Korea, China and, God help us, Canada—this wasn’t extreme enough, that we should be pushing for 37 weeks, 38 weeks”.

Opposition to abortion is not popular. But abortion rights are being fashioned into a unifier and a mobiliser for the global far right.

They share a commitment to the Great Replacement Theory and the misogyny that sees women as incubators unworthy of individual rights and freedoms.

Orr’s views connects him to the most influential evangelicals in Trump’s circle. US vice president JD Vance calls Orr his “English philosopher king”.

Orr joined the Holy Trinity Brompton Church, which is funded by Paul Marshall, the billionaire who owns GBNews, Unherd and the Spectator.

In the 1980s, Holy Trinity Brompton launched the Evangelical Alpha Course which has reached tens of millions worldwide.

Marshall donated £1 million to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a group co-founded by Jordan Peterson in 2023 to promote “Western values” and find alternatives to “woke” ideologies.

Orr was a member of ARC’s advisory board and helped organise ARC’s first London conference in 2023.

Orr was also an advisor to then Conservative MP Danny Kruger. He also made contact with Silicon Valley “broligarch” Peter Thiel, CEO of Palantir Technologies and another hard right evangelical.

Orr hosted Silicon Valley titan Peter Thiel in Cambridge for a series of lectures which he hailed as “the highlight of our academic year”.... (More details in article)