So who have the DUP gone and replaced Edwin Poots with as Minister for Health, Social Services and Public Safety. Why none other than their member for South Down Jim Wells.
The question is whose health etc will be looking after?
In 2011 the new Health Minister said that the behaviour of those who took part the march at Belfast Pride was "totally repugnant". Now that he is a minister he should not be judging and without evidence generalising such a group of LGBT Northern Irish people, plus their families and supporters. He should be providing health and social services to them without discrimination as well as working to improve their public safety. So yeah this does include proper sex education and that included MSM sex as well as disease prevention. he may not condone the activity but he has budgetary responsibility for the consequences.
But that is that the only group whose health in now in the hands of this man. The following year he said that victims of rape and sexual assault should not be exempt from the strict Northern Irish laws banning abortion. His plan instead, contrary to the opinion of many medical professionals, is that such traumatised women should carry the child full term and offer it up for adoption. This of course means that the trauma of the assault would have to be revisited 9 months after the incident as well as the various times during that period that the mother has to go through pregnancy.
What is worse of course is that Mr Wells made these comments while Deputy Chair of the Health Committee and has long been muted as the replacement for Mr Poots. It looks like we have lost one science sceptic from the health department for one just as, if not more so, sceptical person. Who seems to ignore medical advise, scientific evidence and has a way with language that is ill thought out and offensive to groups which he now has some say over key elements of their well being.
We live in interesting times, but then so was the days of the dinosaurs.
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