On September 14th, the Twitter followers of University of Virginia professor William Bradford Wilcox woke up to something dismaying. In a tweet, Dr. Wilcox drew attention to two advertisements put out by the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS). The advertisements implore young teenagers and young adults to use protection during sexual intercourse. Hardly tweet-worthy, you say? Never doubt how frivolous government agencies can get when it comes to family issues. Take a look:
Staggering visions of good life for young men & women from @NHSEngland, esp since English fertility is well below the replacement level. pic.twitter.com/o11RWPjA0G
— W Bradford Wilcox (@WilcoxNMP) September 14, 2018
Essentially, if you are a young man, NHS says you must leave behind all carefree entertainment (including video games) if you become a father. And if you are young lady, you must pick either feminine glamour or the duties of motherhood. And in both cases, the NHS seems to be intimating that the non-baby side of that equation is more desirable. The organization even refers to babies as a “trap” that guys ought to “Bware” (?) of.
Note as well, the ads don’t urge abstinence. That would be too much to ask of Britains’ video-game addled, fashion-besotted youth. No, just contraception.
Many on Twitter and beyond have joined Dr. Wilcox in rebuking the NHS, questioning why the organization believes fun and child rearing are mutually exclusive. Americans United for Life president Catherine Glenn Foster called the ad “sexist and offensive” for its implication that women who become mothers necessarily lose their femininity, and the Daily Mail reports the ad is getting its fair share of criticism on its own side of the pond.
This isn’t the first time the UK government has treated family values with contempt. Back in April, a UK Court of Appeal forbade one-year-old Alfie Evans’ parents from transferring him out of an NHS hospital that was prepared to cease his treatment to a Vatican-run facility where doctors were willing to continue it. Evans passed away on April 28th, still in the “care” of that NHS hospital.
What these incidents demonstrate is that government, when allowed to accumulate mountains of power under a socialized healthcare system, effectively has the power to call the moral shots.
