Mick Hartley

What's going on in Holland?

Women in the Netherlands who are deemed by the state to be unfit mothers should be sentenced to take contraception for a prescribed period of two years, according to a draft bill before the Dutch parliament.

The proposed legislation would further punish parents who defied it by taking away their newborn infant. "It targets people who have been the subject of judicial intervention because of their bad parenting," explained the author of the bill Marjo Van Dijken of the socialist PvDA. "If someone refuses the contraception and becomes pregnant, the child must be taken away directly after birth."

To which the only possible response is……what?? The phrase "deemed by the state to be unfit mothers" has a terrifying chill about it.

This comes as they draw up plans to criminalise insults to religion:

The intention is to introduce the concept of “indirect insult” and expand an existing law which protects people on the basis of race, age, disability, and sexual orientation to include protection on the basis of religion or “conviction”. This means that remarks directed at Islam, Christianity, Buddism or – depending on your interpretation of “conviction” – even homeopathy and astrology, could be interpreted as indirect insults to people, and prosecuted as such.

According to a commenter on the original story, this law carries a maximum sentence of 12 months, whereas the original defunct blasphemy law carried a maximum 3 month sentence.

And there's the case highlighted by Dhimmi Watch where a classroom booklet for 10 to 12-yr-old schoolchildren compares Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders to Hitler, and his Islam-critical film Fitna to Mein Kampf – though this now, after strenuous objections from the Freedom Party, will be changed.

As chronicled by writers like Ian Buruma, the Dutch tradition of liberalism has been buckling under the strain recently. And the buckling, apparently, continues.