WIDESPREAD, justified opposition to the Child Tax Credit “rape clause” has overshadowed the Victorian iniquity of what produced it: restriction of these credits to the first two children in a family, under the Welfare Reform & Work Act 2016. But this whole Conservative policy must be as vigorously opposed as the “rape clause” by other political parties and organisations.

First, because those who suffer will be children, with many more pushed into poverty and need; secondly because it is class-prejudiced, giving a lower value to the existence of children from, as they see it, feckless families on benefits; thirdly because it is based on absurd assumptions, yet will be discriminatory and damaging to the most vulnerable women in our society.

It’s absurd because there is no evidence that parents sit down, discuss and decide whether to have more children depending on the modest child benefits or child tax credits they will – or will not – receive. It is discriminatory and damaging because the women with the largest numbers of children are most often those with least independence or control over their own fertility. Coercive controlling relationships, traditional religious or cultural pressures and strictures, or past sexual exploitation which can destroy self-confidence and a sense of sexual safety, are the main reasons for repeated pregnancies.

This rational world, which Conservative politicians seem to imagine, only happens when there is relative equality in personal relationships between men and women. I did not think I would see the murky world of eugenics reappearing in my lifetime in British family policy. We must all campaign to get rid of this restriction for good.

Sarah Nelson,

Seacraig Court, Newport on Tay.