There can
be little doubt that abortion is still
the keystone issue in the battle to defend and
uphold respect for all human life. Now, after almost three
decades of ‘easy abortion’, are there some pro-life cracks
appearing in this touchstone of the secular humanist's
worldview? Some months ago, Norma McCorvey (alias Jane Roe),
the woman at the centre of the historic 1973 Roe vs. Wade case,
which effectively legalised abortion in America, reported that she
had found God, left her job at an abortion clinic in Texas, and
turned pro-life. Then Naomi Wolf, darling of the US
feminists, who recently gave birth to a daughter, has said that
the experience has caused her to rethink her pro-choice
rhetoric. Apparently in the midst of morning-sickness, she
realised that the "fetus-is-nothing" argument was untrue! On
the contrary, she realised that the pro-life slogan "abortion
stops a beating heart" was incontrovertibly true. She now
thinks that abortion is "a moral iniquity". And, finally,
Dominic Lawson, as editor of the Spectator, has, after his wife
gave birth to Domenica, their daughter with Down's syndrome, made
a brave and eloquent stand against aborting the disabled by
challenging the prevailing negative attitude of the NHS towards
such children.
Perhaps these are just tiny drops, albeit welcome, in that vast
ocean that is our Western world’s unthinking mix of secular
humanism and political correctness. Nevertheless, the
abortion figures, at least, for England and Wales, have been very
slowly declining over the past few years. Even so, the
recently published official annual total, for 1994, is still a
huge 166,876 abortions (which, on the basis of a 6-day working
week, is still well over 500 every day). And the decrease is
very, very small - only 1,835 less than the previous year.
So, perhaps these are just tiny cracks in an otherwise seemingly
impenetrable pro-choice wall. Can anything of significance
happen in this area until men and women come to appreciate their
true worth and dignity, as well as that of their offspring?
Can anything, other than a robust understanding of the Biblical
doctrine of man, so completely and satisfactorily supply
this? Indeed, it is an awesome responsibility to recognise
that ordinary Christians should have a greater insight into these
problems (and their needed answers) than almost all unbelieving
men.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Authority (HFEA), the UK watchdog of IVF and human
embryo experimentation, has just published its 4th Annual Report,
though if you have seen a copy, you are doing well - it took me
three phone calls before mine was sent, and I'm still waiting for
another of its publications I asked for. Could the HFEA be
incompetent? With 21 part-time members and 22 full-time
staff, you would hope not.
Yet, beneath some bland statements on p. 21 of its Report, there
lurks a shambles of unknown proportions concerning the storage of
frozen human embryos. When the Human Fertilisation &
Embryology Act (1990) was drafted the time-limit for storing these
tiny human beings was five years. The first five-year period
runs out on 21 July 1996 and the HFEA is faced with thousands
(nobody knows the exact number, though tens of thousands have been
mentioned) of ‘orphaned’ embryos.
Why are they ‘orphaned’? Because reports from the
infertility clinics reveal that labels have dropped off embryo
storage vessels, and additional records have been lost, or not
updated so that some of the embryos’ parents, who have divorced,
died, or simply moved house, cannot now be traced. It is
disturbing to learn that these parents, who went to so much
expense and trouble to beget them, can now so easily forget
them. And anyway such a freezing process (which can never be
a proper way to treat human beings) will have hopelessly damaged
and killed many of the embryos already. It's all an ethical
and administrative nightmare.
How can a body, which is given the task of regulating such
profound and contentious activities as IVF and embryo
experimentation, be so myopic and incompetent? Well, I
suppose it’s quite easy really. But can you believe, as its
remit states, that the HFEA is seeking "to ensure that treatment
and research using human embryos are undertaken with the utmost
respect and responsibility"?
What should be done? We are faced again with a dilemma
created by a procedure that inevitably involves the trivialisation
of human life, but the answers here are very difficult and very
few. Perhaps the best solution available is that these
embryos should be unfrozen and reverently buried. But
surely, the long-term answer is to make the creation of such
surplus embryos illegal. Incidentally, the HFEA’s answer to
this dilemma is to get Parliament to recommend an extension of the
storage period - there’s nothing like "putting off until tomorrow"
is there?
Perhaps too much has already been written about the UN World Conference on Women
held recently at Beijing. Undergirding the whole
proceedings, of course, was political correctness. So, for
example, gender was viewed as being a matter of choice, rather
than biologically constructed; motherhood was rarely mentioned;
fathers and husbands were never mentioned. In addition, many
wanted the word 'abortion' expunged because it was seen to have
connotations of denial; instead, it was suggested, it should be
called 'menstrual extraction', because that would make women feel
better!
Nevertheless, not all was so depressing. During the informal
meetings this PC veneer was dropped and women animatedly asked
each other about their children, husbands and brothers (was he
married yet?), and so on. Above all, the African women were
superb to hear talking about the wonders and delights of fertility
and motherhood. For us, it can only be a matter of deep
regret that in the last thirty years we have allowed a few
misanthropes to squeeze out Christian values and Christian
teaching from our schools and replace them with so-called sex
education, or, as it is referred to in Whitehall, 'teenage
fertility management'. Now, a girl's fertility is seen as a
curse of nature that only contraception, backed up by abortion,
can control. This is not sex education, it's antinatal
education. You tell me, when are chastity, fidelity,
motherhood, and so on, ever mentioned positively in our schools?
Euthanasia is not just for the elderly.
The pro-euthanasia lobby is still busy making steady progress by
highlighting specific cases, even though we all acknowledge that
"bad cases make bad laws". Two of their watchwords are
‘pain’ and ‘cost’. If patients are in pain and their care is
costing large sums of money, then both problems can be immediately
solved by "letting them die". Pain is so often a red
herring, as shown by the cases reported below. And anyway we
should be aware of the massive strides made by the hospice
movement in palliative care and the use of analgesics, which have,
by and large, removed the problem of pain for most people.
But we should also realise that there is a real and growing
economic drive for legalising euthanasia. Most Western
countries already have a top-heavy population structure, not only
because the elderly are now living longer, but also because
abortion has ‘taken away’ millions (at least 3 million in the case
of the UK) of our youngsters. Recent figures from the USA
show that 50% of a person’s lifetime health-care costs are spent
in the last 12 months of life - in our economically-driven
society, can you think of a more compelling argument for
legalising euthanasia?
The parents of two-year old, Thomas
Creedon, have applied to the High Court so that
their son can be allowed to die by stopping him from being
tube-fed. The main reason given by Thomas’ parents for this
request is that Thomas, who was brain-damaged in the womb, is in
continual pain. This theme was picked up by much of media,
which portrayed Thomas as "a child in agony". However, one
key aspect of the case, not reported by the BBC and most of the
quality newspapers, was the judgement by Sir Stephen Brown,
president of the High Court’s Family Division, that Thomas "does
not suffer significant pain or distress". Indeed, doctors
caring for Thomas opposed the High Court application. Much
of his apparent distress is caused by his age and his frustration
at not being able to communicate effectively. Others have
since reported that many children like Thomas reach adulthood and
lead "contented lives".
Of course, none of us can consider this an easy case. But
what is our answer? If you ever met them, what would you say
to Thomas’ parents? In the meantime, what can we do?
Perhaps not much as individuals. However, LIFE has offered
the Creedons accommodation for Thomas at Zoe’s Place, the first
and only UK hospice specifically designed to look after newly-born
disabled children, located on the outskirts of Liverpool, but the
parents refused. A similar offer has also be made to, and
refused by, the parents of Ian Stewart. He was born with
only one artery leading to his heart, and an unsuccessful
corrective operation has left him brain damaged, deaf and
blind. “Why”, his mother has asked, “when abortion is legal,
when a mother has a right to end a perfect life, can I, as his
mother, not end this damaged one?” That is a perfectly
reasonable question. But it shows what a tangled web of
medical ethics we have woven for ourselves. And it also
comes as a warning of how easy it is for Christians to adopt the
mores and thought-patterns of our sad, unbelieving world.
Without a clearly thought-out, Biblically-derived ethical
platform, we can so easily drift with our society on its tide of
humanistic secularism and offer it no resistance, no critique, and
no proper charity. What huge responsibilities we have to
ourselves, our children, our churches and our watching world.