And so, it has been another rotten week for the right to life. Last week I ended with the proposed decriminalisation of abortion for England and Wales, and unfortunately it came to pass.
This happened last Tuesday, getting the week off to a grim start. It proved yet again how permissive abortion laws are inevitably widened. This was more than the slippery slope, it felt like the abyss. The story dominated in the UK media, but in Ireland, coverage was minimal. I still can’t find any trace of RTÉ or Newstalk covering the story. A case of ‘Don’t frighten the horses’ perhaps? The idea of abortion just before birth would probably be too extreme for most who voted away the unborn child’s right to life in 2018. Press Preview (Sky News, Tuesday) pored over the events of the day and how it would be covered in the next day’s paper. I generally value the opinions of journalist Jenny Kleeman, who could, I think, be described as a moderate liberal, but not this time, as she favoured the change in legislation. She felt that it was compassionate and catered to women in domestic abuse and trafficking situations. In fact, it facilitates abusive partners forcing mothers to have abortions. She was quite clear that we were dealing with a baby.
Even more usefully, she gave an insight into the nature and effects of the legislation – she maintained that late term abortions were not now legal, but merely that mothers would not be prosecuted. Abortion providers would still be breaking the law and subject to criminal sanction. As late abortions would need medical or surgical intervention, it’s hard to see how this new regime would actually work in practice. Further, law is educative, so attitudes will change for the worse I suspect. The Pro-Life movement is always more sympathetic to the mother and more interested in stopping the abortion providers, so perhaps there might be a flicker of hope.
The other contributor on that show was Henry Hill of ConservativeHome.com. He was opposed to the new legislation and spoke frankly of the baby being “killed”. However, I couldn’t agree with his notion that there had been up to now a “consensus” in the UK relating to abortion – he feared this new law would be extra divisive and lead to US-style culture wars. He criticised the questionable parliamentary process involved – the Government had no mandate for it, and it was inserted as a sub-section in a criminal justice bill. “Not a good way to be making law”, agreed Kleeman. It’s not the first time we have seen such sneaky stuff. I well remember abortion related legislation being passed here in the dark of night.
The week was horribly bookended with another dark vote in the UK Parliament – a vote in favour of assisted suicide legislation. This was a much tighter vote, with the political and medical opposition being quite considerable. Most programmes I heard interviewed speakers from both sides of the argument. For example, on Sunday (BBC Radio 4) we heard from the Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool John Sherrington, who stressed the sacredness of life from conception to natural death, expressing concern about the dangers of coercion, treatment of the disabled and the freedom of institutions to offer a zone free of assisted suicide. Rabbi Jonathan Romain also subscribed to the sacredness of life, but took the pro-choice line, said a lot about horrible deaths and avoiding suffering, but didn’t really address the societal consequences. On Times Radio news bulletins last Saturday, campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen said that the House of Lords had a “duty” to support the bill – a strange take on democracy and smacking of entitlement and individualism. Both offending bills still have to go through the House of Lords.
The right to life is not well respected in the Middle-East conflicts. Last Sunday morning we woke up to the dramatic news of US bombers attacking Iran’s dangerous nuclear facilities. On Sunday Morning (Times Radio) host Adam Bolton said it was “one of those mornings when the world has changed”. Earlier, on Times Radio Breakfast, presenter Calum McDonald said it wasn’t clear if the attack meant a change for better or worse.
President Trump, in a triumphant mood, distastefully invoked God, and is taking chances, but there’s an obvious danger with brinkmanship – you don’t know you’ve gone too near the edge until you’ve fallen off … into another abyss.
