Law For The Irresponsible

Despite the insistence by some neonatal consultants that significant numbers of children born before 24 weeks survive if they are treated at top specialist centres — as many as 42% — Health Minister Dawn Primarolo will today tell MPs on the Select Committee of Science & Technology that she sees no evidence for a change in the law on abortion.

Forty years ago, Lord David Steel was influenced by the reading of Alice Jenkins' polemic, Law for the Rich, highlighting how rich or educated women were getting round the abortion ban by claiming their life was threatened by the danger to their mental health, while "ordinary" women were left turning to backstreet abortion clinics or to self-induced abortions at home, resulting in the deaths of 30 to 50 women a year.

Today, a whole generation's experience of this shadowy alternative is limited to their viewing of films such as Vera Drake and abortion has almost become a way of life or an alternative to contraception, with almost a quarter of all pregnancies ending in an abortion — 193,737 were carried out in the UK last year, an increase of 3.9% on the year before, with almost a third (32%) performed on women who had already had at least one previous pregnancy terminated and 19-year-olds the most likely of any age group to have an abortion — and this despite the introduction of the morning-after pill.

Thus, the 1967 Abortion Act no longer seems to be about saving the lives of pregnant women dying at the hands of back street abortionists or by suicide but instead appears to have become a law for the irresponsible. Yet, at the end of the day, whether you have greater sympathy for the pro-choice or the pro-life lobby, as Lord Steel notes, abortion itself is not the problem. The problem is the unwanted pregnancy. However, sex education and availablility of contraception have done nothing to prevent this trend. Instead, we will only really be able to tackle the issue when we see a shift in culture away from today's individualistic society towards one in which each person acknowledges that they have a place in a network of relationships radiating out from the family to the wider community and that even their individual and private decisions have an impact on this network.

Fight Against Government Suppression

Much as I personally hate smoking, I wish Britain's newest political party, FAGS, every success. The smokers' equivalent of UKIP was launched by Hamish Howitt, who last night was served no less than seven separate court summonses at his Happy Scots Bar in Blackpool for flouting the recently introduced law banning smoking in enclosed public spaces.

Fight Against Government Suppression is of course right to remind people that the government broke its manifesto pledge to restrict the ban on private clubs and pubs to those serving food. When the issue reaches them, as it surely inevitably will, I suspect that the more liberal European Court of Human Rights will also delight in taking the opportunity once again to assert its supremacy over our federal national Parliament. However, the real issue is actually nothing to do with smoking — it is about enforced uniformity. Which is why I hope FAGS becomes so much more than just a single issue party.

For there are so many ways in which we have all been suppressed by NuLabour's nanny state-cum-police state mentality and the fight against government suppression needs to be waged on all fronts. Take the recent issue of the Sexual Orientation Regulations. Mr Howitt claims that his non-smoking customers may go next door to his smoke-free karaoke bar. Quite so. Just as the Catholic adoption agencies suggested that they could continue their previous practice of directing homosexual couples to the non-Catholic adoption agencies next door. Just as doctors who do not wish to carry out an abortion may, at present, point some of their patients towards other doctors who are prepared to assist them. But in modern socialist Britain, we must all conform to the one model. One size must fit all. As the Shadow Attorney General Dominic Grieve put it in the current issue of The Difference, the Government appears to believe that "greater diversity needs greater restrictions of freedoms, so that all will conform to a Government dictated framework."

No, enough is enough. We should not be forced to conform. We should all be treated with respect and have the freedom to choose.

"Conformity means death for any community.
A loyal opposition is a necessity in any community."
Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow (Pope John Paul II)

BMA Ethics Petition

There is growing public unrest about the growing number of abortions and specifically about:

1. The 24 week upper age limit for abortions – many feel this should be reduced
2. The fact that abortions for handicap are available up until birth
3. Doctors being placed under pressure to be involved in abortion
4. The increasing evidence that abortion has adverse consequences for mental health
5. The inadequacy of counselling currently available for women seeking abortion

Despite this the British Medical Association (BMA) Ethics Committee is pressing for further liberalisation of the abortion law to allow abortion on request up until twelve weeks.

The BMA is to vote on these proposals at its annual representative meeting in Torquay on Wednesday 27 June.

If you believe that the 1967 Abortion Act should be reviewed in the light of advances in scientific understanding and changes in public opinion and that this should be done in a properly considered, evidence-based way before the BMA considers changing its policy on abortion, then you may wish to sign a petition requesting the BMA to reject the Ethics Committee proposals, calling instead for a properly evidence-based review that involves full consultation with its members and all frontline doctors:

Petition to BMA on Abortion

Undignifying Research?

The Independent reports that Britain's top scientists are calling on the Government to lift a ban on the use of embryos created from human eggs and animal sperm.

In actual fact, the Academy of Medical Sciences report, Inter-species embryos, does not go as far as making any such explicit call. It simply notes, "The reasons for banning the creation of hybrid embryos for in vitro experimental use, while permitting research involving other types of human embryo incorporating animal material, are not clear to us, but we are not aware of any current scientific reasons to create such entities," adding elsewhere, "However, given the speed of this field of research, the emergence of scientifically valid reasons in the future cannot be ruled out."

Somewhat ironically, though, in making their case for proceeding with research on other kinds of hybrid and chimeric embryos, they use an argument that could equally undermine respect afforded to people who are disabled or elderly. For they argue that human "dignity arises from the qualities possessed by a creature, rather than species membership per se." Explaining their point in more detail, they state:

"We judge it unlikely that ‘human dignity’, a phrase used to emphasise the special moral status and importance of human beings, derives simply from species membership. If the concept of ‘human dignity’ has content, it is because there are factors of form, function or behaviour that confer such dignity or command respect. Either hybrid creatures would also possess these factors or they would not. If they do possess these factors, they would also have a specific type of dignity analogous or identical to human dignity that other creatures lack; if not, they would not."

However, they do not define what these mystic "factors of form, function or behaviour" are. If we can justify excluding human rights from individuals who because of their immaturity lack certain undefined "factors of form, function or behaviour," then what is to prevent us from excluding those same rights from individuals who because of physical or mental impairment also lack those same factors?

Conversely, if human rights are rightly extended to the physically disabled, the mentally impaired, and individuals in a persistent vegetative state, and if "human" rights are even to be extended to great apes and robots, on the basis of "the qualities possessed by a creature" though they do not even share "species membership" with us, then how can we justify excluding those same rights from individuals who because of their immaturity lack certain undefined "factors of form, function or behaviour"? Or, to encroach on the abortion debate, at what point of maturity do embryos acquire the necessary "factors of form, function or behaviour" to merit their protection from needless destruction? At present, the creation and use of human embryos for research is not permitted beyond 14 days in vitro. In order to be consistent, should the time frame allowed for human embryo research be extended to 24 weeks to match that for abortions, should the time frame for abortions be reduced to 14 days to match that for in vitro experiments, or should some other compromise be reached?

China's Forced Abortions

Having been away for a long bank holiday weekend, I am just now catching up on some of the news and comment that I missed. Probably the most interesting is this from yesterday's International Herald Tribune:

Corruption in China: The anger boils over

For the past two months, local officials in the southwestern Chinese province of Guangxi have pursued a harsh campaign aimed at enforcing China's population planning laws.

In order to meet targets for allowable births, they forced pregnant women to have abortions. They threatened to demolish homes to make residents cough up fines demanded for excess children.

This month citizen anger boiled over. Thousands of angry rural residents took to the streets, smashing cars and sacking government offices.

Examining the reasons for the social unrest, Carl Minzner, international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, concludes that official abuses and riots in Guangxi are natural outcomes of China's authoritarian controls and warns that if Chinese leaders are serious about addressing these problems, they need to undertake institutional reform.

Sadly, if our Foreign Secretary's recent visit is any indicator of the kind of international pressure being placed on China, local demonstrators are going to have an uphill battle before they see any substantial improvements.

Baby Sex Tests

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Conscientious Objectors

"It is increasingly difficult to recruit doctors to abortion services. Within five to seven years, a woman's ability to get an abortion will be more shaped by the service's ability to provide them rather than the state of the law." [British Pregnancy Advisory Service]

News of a big increase in the number of doctors refusing to carry out abortions represents an interesting development in the pro-life, pro-choice debate. If women really do find themselves unable to obtain an abortion, doctors' rights will be added to the pot of women's rights and unborn babies' rights ... I suspect things could get messy – especially for health professionals working in the NHS, who may find themselves less free to choose than those in the private sector – nurses as well as doctors, if they come under pressure to perform abortions.

When is a Life Viable?

Fact #1: Amillia Taylor was born on 24 October 2006 weighing just 284 grams, after less than 22 weeks gestation. Today she goes home from hospital.

Fact #2: David Steel, who introduced what became the 1967 Abortion Act, has been calling some time for Britain to fall into line with the rest of Europe, where abortions on demand are only available up to three months into pregnancy.