Abortion and the value of life

As Parliament prepares today to debate whether or not to lower the abortion time limit, Birmingham's Archbishop Vincent Nichols is being taken to task by the head of SPUC. Archbishop Nichols appears to have given a radio interview  where he implied that the value of an unborn child might not be equivalent to that of a fully-fledged adult human.

This lunchtime, meanwhile, a teenager whose mother was advised to have her aborted 16 years ago because she had polio and was liable to be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life is to make a last minute plea to Gordon Brown to back a lowering of the abortion time limit from 24 to 20 weeks. Antoinette Opeyemi Okoiye, now studying for A levels as well as caring for her mother, Clothilda, will be joined by charity and church leaders when she delivers her petition to Downing Street.  Antoinette is also an accomlished poet and hopes to read English at university.

Comments

[J Pearce]

The abortion debate has, to some extent, been hijacked by sentiment and probably no little religious blackmailing.

All the available evidence from eminent medical colleges suggests that before 24 weeks, the viability of a foetus is negligible. There are only rare exceptions. This limit, introduced in 1990 and based on extremely similar research results, indicates that the limit of 24 weeks on abortion remains a sound, medically-validated limit.

The quantifiable increase in medical skill and knowledge during this time has manifestly failed to yield concomitant improved survival rates for foetuses born before 24 weeks.

I do understand the sentimentality of the debate - given personal experience of prematurity, it is easy to see why many people are touched by the issue.

I personally have held the opinion that the abortion limit should be dropped - but since availing myself of the statistics, they suggest that only a statistical minority of abortions take place after 22 weeks anyway.

So the limit seems sound. Of course, we can safely ignore the contributions of the Catholic Church to this debate, who's only mission is to impose its dogma on the widest section of the populace it can, regardless of personal circumstances. In no way does the RCC actually care about unborn children, in much the same way that it manifestly fails to care about anything but perpetuating its own power base.

[Tom Jackson]

“This limit, introduced in 1990 and based on extremely similar research results, indicates that the limit of 24 weeks on abortion remains a sound, medically-validated limit.”

This debate isn’t about religion; there are many decent, ordinary people who have never seen the inside of a church who are uncomfortable with the 24 week limit.

This debate isn’t about the point at which a child in the womb is able to survive outside that protective environment. That reasoning would support the withdrawal of support from those who are too ill or too old to take care of themselves.

This debate is about terminating the life of a developing being and doing so in the most horrific and soul-destroying manner.

I am ashamed that my country allows such an atrocity to take place on a regular basis, something which our European neighbours consider barbaric and whose own limits – which on average, are set at about 12-14 weeks – reflect more respect and awareness of the value we should place on any human life.

Some time ago, during a similar debate here, I made available photos of my grandson, in the womb at 24 weeks and now, an energetic, mischievous young boy of 17 months. Looking at his image in the womb, his features so clearly defined and recognizable as the young child playing in my garden, maybe people like J Pearce could have dispassionately and without conscience destroyed him in the womb; I don’t think any intelligent, civilized and morally aware person could.

[Dennis Brown]

The criticism of abortion need have no relation to the independent viability of any unborn child. If it is wrong to deliberately end a human life, and if the unborn child is human, then it is wrong to end the life of an unborn child. The gestation age is irrelevant. I am not a Roman Catholic, but I agree entirely with the Roman Catholic and traditionally Christian view. I am ashamed to be British today, and frankly feel disenfranchised. Having started to vote Conservative I no longer feel inclined to. Indeed I no longer feel inclined to vote, rather to pray that the Lord will have mercy on our desperately sick society. New Labour spout on about caring for the most needy in society - they have shown no interest at all in caring for the most needy. Sick. Sick. Sick. We deserve to be overtaken by Islam.

[Father Bryan Storey]

I never see myself as imposing a Dogma as I contribute to debates. I see the challenge to be to share the liberating truths. Abortion imprisons the human spirit.

[J Pearce]

Tom,

I'd be careful about casting aspersions about people's conscience. I've been at the sharp end of an entirely similar situation for several months now; I don't need to be patronised and slated about an issue I probably have more experience with than you will ever have.

Being pro-abortion does not make you some heartless killer. If you look at the stats, you will realise that very few abortions take place beyond 22 weeks anyway; one surmises from this that most Doctors are entirely unwilling to allow abortions after 22 weeks and therefore we have a de facto 22 week limit anyway, despite what the statute book says.

I don't believe in abortion as a contraceptive method; I wouldn't recommend it to anyone; I understand that it must be seriously difficult for any potential mother to make that sort of decision (an issue that the religious seem to want to ignore altogether); but I wouldn't force someone to not have an abortion if that is what they chose to do.

The debate about viability impacts on this, precisely because it acts as a medical barometer about the development of foetuses. If a foetus is not viable at 23 weeks, then medically (I assume) it is not regarded as altogether "human". The religious angle poisons this debate, precisely because it states that an embryo is "human" - which it isn't in any biological sense. And neither does it have a "soul" (another useful myth peddled by religious dogma).

As I said before, I personally have any number of qualms about abortion and I know from personal experience how knife edge the 24 week limit is in terms of survival outside the womb. But there are still morally justifiable circumstances where abortion is the appropriate - or should I say, least problematic - solution to individual problems.

And if people like D. Brown think Islam is the answer to societal problems, he's seriously mistaken. Unless, of course, he actually wants to live under a fascist theocracy.

[Recusant]

J.Pearce

Who made you Pope? Is it possible to pontificate more pompously? Concomitant indeed!

The statistical viability of sub-24 week old pregnancies is misreported by you, most of the press and many partial scientists and lobbyists. Take into account that most births before 24 weeks involve a foetus or uterine environment that is damaged in some way: it is clear that they would have a statistically lower chance of life. The point is:what would be the viability of a healthy foetus at 24 weeks? Not an unhealthy one, which most of the statistics report.

[J Pearce]

Recusant:

Statistics, please. I'd really like to know what your definition of "not unhealthy" is.

[Mike Homfray]

If people wish to believe that a clump of cells is equivalent to a fully grown human they are entitled to. I think its clearly nonsense and sums up the problem with Catholic and Christian social beliefs.

[George Parr]

Nice optimistic and balanced post from Mr Brown then - another hugely gloomy Christian.

Society is 'desperately sick'. 'Sick, sick, sick'. He feels 'ashamed to be British'. He would rather pray than vote because its not worth it. By comparison Islam is a viable alternative and we are all so guilty we deserve to be taken over by it.

Hell's teeth. When are some of these people going to take control of their lives instead of just pinning their hopes on the invisible?

Just have a look around Mr Brown, China, Burma, the Middle East - the list of dire misfortune with which to compare our fat, squabbling lives is endless!

[Peter Farrington]

Mike Homfray, the thing is that an unborn child at 20 weeks is not a clump of cells, nor at 18, or 16. And I am not sure that anyone is saying that even a clump of cells is equivalent to a human being, if you mean the same as a fully developed human being, but it is clearly a human life, since it is alive and it is human. My wife and I considered her to be carrying an unborn child as soon as we discovered she was pregnant, because that which she was carrying in her womb was truly our child, not just a clump of cells.

Taking a bald and inhuman view of things you yourself are just a pile of chemicals and compounds and lots of water. But that misses the point, just as you miss the point when you consider an unborn child a clump of cells. Countless billions of men and women, mothers and fathers, who have anxiously waited and watched their unborn child grow prove you as wrong as you could be.

It has nothing to do with Christian beliefs, since a great many atheists would also believe that what is formed at conception is truly human life. If this tiny, defenceless, needy, unborn human life is of such little value that it can be considered just a commodity, a bunch of cells, then it explains the hopelessness of so much of British society living without a faith in anything or anybody.

Frankly it is frightening, because when human life is considered only in a utilitarian sense then the old, the handicapped, the weak, the humble, are all at risk since they also lack utility.

[Mike Homfray]

And you are entitled to that view Peter - but the problem is that you wish to impose it on others who do not share your view.

You simply cannot grasp that human rights begin at birth, not before, and that the only reason we are talking about limits is because of medical advance.

The priority should be given to those already here. Its hardly as if there is a world population shortage now, is it?

[Tom Jackson]

Your personal indignation, J Pearce, brings nothing to this debate. Many of us have experience which relates to this situation, especially so when you reach the later phase of your life.

Forget the "religious angle"; this is about removing a developing human being from the womb in the most abhorrent and horrific manner, an act - which in any other context - would be considered murder.

Of course, there is a point at which it could be justified to terminate a pregnancy if the circumstances are such that there is no alternative but that limit is far lower than 24 weeks - as many of our more civilised European neighbours recognise!

Viability is a perspective specifically chosen by those who support late abortion to 'spin' the argument their way. The reality is that if you should ever have the misfortune to come across a premature child, abandoned by the roadside, 24 weeks after conception, would you walk on by?

Would you take up a heavy implement and batter that defenceless infant to shreds - a resulting mess which mirrors the results of medical abortion as such a late stage?

Or would you do everything in your power to give the infant a chance or survival and life?

[Robert Ian Williams]

I feel sad that I live in a once Great Nation where the unborn child is less valued than the fox.

[Alison Clegg]

Why has the Church of England been particularly quiet on the Passion for Life campaign or have I been sleeping?

[J Pearce]

Tom,

Your age does not necessarily qualify you as having greater knowledge or experience in all areas of life. And why does my alleged "personal indignation" differ and become less valid than your moral indignation?

Your lack of knowledge is exposed by your theoretical assertion about the premature child abandoned at 24 weeks. The medical reality is that, without immediate - as in, immediately after being removed from the womb - medical intervention, which includes specialist breathing and monitoring equipment at the minimum, no child born at 24 weeks will survive, let alone by a roadside. That is a fact.

So the question of whether I would "walk on by" is irrelevant - the child would be dead. It would have expired seconds after having come out of the womb, due to the fact that - at the very least - its lungs would not have formed to the point where it could breathe unaided.

I know this, because of the fact that I have intimate knowledge of it.

Now, let me ask you, which do you prefer - legalised abortion, where the woman can undergo a sanitised, statistically safe procedure with legal, as well as medical, safeguards. Or do you prefer the criminalised backstreet butcher, where not only is the infant killed, but potentially the woman can bleed to death as a result of a botched "procedure", carried out by a drug addict using whisky and a rusty coat hanger as surgical implements?

I am assuming, given your beliefs, that you condone the latter. Which makes you complicit in religiously sanctioned manslaughter. So much for the sanctity of life, eh Tom?