MEDIA STUDIES
Yes, the News of the World wants its freak show, but for once someone else confused the facts
STEPHEN GLOVER
Most newspapers fight shy of abor- tion. Like God, it divides readers, only much more bitterly. But occasionally an irresistible story comes along such as the recent destruction of frozen embryos. This gave a reporter called Caroline Phillips, who has recently had a baby at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London, the idea of interviewing Phillip Bennett, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the same hos- pital, for the Sunday Express. Professor Bennett knows a thing or two about abor- tions, having performed some 3,000 of them over ten years.
Thus Miss Phillips, assisted by Greg Hadfield, got one of the stories of the year. By his own account, Professor Bennett was planning to end the life of one healthy twin in utero because its mother did not want two babies. (By the way, this story might have appeared in the London Evening Stan- dard had not that newspaper's recently installed editor, Max Hastings, foolishly Parted company with the enterprising Miss Phillips.) In fact, most of the interview was taken up with Professor Bennett's some- what confused and contradictory ramblings about abortion. The stuff about the twins took up only the first third of the piece.
As we now all know, it emerged two days later that Professor Bennett had already aborted one twin, and so the efforts of anti- abortion campaigners to prevent the opera- tion had been entirely futile. Queen Char- lotte's has subsequently stated that the Sunday Express was aware that the thing had already been done. 'It is true', a hospi- tal spokesman said, 'that Caroline Phillips was told that the operation had been done. We are not accusing the Sunday Express of lying, but we do think there has been a mis- understanding here.' The suggestion that the newspaper had confussed the facts has also been made by several pro-abortion journalists. Mary Riddell in the New States- man wrote that 'a careful reading of the ambiguous initial report in the Sunday Express always suggested that the termina- tion was done and the file closed.'
I can't see this. The interview in the issue of 4 August led me to the opposite conclu- sion. Professor Bennett is quoted as saying that 'killing one healthy twin sounds uneth- ical. But my colleagues and I concluded this week that it would be better to terminate one pregnancy as soon as possible and leave one alive than to lose two babies.' This could imply that the operation is yet to be performed. It is, I repeat, a direct quota- tion, and all parties accept that Professor Bennett had seen and approved the inter- view before publication. He could have changed the tenses in this passage, but he did not. He did make one or two other minor changes.
If anyone confused the issue, it is not Miss Phillips or the Sunday Express. Does it matter? The world believes that Sunday tabloid newspapers bend the odd thing or two, but hospitals and doctors are supposed to be above these practices. On this evi- dence they aren't. There cannot be any conceivable justification for such obfusca- tion. One is left with an impression of moral confusion which is made worse rather than dispelled by a close reading of the interview. Professor Bennett, who is described as a Christian, believes that `broadly speaking it is better not to inter- fere with life' yet he carries out an increas- ing number of late abortions at which other doctors balk. He believes that 'a baby at 20 weeks plus can feel pain' but doesn't think anaesthetic should be administered to the foetus.
Miss Phillips certainly knows how to get her subjects to talk. 'I dismember the foe- tus' Professor Bennett tells us at one point, `pull it apart limb by limb and remove it piece by piece. I don't find it pleasant but I'm of a sufficiently tough constitution to do it.' Can a leading abortionist ever have been so candid in public about his grisly trade? It is as though Miss Phillips has shone a light more brightly than it has ever been shone before on practices which most of us would rather not think about. And now she has shone that light I am inclined to be less sympathetic to Professor Kypros Nicolaides, head of foetal medicine at King's College, London, who says that it is imperative that he and Mandy Allwood, who is expecting octuplets, be left alone to determine the fate of the eight foetuses without the media attempting to influence the outcome.
In particular he wants the News of the World to withdraw from its sponsorship of Miss Allwood who stands to receive a very large sum of money from the newspaper in the extremely unlikely event of all her babies surviving, but much less if only one or two of them do. According to some experts, even her own life may be at risk if she attempts to give birth to all eight babies. Much better abort five or six of them, and give the remaining babies a chance, and Miss Allwood the near certain- ty, of survival. Almost all sensible people appear to be of this persuasion. Even the Daily Mail has accused the News of the World of setting up a 'freak show', and makes much of the allegedly unsuitable character of Miss Allwood's partner, Paul Hudson, a bankrupt who has two other children by another woman with whom he spends alternate nights.
Morally speaking, this is a wonderfully tangled tale. Professor Jack Scarisbrick, chairman of the anti-abortion group Life, says that nature should be allowed to take its course. One can see his point, but of course to be pregnant with octuplets, none of whom may survive a natural birth, is the consequence of misapplied technology not of the workings of nature. In these circum- stances the pragmatic thing might be to set out to preserve as many foetuses as possi- ble. On the other hand, one can appreciate the consistency of Dr Scarisbrick's position, which I take to be the orthodox Roman Catholic one. In this view abortion is always wrong for whatever reason other than to save the life of the mother where that is jeopardised by an unborn baby. Once you exceptionally admit the moral validity of some abortions you are on the road to admitting the validity of many.
One would have to defend the News of the World on the giounds of consistency if it shared Dr Scarisbrick's views. It does not. The newspaper does not believe that abor- tion is always wrong. It has latched on to Miss Allwood not out of any great moral conviction but because it wishes to have the exclusive rights to a story which may put on circulation. It does want a freak show. But what if the octuplets all die? The paper will be blamed for having put pressure on Miss Allwood, and its true motives will be dis- cerned. Anti-abortionists may like to think that the News of the World is serving their ends, but its involvement could do their cause almost as much harm as Caroline Phillips and the Sunday Express have done to the pro-abortionists.
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