COULDN'T HAPPEN HERE, COULD IT?
on the debate that journalists largely ignore
The media: Paul Johnson WHAT is the outstanding under-covered news story in Britain today? I can give it to you in one word: abortion. You can't say the same of the United States. There, it is true, powerful newspapers would like to hush things up and their treatment of the issue is certainly one-sided, but they are forced to cover it by the sheer intensity of the public debate. In fact it is probably now the biggest issue in American politics. And rightly so, for with the end of the Cold War it is, perhaps, the most important battle being waged about the nature of our civilisation. Last week Cardinal O'Connor of New York gave the debate new impetus by arguing, in a 20,000-word article in his diocesan journal, that it might be necessary to excommunicate Catholics who are not only 'perceived as treating church teaching on abortion with contempt' but support pro-abortion legislation and help to make taxpayers' money available for acts the Church condemns as wicked.
One of the offenders the Cardinal has in mind, I dare say, is Governor Cuomo of New York State. The London Times de- scribes him as a 'devout' Catholic. I don't know why. This is the politician who refused to condemn the homosexual- abortionists' demo in St Patrick's Cathed- ral in which a consecrated host was dese- crated — he thought it might lose him votes — and supports the public funding of pregnancy-terminations. Operators like Cuomo have hitherto traded on their reli- gious status to corral the Catholic vote while feeling free to ignore their Church in fishing for the suffrages of anyone else. The Cardinal rightly reminds them that Catholicism is not about political horse- trading but about truth, faith and morals and that the Church has the duty to expel those who reject its beliefs. Needless to say, in the United States telling the blunt, awful truth in public is a rare event and what the Cardinal said has excited fearful cries of rage, fear and pain among the hedonistic multitudes of the City of Gotham. He has already been accused of seeking to revive the Spanish Inquisition.
Over here there is no such ecclesiastical prince as O'Connor to take on the massed battalions of the modem world. The Angli- can Church has long since thrown in the sponge over abortion and related issues. When the question of the morality of research on human embryos — unborn children — came up in the House of Lords recently, only six of the 25 bishops who sit in there even bothered to vote and they divided four-to-two. The latest Anglican pronouncement, by the Bishop of Glouces- ter, was that abortion is 'a grave moral evil' but permissible if the circumstances are difficult. If 'progressive' opinion moves in favour of infanticide (by no means impossi- ble the way things are going), will Anglican prelates soon be trudging concernedly be- hind it? The Catholic bishops have so far stood firm against the slaughter of unborn life but they lack an outstanding leader who can make his voice heard and heeded.
Meanwhile the media dodges the issue. As the Catholic Bishop of Middlesbrough pointed out in a letter to the Times last Saturday, the public has been given the impression that abortions can now be performed legally only up to the 24th week of pregnancy, whereas in fact the amend- ments recently passed to the Embryology Bill will have the consequence of allowing such operations right up to birth in a range of cases. The abortion industry has been given a green light to do, in effect, what it wills. A fully formed child can be ripped from its mother's womb, screaming and gasping for breath, and then coldly butch- ered on the waiting slab by men and women — 'specialists' — whose sole job in life is performing such lawful operations.
The horrors and details of the abortion industry have never, so far as I know, been fully exposed either in the press or on television. What, exactly, goes on inside an abortion clinic? How does the money change hands, and who gets paid what? What does a skilled, professional, legal abortionist earn in a year? Is it true that the speed at which abortions are performed varies enormously, and that some doctors — using drastic methods — can get through many more than their squeamish colleagues, and earn more accordingly? How many unborn children does a really top-notch quick-kill abortionist rid the world of in a year, and what is his income likely to be? Is it true that a fast, hard- working abortionist can dispose of more living human creatures during his career than the late Dr Eichmann? Then again, how exactly does the killing take place? Is it true that many of these unborn children scream with pain and fear as they are assaulted? What happens to their bodies? Are they buried or incinerated? What efforts are made by the authorities to inspect these institutions and ensure that they observe the law, such as it is? Have there been any prosecutions for infringe- ments? And what about the profits where do they go? What are the relations between the abortion industry and MPs who support its interests in the Commons? Are all those politicians who vote for easier abortions solely concerned, as they claim, for the `rights' of the mother who wants to get rid of her unwanted child?
These are some of the questions — there are plenty more — that are not only not answered but seldom even asked by the media. We all know that the issue is a difficult one, and that immensely powerful arguments can be ranged on both sides. But silence plays into the hands of those who run the institutions which, ceaselessly, day after day, week after week, year after year, are processing the innocent unborn. I think a great many people are vaguely uneasy about the issue: they know there is something wrong, that things are taking place in this country which they ought not to condone and which, if brought into the light of day, would compel the public to rise up in wrath and say, 'These things must cease.' But they still their consciences by averting their gaze and the media makes this cowardice possible by itself turning the other way. Thus did the Germans permit the death-camps to function: they too operated round the clock, year after year while people who considered themselves decent human beings tried not to know about their existence. But at least the Germans could argue that the media was government-controlled, the Gestapo was everywhere and that those who spoke out would end up in the camps themselves. We have no such excuse.
Previous page
