Legal abortion
Sir: I am glad that Mr C. F. Langdon was shocked by the Life advertisement. The complacency of the more vehement supporters of legal abortion is not easily disturbed. I have these comments on the points he makes: (1) He accuses the advertisement of "obliterating all meaningful distinctions, the most important of which is that a foetus and a child are not the same thing. One is potential and the other is actual." This statement is pure nonsense. The foetus is an actual foetus and the born child is an actual born child just as an adolescent is an actual adolescent. The foetus, born child and adolescent are all potential in the sense that they have further development to realise. What they are not is potential biological human beings. A person is no less a biological human being when he is a child in his mother's womb than he is when he is a baby in arms or an old man.
(2) Though the full humanity of the unborn child is something which anyone who has any knowledge of biology can hardly dispute, it is difficult for ordinary people who have never seen an unborn child to appreciate the fact. This is why our advertisements carry photographs of unborn children. One of the children in the Spectator advertisement is indistinguishable in every physical respect from an actually born child. That anyone can look at that photograph and still assert that the unborn child is only " potential " or (to use Lord Soper's felicitous expression) " a piece .of jelly " is beyond comprehension. I make again the point made in the advertisement: Is it not nonsensical to permit the destruction of a child in its mother's womb and to treat the destruction of the same child at the same point in time as a crime should it happen to emerge from the womb alive? It is as though the law punished the killing of a man out of doors but allowed him to be murdered with impunity when he was at home. (3) Mr Langdon appears to be saying that because some unborn children die through spontaneous abortions the law ought to permit the deliberate 'destruction of other unborn children. Which is like saying that because people occasionally die through accidental fires, arson should be permitted by law.
(4) The three quotations, were not, as Mr Langdon asserts, taken out of context. Neither are they in any way untypical. That the Abortion Act keeps illegitimate children off the rates is commonly proclaimed by the abortion publicists as one of its most beneficial results. The same people are also fond of telling us what a simple straightforward business abortion is — easier to have your baby dead than alive (easier on the taxpayer's pocket as well). Arguments like these look less convincing placed in juxtaposition to actual pictures of the carnage they attempt to justify, of course. This is why Mr Richard Crossman now appears to be ashamed of the words he used — as well he might be.
(5) Of course abortion gets rid of
unwanted children. Infant icicle would also get rid of unwanted children. We do not countenance infanticide because it is Unmoral. We ought not to countenance
abortion because it is equally immoral.
This is the point the advertisement is trying to make. The photograph in the Life advertisement speaks more eloquently than thousands of words. Clearly the children shown in this photograph were human beings and clearly they were murdered.
Martin Mears General Secretary—LIFE, Norfolk.
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