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A LIFELINE
The press has been reporting that the Government is now to adopt a policy on abortion. This is not the case. What has happened is that the Government is re- sponding to. widespread public dissatisfac- tion about the way the issue of abortion has been treated in Parliament.
There have been 14 attempts to reform the 1967 Abortion Act, all of them de- signed in different ways to reduce the number of abortions. All these Bills have been passed in the House of Commons, but none of them has reached the statute book. The reason for this is that, because abortion is a 'conscience' question, legisla- tion concerning it has to be introduced in private member's Bills. This in turn has meant that the Bills have not been able to command government time, and so their opponents have succeeded in talking them out. This has rightly enraged many people: hundreds of thousands have written to protest. The Government has therefore decided to make available in its forthcom- ing Bill on embryo research a space for an amendment reducing the maximum num- ber of weeks at which an abortion may be Performed.
But the Government is not adopting its own abortion policy. It is simply providing the time necessary for Parliament to de- cide. The Labour government did some- thing similar in 1967 when it made room for the passing of Mr David Steel's original Bill. On this occasion, the Government Will allow a private member's amendment to be incorporated into the legislation. There will be a free vote on the amend- ment and, indeed, on the entire Bill. This is surely the right way to proceed.
A variety of amendments will be tabled by Miss Ann Widdecombe and by .Mr David Alton. The present 28-week max- imum will be replaced, the Bill's authors hope, by a maximum of 18 weeks, but they will also allow the Commons to vote on a maximum of 20 weeks or of 22 weeks, and are confident of carrying at least this last. Exceptions will still be permitted for cases of severe handicap and for girls under the age of 18 made pregnant by rape.
It is hard to understand why such modest reform arouses such implacable opposi- tion. Although it is true that Miss Widde- combe and Mr Alton are against abortion in principle, it should not be so difficult for a supporter of abortion to vote for the changes. The present 28-week limit is considerably higher than that in almost all other countries. Most supporters of abor- tion presumably think that it is a regrett- able necessity rather than a positively good thing. They cannot be proud of the fact that Britain has about 170,000 abortions every year. They cannot argue that the reduction to 18 weeks will make abortion appallingly difficult for those who want it: the Bill's authors reckon that it would only reduce the numbers by about 8,000 a year. Anyone who is agnostic on the subject should reflect on what is being done when a foetus is aborted at 24 weeks. A human creature is being killed which not only has the entire potential of a human life, not only has all the major organs (that is true after as few as 12 weeks), but which even has the ability to live outside the womb. The agnostic should in particular consider the Carlisle baby case of 1987. A 21-week- old baby was aborted. It was found to be alive. The baby was left gasping for three hours on a kidney dish before it died. During this period, a horrified nurse bap- tised it. The baby was not registered as a birth or a death. The mother was not told what had happened. The case only came to light because the nurse told the hospital's Roman Catholic chaplain, who in turn, without revealing any names, made the case public. The priest's contract as chap- lain has not been renewed. Advances in science have made abortion more possible, but now they are making it look more dubious. Life can be preserved from such an early stage; and now that people can actually see, because of scans, what the foetus looks like, they are less likely to feel that it can be discarded like some neutral and superfluous lump of flesh.
Proper parliamentary debate and proper legislation should also encourage the pub- lic to see the question for the important moral issue which it represents. Often in private argument about abortion, someone will say to the person opposing it, 'Are you a Roman Catholic?' as if opposition to abortion arose from something obscure and exclusive like the Jewish dietary laws. It is indeed to the credit of the Roman Church that it has identified itself so closely with the cause of the unborn, but it is important to recognise that abortion presents a moral challenge not only to Catholics, not only, even, to Christians, but to everyone who claims to value human freedom and human rights. 'A woman's right to choose' is the slogan of the supporters of abortion, but it has not been explained why women (or men) can have rights of life and death over existing, innocent human creatures, or why, if they do have such rights, these should stop at 28 weeks, or at birth itself.
There is another advantage in the Gov- ernment's decision. By incorporating abor- tion into the Bill on embryo research, everyone is reminded of the connection between the two. That is the right context in which to debate 'Warnock' and after.
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