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· The Bible tells us that all life, of whatever age, race or degree of ability, is uniquely precious, and that life begins before birth
· The number of induced abortions has exploded since the Abortion Act was passed in 1967, to the extent that Britain now has, in practice, abortion on demand
· The abortion culture has not only terminated unborn life, it has cheapened society's attitude to all life in all of its stages.
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Spontaneous or deliberate
The medical profession distinguishes between two types of abortion: those that are spontaneous, and those that are induced.
Most of us, when talking about abortion, mean induced - that is the deliberate destruction of the foetus in the womb. Spontaneous abortion is something altogether different - most people call a spontaneous abortion a miscarriage. It is an additional hurt for those women who have suffered a miscarriage to hear it referred to as an abortion. The medical profession could, and should, find a more sensitive form of words.
This briefing examines deliberate abortion, not miscarriage.
The abortion explosion
The 1967 Abortion Act was viewed by many as a necessary evil, to combat the horrors of illegal back-street abortions. If its supporters envisaged that it would lead to abortion on demand, they did not make that plain.
Yet abortion on demand is now, in fact if not in law, the position that we face. In 1968, 23,641 abortions were performed in England and Wales. By 1998, that had climbed to a high of 187,402. There was a slight drop in 1999, to 183,250. The position is the same in Scotland: 1,544 abortions in 1968; 12,424 in 1998; and 12,144 in 1999. Overall, over 5 million abortions have been carried out in England and Wales alone since 1967.
The Christian Institute's research shows that, of all the abortions performed in 1999, only 1,813 were due to the likelihood that the child would be born handicapped, and only 1,836 were due to the risk of death or severe injury to the mother. The remainder will have been almost entirely performed because of social reasons.
The Bible
Although the unborn child has no legal status in English Law, the Bible makes it clear that God formed us before we were born. Christians regard every human life - regardless of age, race or ability - as being uniquely precious to God. That begins with creation, at conception, not birth.
Psalm 139, vv. 13-16 contains a passage which is as marvelous in its poetry as it is clear in its teaching: "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb."
Likewise, in Luke 1: 44, we are told that the unborn John the Baptist "leaped for joy" in Elizabeth's womb when Elizabeth met Mary who was then carrying Jesus. Also in Luke 1:42 Elizabeth calls Mary "....the mother of my Lord....". Mary is only a few days pregnant. To be a mother she must have a child - the embryo Jesus. His full humanity and deity are already witnessed to; only a few days after conception.
Medical evidence
Most abortions are only permitted until 24 weeks, although some are permitted until the moment prior to birth.
However there is a growing body of evidence that the unborn child may be able to feel and experience pain as early as 11 weeks. By 14 weeks, sensory receptors are present over most of the body's surface. The baby's brain works earlier than that - the brain's waves can be detected from 6 weeks.
'Viability' in premature births is also increasing. Children born as young as at 22 weeks have survived.
Danger to the mother
Parents face an agonizing choice, in circumstances in which they are advised that the mother's life and health are at serious risk unless the pregnancy is terminated. This is an appallingly difficult decision to be forced to make. Many in the pro-life camp accept that abortion must be allowed in such circumstances.
Thankfully, however, such cases are very, very rare. As shown above, the vast majority of abortions do not take place for this reason. This example, although it represents a distressing and hard case, cannot justify the bad state of the law that currently permits so many abortions for social reasons.
Related issues
Our attitude to abortion is likely to determine our attitude to other related life issues. IVF has attracted criticism, because of the way in which "surplus" embryos are produced. The strongest are selected. The weaker ones are often simply discarded and killed.
Likewise, issues such as human cloning, and stem-cell research, can only be adequately considered against the background of these questions: Where does life come from? When does life begin?
The morning-after pill, which prevents fertilised eggs from implanting in the womb, is in effect a form of abortion. However, there are no safeguards to govern its use.
People with disability are also beginning to bridle against abortion. A leading fertility specialist said recently that it would soon be regarded as "a sin" to give birth to a disabled child. Eugenicists try and root out genetic "imperfections". If that attitude prevails, many disabled people would simply not be born. Disabled people are increasingly scared of going to hospital as they fear for their lives.
Defending life is a social justice issue
Supporters of abortion often try and paint its opponents into a "religious right" corner. However, opponents of abortion are drawn from across the spectrum. Steve Norris, a Conservative, is anti-abortion and yet hardly on the right of the party. Cherie Blair, widely regarded as being to the left of her husband, is also reputed, as a Catholic, to be personally opposed to abortion.
The danger with abortion, as with other conscience issues, is that those who oppose it become portrayed as single-issue fanatics. The Pro-life movement needs to break out of the box, and discuss abortion in the social context within which we live. President George W Bush has linked abortion to a wide range of social justice issues: "The Pope reminds us that while freedom defines our nation, responsibility must define our lives. He challenges us to live up to our aspirations, to be a fair and just society where all are welcomed, all are valued, and all are protected. And he is never more eloquent than when he speaks for a culture of life. The culture of life is a welcoming culture, never excluding, never dividing, never despairing and always affirming the goodness of life in all its seasons. In the culture of life we must make room for the stranger. We must comfort the sick. We must care for the aged. We must welcome the immigrant. We must teach our children to be gentle with one another. We must defend in love the innocent child waiting to be born."
Gilbert Meilaender in the Weekly Standard said: "It may be that abortion is foundational in the culture of death. It has embedded in our public morality the priority of the language of choice. It has taught us to believe that our dignity as moral beings lies not in accepting what may be unwanted and unexpected not in accepting as sheer gifts our own lives and the lives of others but in being free self-creators who shape our own directions. It is ironic that an age which seeks to recapture our relation to the earth and bids us tread lightly on this planet should simultaneously encourage us to think of ourselves not as bodies, not as animated earth, but simply as masterful wills.
But that vision of the human being as fundamentally a chooser, as will, as free self-creator, is actually narrow and sterile. It cannot comprehend the mystery of erotic love or of the bond between parent and child. It can make no sense of death as a limit up against which we live. It is baffled by a compassion that, rather than holding suffering or sufferers at arm's length, accepts and shares that suffering. And most of all perhaps, it cannot comprehend the mystery of a creature drawn by longing to bend the knee to the God whose very being constitutes our limit."
Conservative Party policy
Abortion is an issue of conscience, subject to a free vote. However Iain Duncan Smith expressed his opposition to abortion in an interview with Steve Chalke in November 2001: "Let's take euthanasia for example. I am opposed to it because I'm not sure where you stop. Once you agree to somebody taking away somebody else's life on the basis that supposedly they requested it, or that they thought that it would be better for them, where do we define whether someone was conscious enough or capable enough to make that decision for themselves? And where does it end when somebody wants to get rid of an ailing relative because they are in the way, they're a problem, or they've got some money that someone wants to get their hands on and they conjure up some problem? Once you start down that road, I don't think you ever stop. I think what then happens is that society becomes weaker because it can no longer protect those who need protection. Today it's supposedly about the terminally ill or very sick person. But in 10 years time the boundaries could be pushed much further and we get further down the road. I think the same with abortion and that's been my personal view for a long time. These are free vote issues in parliament because all these sort of moral issues are. The party does have a position when it comes to euthanasia, which is we are opposed to it. We allow people to express their view but I think the Party's position sends a message. I think we want people to learn and demonstrate how to look after people, not how to get rid of them."
Many pro-life websites contain information about the voting record of individual MPs (eg www.righttolife.org.uk).
There may be ways of reducing the number of abortions - a goal held by most people in this debate - without outlawing abortion. This may include providing pregnant mothers with more information about the consequences of choosing an abortion. There is increasing evidence of long-term health consequences of abortion, for example, and women considering terminating a preganancy should be fully informed before they consent to do so. There may also be scope for society to do more to help mothers who want to keep their unborn child but who feel unsupported in that aspiration. The lack of financial support for pro-life pregancy services could be looked at. The case for adoption should also be reconsidered as often the best option for the child.
Factfile
· 183,250 abortions were performed in England and Wales in 1999 (source: Office for National Statistics). In the same year 12,144 were carried out in Scotland (ISD Scotland Health Briefing)
Quotes and scriptures
Maurice Baring used to tell the following story:
"One doctor said to another doctor: 'About the termination of a pregnancy. I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic. The mother had tuberculosis. Of the four children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was deaf and dumb, the fourth also had tuberculosis. What would you have done?'
'I would have ended the pregnancy.'
'Then you would have murdered Beethoven.'"
"Even most pro-choicers know that killing innocent people is wrong. The mutterings of conscience can be heard not only in the public responses to polling questions but in the embarassed, euphemistic language used by abortion advocates: abortion is "reproductive choice", abortion clinics are "women's clinics", unborn children are "products of conception" and so on.... It is getting so hard to deny the humanity of unborn children. Remember when pro-choicers used to call them "blobs of tissue"? Ultrasound pictures have retired that expression, and fetology keeps giving us outstanding new information about their mental and physical activties in the womb. It may be just because of all these developments, because the perceived line between the unborn and the newly born has thinned into non-existence, that the most hardened pro-choicers are tempted to go all the way to infanticide." -Professor George McKenna
"Why then dost thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and pursue what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber of murder, and arm the woman that was given for child-bearing unto slaughter?" John Chrysostom
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb; your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalm 139 vv. 13 and 16.
"The old political question is how ought we to order our life together. The questions of abortion, euthanasia, and our treatment of the radically handicapped, of the looming threats of eugenics, all of these questions touch on who is the "we." Who is the "we"? And how do we, as in the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, set up criteria by which we exclude from the human community those who possess what is - unquestionably and undoubtedly - human life. By what criteria do we exclude some by virtue of age or size or weakness or dependency without by the same criteria and measure excluding others who by virtue of their age or their size or their weakness or their dependency, aspire to the heart of public life?" Father Richard John Neuhaus
Further reading and websites
Nigel M de S Cameron and Pamela F Sims Abortion: the Crisis in Morals and Medicine Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, 1986.
John Stott - Issues Facing Christians Today, Marshalls, 1984.
Related links
Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
Care for Life (Christian Action, Research and Education) - which runs crisis pregnancy and support services
Other ccfwebsite.com briefings
Dr Liam Fox MP on medical ethics
George W Bush - National Sanctity of Life Day
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