Time to Rethink British Abortion Law
-- Part Two of Three
More than a few people with whom I correspond in Great Britain have warned
me not to be mislead by the upcoming vote on abortion in Great Britain. By
this they mean that proposals to lower the upper limit for [most] abortions
from 24 weeks to 20 weeks may not only be defeated but commandeered by the
Abortion Establishment and used to make an already dreadful situation even
worse.
I don’t doubt them for a moment, but to an outsider, it is amazing to watch
what the debate is unleashing. While militant pro-abortionists are busy
plotting ways to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, the public
discussion in the media is revealing a deep unease with the increase in
abortions to over 200,000 annually.
Take an editorial in the Telegraph that
ran yesterday. Under the headline “It's time to rethink abortion law,” the
lead paragraph aptly sets the stage:
“The latest figures on abortion, which we publish today, generate a deep
sense of despair. Despite the billions poured into sex education, the number
of teenage girls having abortions is at an all-time high. In some parts of
the country, as many as one teenage girl in every 23 has had an abortion.
Whatever is required to get the rate of teenage pregnancy down in Britain,
it is clearly not being done.”
What drives the editorial goes beyond futility. The revolutionary change in
the law was not supposed to make abortion routine, but it did. Likewise,
“Many people rightly feel deeply uncomfortable with a situation in which
babies can be terminated at 24 weeks in one hospital theatre - while in the
ward next door, doctors make heroic efforts to keep babies of only 23 weeks'
gestation alive, sometimes with complete success.”
Again, comments like this not necessarily coming from pro-lifers. In most
cases, they are not; they are the expression of a cogitative dissonance that
is demanding a response.
Even if in the unlikely event the nominal upper limit were to be reduced
from 24 weeks to 20 weeks, that would hardly be an end point. But it might
establish a baseline from which a more intelligent discussion of abortion in
lieu of contraception (which is what the editorial says the situation has
become in England) could begin.
And a key part of that discussion would be to agree with this from the
Telegraph:
“Abortion can be a personal disaster for the woman or girl who goes through
it. A generation of girls has been encouraged to believe that it is a
solution to pregnancy. In reality, the termination of a foetus is rarely a
solution to anything.”
Please send any comments to Dave
Andrusko at
daveandrusko@hotmail.com.
Part
One
Part Three |
