Contents
- Home
- Green Church Awards
- News
- Use of Abortion Act is drifting from its aim, says Primate
- Child-protection protocol agreed
- Deans question power of diocesan bishops
- ‘Violence is always defeat’
- Christians condemn Pakistan bombs
- Forward in Faith’s US bishops hope to be free in 2009
- Consuming
- Foreign rews in brief
- Christian Aid criticises World Bank on ‘energy-poor’ people
- Kunonga keeps diocesan assets
- News in brief
- Hereford schools fight closure plan
- Awards for C of E headteacher
- NHS trusts at service
- Cathedral queries gas-bill row
- Attack unites Philippines
- Aspinall awards praise
- Quincy ‘is in process’
- Australian tight corner
- Greyfriars, Oxford, to close
- Bringing Taizé to Bolivia
- Go-slow on Montreal vote
- St Peter’s ‘special’ say parishioners
- Sex-abusers to be on register
- Praise for peace teams after event cancellations
- Question of the week
- Comment
- Letters
- Features
- Faith
- Humour and crossword
- Pastimes
- Books
- Arts
- Media
- Gazette
 back to News |
 previous story
|
next story 
|
Use of Abortion Act is drifting from its aim, says Primate
by Pat Ashworth
 Persistent concern: anti-abortion protestors in London ten years ago mark the 30th anniversary of the Abortion Act PA |
| SOCIETY risks losing sight of the sanctity of life and the compassionate intentions of the 1967 Abortion Act, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned.
Writing in The Observer last weekend, he said that the original reformers had been providing for “extreme and tragic situations”. Their supporters had started from the position that abortion was a profoundly undesirable thing, but the spiralling statistics of nearly 200,000 abortions a year told their own story.
Recent discussions on making it simpler for women to administer abortion-inducing drugs at home indicated “the growing belief that abortion is essentially a matter of individual decision, and not the kind of major moral choice that should involve a sharing of perspective and judgment”, Dr Williams said.
There was no definitive argument for tightening the law, or for lowering the time-threshold for abortions, he said, although he acknowledged that the existing law assumed rather less developed medical science than was now the case. But thinking about what was previously taken for granted did highlight questions about “how we hold a steady moral focus in these matters of social and legal debate”.
Clear principles did not “let you off the hook”, he said, and there was no escaping tough decisions where no answer would feel completely right and no option was without cost. The history of the 1967 Act was “an object lesson in how slippage can occur between thinking compassionately about exceptional cases, and losing the sense of a normative position.
“I don’t think we’re yet at the point where such a sense has been entirely lost. Even if some of the language about foetal rights is uncertain and confused, it illustrates the half-articulate conviction that the unborn child does merit protection,” Dr Williams said. The slippage was not an argument for legal prohibitions against abortion in every circumstance, but it was “an argument for keeping our eyes open for the unintended consequences”, he said.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, and his Scottish counterpart, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, have written an open letter to mark the 40th anniversary of the Act. The abortion rate could fall dramatically, even without a change in the law, they suggest, “if enough hearts and minds were changed”.
Britain has the most liberal abortion laws in Europe, the Cardinals state. “Whatever our religious creed or political conviction, abortion on this scale can only be a source of distress and profound anguish for us all.” They focus on the practical and spiritual care given by the Roman Catholic Church to women and babies in need, and help for those suffering after an abortion. “For everyone involved, abortion will often have been a painful and shattering decision. . . Abortion robs everyone of their future,” the Cardinals say. They urge good parenting, sympathetic counselling, better facilities to help mothers keep their babies, genuine freedom of choice, better sexual education, support for doctors who, out of conscience, refuse to perform abortions, and pressing for an achievable change in the law in the light of medical developments. “The time to take a different path is now,” they conclude. The Methodist, Baptist, and United Reformed Churches have also joined the debate, as Parliament reviews the abortion laws. They have produced a joint briefing paper for churchgoers, setting out arguments they acknowledge to be “complex and sensitive”. A joint working-group, with a wide range of medical, theological, and practical experience will look not only at abortion, but at human embryology and early human life, including therapeutic cloning and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. “For many people, abortion is not a black-and-white issue, and there are many Christians who do not sit comfortably on either side of the argument,” said Alison Jackson, a spokeswoman for the Methodist Church. “What most Christians want to see is greater moderation and understanding of the issues. This briefing will help church members engage thoughtfully with the debate.”The abortion briefing is available at www.jointpublicissues.org.uk. Press, |
