Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Why, for the Love of Martha, why!

Sadly, the proposed bill in the British parliament to lower the time limit for abortions (down to 12, 14, or 22 weeks from 24 weeks) was resoundly defeated. I'll probably console myself by reading fire and brimstone portions of the Apocalypse of Peter. But for some irenic pastoral thoughts do read Doug Chaplin!

1 comment:

Ben said...

I am confused. Isn't that a good thing? Or are you in need of consolation because abortion is still allowed at all? Do explain. I suppose that it really isn't that great to defeat a bill, while still allowing abortions in the first place. That is probably what you mean, right?

I have been hearing that doctors in the UK are increasingly unwilling to perform abortions because of the social stigma attached to the job, not so much for any moral reasons. Some culture watchers that I have read think that abortion is quietly becoming more and more unpopular in the UK, while remaining less of a cultural war issue than it is in the US. Thus, ironically, precisely because of the inflamed rhetoric in the US on both sides, laws attempting to end abortion have less chance of succes, while in the UK access to abortions is dwindling simply due to the unpopularity of the procedure among physicians (which is even leading to a decrease in the number of doctors willing to be trained in the surgical methodology of abortion).

I don't know if this is an accurate observation of how things are in the UK, but it would interesting if true. It would seem to say to me that humans created in the image of God can't completely suppress the knowledge that abortion is the killing of a human being (thus the unpopularity among the UK doctors) while the rhetoric in the US has the tendency to drown out the moral sense that all people have that abortion is wrong, even if they theoretically say it is okay.