As I happened to be gazing at
images photographed at the Yad Vashem (meaning ‘place’ & ‘name’) Holocaust
Memorial one particular picture caught my attention: that of the cattle truck
memorial. It features a cattle truck
mounted on a pedestal, representing those helpless Jews being transported to
the death camps.
‘Kristellnacht’, seventy-five
years ago, of course preceded Advent and Christmas, during which German
congregations were urged to sing louder to drown out the cries of the
transportees if the railway lines on which they were taken ran close by. Ironically: ‘Stille Nacht, Heilig Nacht’
(Silent Night, Holy Night) ..
At each Christmas we sing carols
and hymns while another holocaust is taking place, not in another country, but within
our Marie Stopes clinics where the silent screams of terminated foetii cannot
be heard. I have heard the accusation
that women are being denied the right to their own bodies, by the pro-life
movement. Not only do we in the CPA
stand for the Right To Life for the defenceless foetii but that we should stand
to protect especially vulnerable women from themselves, who have been
pressurised into having a termination by their husbands or boyfriends. Their vulnerability becomes increased through
consequences of abortion – post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder,
increased risk of depression, to say nothing of a plausible 30% increase in
breast cancer.
The current
season of Epiphany, during which we celebrate the visit of the Wise Men to the
baby Jesus and its consequences, should remind us of King Herod’s ‘Slaughter of
the Innocents’ according to their gender,
‘Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has called for
"urgent” guidelines to be issued to doctors after the Crown
Prosecution Service (CPS) refused to prosecute two doctors who agreed to allow
abortions on the basis of babies’ gender.
‘Last month, the Director of Public Prosecutions
issued a statement claiming that the law did not expressly prohibit abortions
based on a child’s gender and that the decision not to prosecute “was the right
decision on the facts of these cases." Therefore the law, as presently stated,
plays King Herod.
‘Following the statement, Mr Hunt wrote to Attorney
General Dominic Grieve asking for urgent clarification on the issue of gender
selection abortions.
‘The Department of Health has announced that it will
now work with the General Medical Council, the British Medical Association and
the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to “provide urgent
guidance to doctors”. (Christian Concern website, 29th November)
I have two philosophical arguments against abortion:
11)
the life that I once had as an embryo, subsequently as a foetus and now as
an adult, does not in any way justify my being terminated then any more than
anyone would be justified in terminating me now;
22)
they say ‘What goes around, comes around’. Today’s elderly generation, by virtue of its
tacit acceptance of – or active support for – legalised abortion forty-six
years ago, may well find itself being
terminated by the very succeeding generations that it set out to terminate,
should euthanasia ever be legalised.
33) It’s
my body, I do what I wish with it’ – from a pro-choice woman. Had her own mother had advanced the same
argument she would not have been born.
A foetus is a distinct, living & whole being, not part of the mother.
‘Pregnancy is a privilege, not a condition’ (Andrea
Minichiello Williams, summer 2012).
Psalm 139: ‘You have
knit me together in my mother’s womb .. my frame was not hidden from you, when
I was made in secret and skilfully wrought in the lowest parts of the
earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being
yet unformed’.
PICTURES
Synagogue in Frankfurt
destroyed during Kristallnach: image downloaded from www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org through searching on Google for Kristellnacht
Images taken from the
Wilberforce Academy ‘Right To Life’ Conference, 5th – 7th
September, 2013
