ABORTION - THE SILENT HOLOCAUST

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, 29^th 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, 5^th – 7^th September, 2013