Letters should include a genuine postal or email address, phone number and the style or title of the writer. Email: [email protected]
Due to space constraints, please keep correspondence below 250 words, longer letters may be published online
SIR – Ed Condon (Cover story, January 21) rightly notes that “the real reason for the sudden crackdown on vocal opposition to abortion”, exemplified by the “buffer zone” campaign, is that “it is changing minds”; thanks to pro-life vigils the numbers of abortions are declining.
This is bad news for abortion providers, beset by scandals involving bad practice, and it also underlies the campaign to remove all legal protections surrounding abortion, for if it is legal in all circumstances, why scrutinise abortion providers so closely?
The “pro-choice” movement would deprive women of choice – of information regarding foetal development, what abortion actually entails, its negative outcomes, and the right to receive practical help and moral support to continue their pregnancies. “Pro-choice” means no choice, because if women were really allowed to choose they might choose life, undermining the claim that women need abortion.
A government consultation about buffer zones is now under way, but refers throughout to “protests”, “protesters” and “harassment” outside the clinics, suggesting that despite a lack of evidence of harassment, this “consultation” is merely a preliminary to imposing the buffer zones.
The “right to abortion” did indeed originate in eugenics population control. Western nations could hardly introduce this “boon” to poor countries unless it was first imposed on their own populations; but it has always been aimed at the poor and minorities.
Deregulating abortion would also, in a campaign based on equality, avoid the awkward problem of sex-selective abortions and abortion up to birth for disability, because all abortions would be legal up to birth. Moreover, premature babies are surviving at earlier and earlier stages, highlighting the humanity of the unborn.
Campaigners hope that “abortion for all” will be so difficult to roll back that death will become a way of life; but first they must silence all opposition. We must not let that happen.
Ann Farmer
Woodford Green, Essex
SIR – Freddy Gray’s dismay at the digital lynching of his colleague Toby Young is understandable (Notebook, January 19), but it won’t do to dismiss Mr Young’s “progressive eugenics” proposal as merely “barmy”. It is, on the contrary, profoundly scary.
Granted, the feasibility of the scheme depends on a scientific breakthrough, but that may be a very few years away. Morally, it adds to the existing evils of IVF a procedure for screening and selecting embryos by intellectual potential, which strikes at the heart of the principle that we are all made in the image
of God and thus of equal value in His sight.
Of course, a cruder form of “positive eugenics” is very much with us already, enabling screening for conditions ranging from Down’s syndrome to cleft palate. This doesn’t seem greatly to trouble those casting stones at Mr Young; many indeed would surely agree with his arch-tormentor Polly Toynbee, who in 1981 declared that it was a “scandal” that Down’s syndrome babies were still being born.
From Toby on the Right and Polly on the Left, the political rhetoric seduces with promises of social mobility and equality; in both cases the means to these desirable ends involve the most fundamental inequality conceivable – that between those deemed worthy of life and those doomed to become waste products.
Alan Norman
Cambridge
SIR – Why does the Church continue with the use of obsolete words such as “art”, “thy”, and “thee” in its most common set prayers? There is a perfectly acceptable modern version of the Our Father in the Jerusalem Bible, in chapter six of St Matthew’s Gospel, so there can be no reason in principle for retaining the obsolete wording, which must be very baffling for foreigners. Getting used to more up-to-date language could also have the effect of enabling us to think more about what we are saying, instead of just repeating the words parrot-fashion.
Alan Pavelin
Chislehurst, Kent
SIR – The award of a pontifical order to a prominent pro-abortion politician (World news, January 19) fills me with not just anger (which will have to be addressed at my next Confession), but also overwhelming despair and depression.
Whatever weasel excuses are provided, why do those charged with the governance of Christ’s Church never seem to take into account the dispiriting effect of their actions on the faithful?
Many of us struggle to live holy lives in accordance with the teaching of our Church, only to be undermined time and again not by enemies without, but by the failure of prelates openly to confront evil and speak clearly to their flock “for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (1 Corinthians 14:3).
The toleration, and now public endorsement, of political figures who dubiously claim to be Catholic while openly attacking the teachings of Holy Church is truly a σκανδαλον, a stumbling block to the faithful.
Stuart Dewar
Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire
SIR – Damian Collins MP really cannot be allowed to get away with the facile statement (Interview, January 26) that Thomas More would have voted in favour of same-sex marriage had he been in politics today on the basis of a view of church-state separation which did not exist in the 16th century.
What More ultimately died for was his belief in conscience that the Church should be free from the state. Conscience for More, and indeed for Catholics always, is not some vague subjective feeling but our guide in seeking to interpret the natural law. So the question becomes: what would More’s conscience have led him to believe that the natural law said about same-sex marriage? I think we can guess the answer. Mr Collins should have asked the same question before he voted.
As a Catholic in politics, he really should be better instructed in these matters, as they shape how Catholics in public life ought to act.
John Duddington
Editor, Law and Justice, the Christian Law Review, Worcester
SIR – Perhaps I may be permitted to soothe the anguish over the English interpretation of “Et ne nos inducas in tentationem” (Letter, January 26). As it is referred to as “a plea to the Almighty”, I don’t think He would have a problem discerning its substance, any more than when it was originally expressed in the Latin. Back then, most of us didn’t have the knowledge to make fine linguistic distinctions, nor did we worry about referring to the Almighty as “He”.
Time, I think, to lighten up.
Frank Murphy
Sheffield
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