MB Civic

Bruce Anderson: Like most Britons today, I believe that abortion is murder – and I’m in favour of it

It is an unpleasant business. So is unplanned pregnancy, and its consequences can last for decades

Published: 04 June 2007

His Eminence ought to be pleased. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Roman Catholic Primate of Scotland, denounced abortion in minatory terms and aroused far more comment than might have been expected. In the UK, abortion has been at most a marginal political issue. It has never determined the outcome of a single parliamentary contest. Yet according to some commentators, Cardinal O’Brien has become the leader of Britain’s Religious Right, and dramatic consequences are possible.

This is nonsense. Despite the publicity, there are no grounds for supposing that the Cardinal’s intervention will save a single foetus. The British political system is as well-insulated as ever against the abortion issue – whatever the philosophical, theological and humane implications.

There are only two possible philosophical responses to abortion, and they are utterly opposed. According to the first, a woman has absolute control over her own body. She is entitled to treat a foetus as merely another form of bodily waste. The law has no locus standi; nor has the Cardinal. His intervention is impertinent.

The alternative position could counter feminist outrage with biological reality. We were all foetuses once. If Kant was right – act as if your action shall become a universal moral law – those who procure abortions are conspiring to destroy the human race. Science is reinforced by religion and by the moral intimations which even the non-religious possess. If you believe that man was created in the image of God, you ought also to believe that the destruction of an embryo is a mortal sin, in a double sense.

Even those who do not believe in God will almost certainly believe that human life is special and should not be taken without grave cause. It is surely not unreasonable to argue that some of that gravity, and protection, should be extended to the apprentice humans, still snuggling in their mothers’ wombs.

Whenever a photograph of a foetus in such a posture appears in the press, there are calls for an earlier deadline after which abortion should be prohibited. Good Catholics are implacable in their opposition to such sentimental mush. If a foetus is life, it should be sacred from the moment of conception. Such Catholic rigour would of course prohibit all those forms of contraception which depend on abortifacients.

Even those who resile from ruthless Roman Catholic logic might find it hard to understand why abortion is a left-wing cause. Leftists are supposed to believe that human beings should have higher purposes than the sensual gratification promoted by consumer capitalism.

Those on the left usually flatter themselves that they protect the voiceless and the powerless. What could be more powerless than a foetus? So where are the Michael Mansfields, the Geoffrey Robertsons, the Helena Kennedys to defend that most compelling of pro bono clients: the foetus threatened with death?

There would seem to be scope for a vigorous debate. But in British politics, philosophical arguments rarely reach the front line. Abortion is no exception. Instead of heated debate, there has been a tacit consensus. Despite Cardinal O’Brien, this is likely to continue, because it is rooted in the pragmatic temperament of modern England.

The consensus runs as follows: “We do not want to think about abortion. It is undoubtedly an unpleasant business. So is an unplanned pregnancy, and its consequences can last for decades. Whatever you say, a foetus is not the same as a baby. Extending human rights to the womb would result in ghastly inconveniences.

“It is true that when abortion was legalised it was intended to be a last resort, not an alternative to the French letter. It is also true that if many of those who voted for the original Bill had known that 40 years on, nearly 200,000 foetuses a year would be aborted, in a procedure as routine as vacuuming the drawing-room carpet, they would have voted differently.

“In 1967, it would have been widely predicted that abortion on such an industrial scale would have led to a coarsening of society. Although that has undoubtedly occurred, there is no reason to blame abortion. It could indeed be argued that without the foetal elimination of hundreds of thousands of children who would otherwise had been neglected and undisciplined, the problem of criminal feral youngsters would be much worse than it already is.

“Abortion is messy, repugnant – and necessary. It is annoying that this Scottish cardinal has embarrassed us. But embarrassment is much more transient than an unwanted baby. Let us continue as we are.”

In England, that view commands overwhelming support. This is not necessarily the case in Scotland, which is not yet a post-religious country. That explains one of the many shoddy little compromises associated with Scottish devolution. Many Scottish Labour voters are Roman Catholics. Left-wing on economic issues, they still tend to be cultural conservatives, especially when they listen to their priests. But their political representatives are banally left-wing on everything, including abortion. To save them from embarrassment, the Labour Party decided that abortion should be a Westminster matter.

The state of Scottish opinion may have encouraged Cardinal O’Brien to launch his campaign, in the hope of influencing Parliament and, therefore, achieving a favourable legislative outcome. For the reasons given above, there is no hope of that. There is indeed a danger that the Cardinal will fall into a trap, and will confuse feeling good with doing good. He has vindicated his Church’s moral stance and has been attacked by all those whom a dutiful cardinal should regard as his natural opponents. This might lead him to believe that his comments will have some practical effect.

That is a snare and a delusion. There is no hope of persuading Parliament to pass laws which would significantly restrict the right to an abortion. If the Roman Catholic Church wishes to curtail the number of abortions, there is only one way of doing so. It should be possible to establish a charity which would seek to persuade pregnant girls that there is an alternative to an abortion; that if they wished to complete their pregnancy, they would be given support, and that no one would attempt to make them feel guilty for becoming pregnant when they should not have done.

There is an increasing amount of medical evidence that abortion is not a cost-free process and that it can have deleterious psychological consequences. If the Church tried hard, it should find it possible to persuade a significant number of girls that adoption is a better alternative than abortion.

The Cardinal was right to say what he did. Given his great office, he could do no other. Even so, he would find that the still, small voice of charity could save more foetuses than the illusion of political change. But despite his best efforts, many of us will still agree with the American commentator, Ben Wattenberg: “Abortion is murder, and I’m in favour of it.”