A British priest is seeking a judicial review of a late abortion case. What makes the debate significant is that it is not being carried out in terms of the usual absolutist positions.
The British media have been carrying an important debate on the issue of abortion after the High Court ruled that Joanna Jepson, a Church of England clergywoman, could seek a judicial review of a case in which a six-month-old foetus was aborted after a “cleft palate” was detected. Under British law, abortion after 24 weeks is not allowed except when there is a risk of “grave permanent injury” to the mother’s health, or a “substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.” The Rev. Jepson argues that a cleft palate does not constitute such a risk.
Miss Jepson says that she is not against abortion in all circumstances and does not belong to any “pro-life” organisation. However she does have a passion for this case which, perhaps, stems from her own background of facial deformity (only corrected by surgery when she was 17, after her bones had stopped growing) and the fact that she has a brother, Alastair, with Down’s syndrome. Diagnosis of Down’s syndrome is the most common reason given for late abortion. “I want the opportunity for voices like Alastair's to be heard in society, not silenced before they have a chance to speak,” she said in The Sunday Telegraph, adding her concern that a government decision to screen every pregnant mother for Down’s syndrome would lead to more abortions.
Offering an opposing viewpoint has been Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, who points out that in some cases a cleft palate can mean a failure of the skull to fuse, impeding brain function, and that a decision to end a pregnancy at 6 months would not have been made lightly, given all that is involved. Writing in The Guardian, she claimed that the law was “deliberately left vague” on the interpretation of what constitutes “substantial risk”, so that the final decision should be made by the mother and her doctors rather than “opinionated outsiders with abstract moral views”.
What makes this debate significant is that it is not carried out in terms of the usual absolutist positions – the “Women’s Right to Choose” vs. “Foetus’s Right to Life” – and it therefore sounds a new note in the deep underlying theme of “moral absolutes” vs. “moral relativity”. This case links the abortion issue with questions of eugenics and whether we respect the rights of handicapped people, starting with the right to exist.
Traditional “pro-life” campaigners have upheld the principle that all human life is sacred – that there are not “degrees” of sacredness, where some human life is less valuable than others. On the other hand, the “pro-choice” campaigners have argued that each person’s set of moral circumstances and values are unique – that what is right for one person may not be right for another – and that choice must lie with the individual. Too often the protagonists on each side of the debate fail to hear the subtleties of their opponents’ arguments. And so there is impasse.
But does it have to be either/or? The German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with a similar dilemma when deciding whether to get involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. His conclusion was that there are basic values which are absolute and unchanging, but that in real-life situations these values can come into conflict with each other. Ultimately, he decided, what counts is to search for God’s will in any particular situation.
Such searching depends on an ability to stretch one’s ethical muscles – to take those basic core values into an internal debate on the rights and wrongs in a particular set of circumstances. Failure to do so can lead to such absurdities as the case a few months ago when an anti-abortion activist was executed in the USA for the murder of a doctor who carried out abortions: the taking of life in the name of protecting life – one lawful and the other unlawful!
It is worth reminding ourselves that this case would not have been an issue were it not for advances in pre-natal scanning. As technology pushes us increasingly into new and untested circumstances it is vital that we (as individuals and as societies) struggle with the ethical implications, listening carefully to different viewpoints and searching our consciences. Thus we may develop the ability to make informed and wise moral choices as issues arise. For this reason, I welcome the debate.
NOTE: Individuals of many cultures, nationalities, religions, and beliefs are actively involved with Initiatives of Change. These commentaries represent the views of the writer and not necessarily those of Initiatives of Change as a whole.
English