A former medical director of the country’s largest abortion provider said it was “well known” that women were terminating pregnancies because of the gender of the child and that he had been asked by women to arrange the procedure for this reason.
Dr Vincent Argent, who previously worked for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and is now a GP and consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, said he had “no doubt” that women were terminating pregnancies because of the sex of the baby and that he believed the practice was “fairly widespread”. This week The Daily Telegraph disclosed that women were being offered illegal abortions by doctors on the basis of the gender of the foetus.
Dr Argent said there were “an awful lot of covert abortions for sex selection going on” where women would have a scan or blood test to find out the sex, then ask for a termination without telling the doctor the real reason.
I am not going to put up all the articles from this investigative series, but the others are worth perusing as well.
My first reaction to this is–taking at face value that some of this is occurring, no matter what the exact extent–is that this is yet another symptom of the monumental failure of the Church in England (which includes the C of E but all the others as well).
I just can’t get worked up about this. It’s kind of like the Nazis, having decided to kill the Jews, arguing over the morality of the method used.
The morality of the issue has been decided in favor of “choice” (abortion) for any reason the woman wants. Having made the basic decision, society has forfeited the right to have any say in the matter.
Let the secularists argue over this if they wish, the Christian opposition to any abortion remains.
Re: Br. Michael,
That’s true from a position of strict intellectual consistency. But few human beings (thankfully) are consistent in their beliefs and actions. They buy the argument that a fetus is not a baby and does not have the rights of a human being, but don’t want to come out and say that women should be able to abort for any and all reasons (thinking in the Commonwealth has differed a bit from the U.S. on this, I think).
Hence something like this helps push on the inconsistency. Many Brits will [i]not[/i] be happy with the idea that abortions are being carried out because of a preference for sons rather than daughters. But they are okay with a woman having an abortion because her family is complete/the father wants an abortion/it disrupts her career/it upsets her holiday plans.
The doctors, who are, as a group, guilty of having given abortions for any and all reasons (and would have been crunched for [i]not[/i] authorizing an abortion) are defending the doctors who have been caught on film. They’re pointing out that an abortion for individual choice (western value) isn’t that different from a preference for one gender (asian value in this case, it seems).
That gives the UK a chance to revisit its inconsistencies on this issue. People might be consistent and decide that the current law is too narrowly drawn in saying that doctors can only certify abortion where the mother’s health and wellbeing is at risk (or where the child will be born disabled in some sense, which I would say is even worse) and women have an unlimited right to abort. Or they might be consistent and decide that they can no longer support abortion at all, or for the reasons they did before – either stopping it, or limiting it more than at present. They’ll either be consistent with their practice of women having the power to choose to abort for any reason or they’ll be consistent with their horror that what is being aborted is a girl and not simply a potential girl and so it really is a ‘war on girls’. Whichever way they go, it disrupts the ‘muddled’ bit of the ‘muddled middle’ and so creates an opening for those of us who wish to change the status quo.
When you add in extra things occurring in the debate, it might push things further. For example some ethicists now arguing in a mainstream and respected peer review journal of medical ethics that the logic of abortion should apply to newly born children – who should be able to be killed for any reason for which abortion would be approved.
http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/02/22/medethics-2011-100411.abstract
http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/9950#When:11:35:20Z
The consistency of one group – especially as it’s now respectable enough to be considered a publishable opinion in a peer reviewed journal – to move in a direction that conflicts with people’s moral intuition will act as a pressure on the ‘muddled middle’ just like women-selective abortion will.
This was arguably a factor in the win for orthodoxy over various kinds of Arianism in the 4th century. A lot of people who didn’t like Athanasius’ strong view that the Son was eternally begotten of the Father, were pushed out of the muddled middle by the consistency of the true Arians who pushed hard the idea that the Son is more like creatures than he is like the Father if he isn’t eternally begotten from the Father.
When these things happen, it can create an opening for people to genuinely engage with the arguments against the belief and practice in question. Especially when they don’t want to because they want just enough freedom for their own position (but not for anyone else’s).
I hope this doesn’t sound crass but the irony in these sorts of things just reaffirms my belief in a God who allows His foolish, disobedient children to engage in full-fledged rebellion as He waits patiently for them to see His point all along. I mean, you can’t miss the richness of feminists in certain countries (ahem, the West) insisting on the right to abort whenever and for whatever reason they decide, only to discover that it’s female babies whose lives are being snuffed out because they’re female. Ooops!
Earlier today, I read a very honest reflection by a self-described “choice” proponent who is now rethinking her “choice” stance. If her veracity is genuine, and it seems to be, it never occurred to her that abortion would be used as birth control or for gender-cide to the degree that it’s been shown is it. She’s appalled, and rightly so. I think that many “choice” advocates are appalled right now and I hope they’re disturbed enough to take some action!
But I also hope that the “pro life” contingent also gets real and moves beyond the religious rhetoric and disturbing images to consider the issues that lead to abortion. Namely, girls and women are still at a disadvantage in this world solely due to their gender and the social norms that make having a girl seen as a liability and expense in some cultures.
So perhaps our “pro life” friends would like to speak out and work against arranged marriages, expected dowries, female genital mutilation, and forced marriages? Maybe they would like to lend their voices against the rape and sexual slavery that have become an accepted tactic in the civil wars in Africa? As immigrants from Asia and Africa settle in the UK, these issues are largely responsible for the rise in gender-based abortions.
Western women need moral and ethical instruction, as well. The common denominator is a reverence for all life. The issues are coming full circle.
What the article doesn’t tell you (because it isn’t PC) – but only hints at in the lat paragraph – is that pressure for abortion on grounds of sex comes most strongly from people of South Asian background, where sons are highly valued and daughters entail costly dowries.
Teatime2 asks (rhetorically?): ‘So perhaps our “pro life†friends would like to speak out and work against arranged marriages, expected dowries, female genital mutilation, and forced marriages?’
Leaving aside your use of “speech marks” (why?), this is a nice attempt to switch responsibility. You know (or should know) that any attacks on these practices would immediately be condemned by leftists as “racist”, “imperialist”, “Islamophobic”, anti-immigration etc.
RE: “Leaving aside your use of “speech marks†(why?), . . . ”
See, this is one reason why I don’t use the words “pro-life” when discussing abortion anyway. I simply call myself “anti-abortion” and I’m honored to do so.
Otherwise, those for abortion will claim that all those who assert they are “pro-life” should be therefore for whatever central planning loony idea they can think of, like “hey, if you’re ‘pro-life’ you should be for carbon credits, or teaching 4-year-olds how to put on condoms!”
“Pro-life” is too vague and sweeping a phrase to describe simply being against baby murder.