Matters of life and death

I woke on Saturday to hear two oddly juxtaposed items on the radio. The first was a discussion on Farming Today about the problem of the male offspring of dairy cows. As I understand it, the dilemma is that they’re not much good for beef and so the practice has been to kill them at birth. The spokesman for Compassion in World Farming was predictably opposed to this, and I got the impression that his view was winning traction more generally. The second was a headline item on the news immediately following it. This was about the exit polls from the Irish referendum on abolishing the Constitution’s Eighth amendment, which banned all abortions except when the mother’s safety was in danger. For this there was general approbation, implying that at last the Republic of Ireland had caught up with the modern world. Later in the day when the official result of a two-thirds yes vote was confirmed, the news included prolonged and loud celebration of the victory.

What struck me was the very peculiar dissonance of our concern for the new-born uneconomic calves and apparent disregard for unborn babies. I understand that medically provided abortion is far safer than any alternatives, and I understand that women who become pregnant against their wills have a case to be allowed to choose to continue with their pregnancy or not. I also understand those who argue for the rights of the unborn child to be taken into account. The NHS website’s description week 10 of pregnancy reads:

“The ears are starting to develop on the sides of your baby's head, and the ear canals are forming inside the head.

If you could look at your baby's face, you would be able to see an upper lip and two tiny nostrils in the nose. The jawbones are developing and already contain all the future milk teeth.

Picture from NHS website

The heart is now fully formed. It beats 180 times a minute – that's two to three times faster than your own heart.

The baby is making small, jerky movements that can be seen on an ultrasound scan.” In other words from very early on we describe a foetus as a baby.

I suppose the question is, Is it really, as I recently heard, a matter of the rights of a woman against the rights of an egg? When does a baby begin to have rights? And are his or her rights ever equal to those of the mother – or even of a new-born calf? 

And I ask myself, should the unconfined celebrations of women’s choice not have been tempered with sorrow for inevitable death of the babies whose lives will be terminated?

In this country we have seen the increasing use of abortion to kill unborn children with Down’s Syndrome and disabling conditions. We have also seen it spreading to become “on demand” and as a desperate form of contraception. I hope that Ireland never passes legislation that allows abortion to be as misused as it has become here. And personally I trust that the North doesn't get railroaded into a rush to become like the rest of the UK.

Readjusting perspectives on disease and death

I enjoyed this picture which I saw on Facebook this week. 

Talking of which there was a very counterintuitive blog from Dr Kate Granger, the young elderly medicine specialist who has a rare aggressive form of terminal cancer. I listened to an interview with her by Stephen Nolan on Radio 5 a couple of weeks ago. She really is a remarkable and winsome character. Her post on Monday was entitled "Is cancer inherently evil? I think not...".

She wrote: "On our DSRCT (her form of cancer) Facebook page there are several patients and parents of patients who post regularly about how they are going about 'beating the tumour' or 'conquering the beast' afraid 'to give up the fight'. The treatments in the US are particularly barbaric with multiple intensive chemotherapy sessions, frequent surgery, radiotherapy and trials of newer treatments. It is as though people are expressing their anger and grief about the situation by blaming the cancer itself. I find this hard to do myself. This is going to sound really strange but I quite admire my cancer. It’s a clever entity that has fooled my body conning the usual systems that living organisms have to suppress tumour growth. When I look at histology slides of DSRCT I cannot help feeling it is somehow beautiful. Maybe I’m just weird!

"However it does raise the point that cancers originate from within us as human beings and therefore by referring to them as evil do we think as ourselves as evil? I think not. I think of my cancer as a part of me and it is unfortunate it has happened to me at a young age, but I cannot change this so acceptance and living as well as I can for as long as I can is definitely going to be my game plan, rather than waging a holy war…".

I do, by the way, recommend her whole blog, http://drkategranger.wordpress.com/, which is quite the most insightful and paradoxically beautiful writing I have come across on a subject which usually makes for rather grim reading. She didn't profess to a particular faith when Stephen Nolan asked her about life after death, though she admitted to believing that there is something "more than this" - perhaps partly from her experience of palliative medicine.

At the other end of life, and very much from within a faith tradition, a friend drew my attention to this moving story from Italy, Goodbye for young mother who died for her unborn child. It comes from June last year and concerns a young couple, Chiara and Enrico Petrillo, who had lost two babies with birth defects. "In 2010, Chiara became pregnant for the third time, and according to doctors the child was developing normally. However, Chiara was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and was advised to begin receiving treatment that would have posed a risk to her pregnancy.

"Chiara decided to protect the baby – named Francisco –  and opted to forgo treatment until after his birth, which took place on May 30, 2011." She survived a year.

Enrico, the boy's father, is quoted as saying, when his son grows up, he will tell him “how beautiful it is to let oneself be loved by God, because if you feel loved you can do anything,” and this is “the most important thing in life: to let yourself be loved in order to love and die happy.”

“I will tell him that this is what his mother, Chiara, did. She allowed herself to be loved, and in a certain sense, I think she loved everyone in this way. I feel her more alive than ever. To be able to see her die happy was to me a challenge to death.”

Confined to barracks

Having a heavy cold which makes me sound a bit like an elephant with a bun stuck up his trunk has meant my being CB (confined to barracks) these past few days. To be honest, it doesn't make a great difference to my schedule, as I'm not highly mobile and don't get out much. The last time was on Thursday - to my amazing dentist from whom I consistently come away grateful and wee bit euphoric; followed by my weekly trip to Cornerstone, while Jane skivvies in the kitchen. Anyway today I stayed at home while Jane went with our friends, Pete and Jane, to a kind of mini home-church with a friend who's ill.

So I spent a quiet and thoughtful morning on my own. Among other things, I was pondering on what lies beneath the St Paul's protest and, come to that, the summer riots. I know there's no simplistic single answer. In fact one of the (more inane) criticisms aimed at the protesters is that they don't have an alternative. "Where's your programme for reform?" That misses the point entirely. One of the factors behind popular cynicism about current politics is precisely that in campaigns politicians make a whole load of promises, which they then fail to carry out when they come to power. Even now one hears politicians trimming their downright condemnation of the St Paul's protest as they discover that it has more support than they first thought. Such unlikely people as George Soros (megafinancier), Bill Gates (megaindustrialist) and Rowan Williams (megaecclesiastic) seem to have found common issues with them, such as the International Financial Transaction tax (the Robin Hood Tax). Oops, one senses the politicians think, we'd better not miss the band-wagon. Thus they expose one of the weaknesses of our liberal democracy. Instead of politicians standing up with their principles by which they will stand, we have politicians whose only principle is to please the people. I suppose the arch-exponent of this was Tony Blair, with focus groups, e-petitions and spin doctors, whose aim was to win at all costs. He of course has set the trend and David Cameron is said to follow his example.

On the surface it seems a reasonable approach: find out what the people want and then give it to them. Isn't that what democracy is all about? The answer is No. That's not democracy; it's demagogy. It's a system of government where the loudest voice rules. Actually it's mob-rule. The alternative is a system where men and women clearly set out their principles for public examination - and then stick to them. In that system the quiet people, the ordinary voters, have equal influence with the loud-mouth lobbyists.   It all depends, of course, on that old-fashioned word "Honour". It depends on our politicians honouring their word, but more than that, being people of honour. I don't often write to MPs, but I don't think I'm alone in the feeling that, when I do, I'm receiving a people-pleasing reply rather than a plain honest expression of opinion. By the way, I think something of this lies behind the Occupy movement's use of general assemblies which I gather are as long as a piece of string. They are an attempt to resist the power of a vocal lobby dominating decisions.

Something else which I believe, recognised or not, lurks behind the protests is a general unease that something is rotten in the state of Britain, and to some degree in the Western world. You don't need to be a prophet to recognise that justice is not flowing like a river (Amos 5.24), either nationally or globally, and to call for it. Ironically I suspect that a contributing factor to this has been the elevation of personal choice over corporate responsibility. Ironically, because on the face of it to allow more personal choice is to add to the sum total of freedom. The end of the 20th century was the great period of deregulation, from personal ethics to market economics. The City markets were deregulated - and since 2008 the world has been reaping the whirlwind. Personal ethics (such as divorce and abortion) were made a private issue rather than one which had implications for society, and we are now wrestling with the effects of divorce on countless children. People who dare to uphold traditional Judaeo-Christian values such as columnist, Melanie Phillips, are branded as "bigots", and we begin to see a new sort of politically correct censorship creeping in under the guise of freedom. However it's a "freedom" defined by the demagogues.

On 27th November 1997 a letter appeared in The Times under the title "The Death of Trust":

"Contemporary morality tends to elevate the right to choose above every other value.  It finds offensive the traditional teaching on the sanctity of human life which has been part of common morality in Western societies.  This outlook is having many profound effects.  It has desensitised many people to the evil of abortion.  It has also predisposed many to support euthanasia.

"Euthanasia aims at ending a life judged to be no longer worth living, either because of suffering or because of presumed ‘poor’ quality.  The aim is accomplished either by a direct action, such as administering a lethal injection, or by depriving a person of medical treatment or of ordinary care in order to bring about death.  An essential defining characteristic of euthanasia is the intention to end life, that is to kill."

The letter was signed by Cardinal Basil Hume. This month will see another push towards euthanasia with the publication of the "findings" of the very unofficial Falconer "commission" on assisted "dying". Hopefully it will be seen for what it is, a piece of demagoguery by a well-financed, well-connected and vocal lobby group.

PS Moving interview tonight on Songs of Praise with Glen Campbell and his wife Kim. He's the American country singer, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimers. That's faith.

Attitude is everything

I was sent some amazing photos today, with the heading "Attitude is everything". They are of a little boy with effectively no legs. No doubt his life's not easy, nor for his parents. And yet it appears he enjoys a pretty full life - and enjoys is the operative word. I've not included the pictures of him cycling, horse-riding and water-skiing....


Yet I've been wondering, in the light of the attention drawn by the courageous MP, Nadine Dorries, to the extraordinary rate of abortion in this country, what "independent advice" his parents would have been given assuming that from conception he was going to be born like that. "What quality of life do you think he'll have?" I imagine the questions, the counselling, would have tended towards the conclusion of abortion being the "kindest" thing all round. And that is what disabled people feel and fear all too often, that they are regarded as having a sort of semi-life.

South African athlete, Oscar Pistorius

One of the great things about the World Athletics Championships in South Korea last week was seeing some disabled events taking place in among the able-bodied events, and even the South African, Oscar Pistorius, on his artificial legs, competing at the top level 400 metres alongside fully able-bodied athletes. Tomorrow tickets for the Paralympics in August next year go on sale, and I for one am going to try and get some. There'll be nothing second-rate about the athletes or their performances. In fact you could regard their achievement as even greater than what we'll see at the real Olympics.

I think it's a shame that Nadine Dorries' amendment was defeated. It wasn't after all very radical, just ensuring the women receive clearly disinterested counselling if they want it before having an abortion. I'm hopeful that the government's promised consultation will honour "the spirit" of the amendment, and ensure that pre-abortion counselling is carried out by trained counsellors and rigorously monitored for lack of pressure - either way -, so that there is real choice for women and, therefore, for their unborn baby.

A programme Jane and I often listen to is Radio 4's No Triumph No Tragedy presented by their disability correspondent, Peter White, who's blind himself. This week he was talking to the remarkable Dr Lin Berwick, who was born with cerebral palsy, put in an iron lung at birth, affecting her sight. Her mother wouldn't accept the doctors' advice to let her die and took her home, and brought her up rather too protectively. At the age of 15 she went completely blind and was sent away to a school for the blind, which was the making of her. Wheelchair-bound she worked in a bank, trained as a Methodist lay preacher and set up a charity to provide holiday accommodation for the severely disabled and their families. Eventually she met, fell in love with and married a widower. He developed Parkinsons Disease after six years of marriage and, after a prolonged depressed decline, he died refusing his medication. During his illness she lost her faith. The interview was recorded a month after his death, and so her grief must have been at its most raw. But her bleak conclusion was if we are determined to cut back on resources for care and support for the disabled then we should not be so assiduous in our efforts to save them at the outset. Reflecting on her own life experience she concluded for herself it would have been better if she'd not been saved.

Listening, I reflected that I was hearing the honest voice of grief. And also that I'd read the selfsame sentiment in the Bible on the lips of Job who cursed the day that the midwife announced his birth. God's verdict on him was that he was unusually righteous and that he had spoken what was right; he'd been honest rather than mouthing platitudes. Maybe, after all, Lin Berwick is not so far removed from faith - as she seemed wistfully to imply. I've no doubt she will achieve her ambition of building another holiday home in Cornwall, named after her late husband.

Personally I can't agree that any life, disabled or not, should be written off as not worth saving or preserving. I agree that it takes resources and that there's a cost to pay. And I agree that we need to know when to let go, and that that's hard. But we have the ingenuity to make life fulfilling despite all appearances. We shouldn't give up. Maybe the little lad may grow up to be another Oscar Pistorius, or a Nobel prize winner.

Last autumn Jane was given a plain green shrub by our friends, Ruth and Anthony. It had a label saying it should have pink flowers in due course. Now it looks like this:

Camellia "Lady Campbell"

Pas mal, heh? I love the fact of creation; as the poet put it, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things". Here's Gerard Manley Hopkins' whole sonnet, God's Grandeur:

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;	5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;	10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Meanwhile I enjoyed this item which I read about today. I initially thought it was an April fool, but I see the CNN article is dated 23rd March. PETA calls for inclusive language for animals in the Bible !

By contrast, on a very serious issue, I'd urge you to look at the Right to Know website. It's to do with an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill sponsored by MPs Nadine Dorries (Con) and Frank Field (Lab), ensuring that women considering an abortion are given independent advice, rather than from those with vested financial interests, http://righttoknow.org.uk/ . It seems to me to make eminent sense, giving women truly informed choice and hopefully saving life. There's something we can do about it. Write to our MPs.

Choose Life

The trouble with blogging intermittently is that you end up with too much to say and therefore don't do justice to anything. I'm glad to report that our broadband switch-over has been successfully achieved, with the bonus of getting the printer on to wifi (after struggling all Saturday - because the software it came with is now out of date, as I should have realised!) I think we're getting a better speed with cable.... I wanted the printer to produce some outlines for the first sermon I've preached "away from home" for years. 


On Wednesday last week I listened to Prime Minister's Questions, a fairly unedifying occasion. Sadly I didn't hear any questions relating to the rally going on outside, the launch of the Choose Life campaign run by Christian Concern http://www.chooselifecampaign.org/.
It was the 43rd anniversary of the passing of the Abortion Act. They cite some astonishing statistics: for example 

• There were over 200, 000 abortions in England, Scotland and Wales in 2009.
• 98% of the abortions in England and Wales last year were undertaken for social reasons.
• For 25% of women having an abortion last year and aged 25 or under at the time, it was not their first. Across all age groups, 34% were repeat abortions.
• More than 7, 000, 000 unborn children have been aborted in Britain since the 1967 Abortion Act was passed.                                                                                                                                                                                (Sources: Department of Health, NHS National Services Scotland )       

It's sad that our country counts the beginning of life so cheap. No doubt that was not the intention of the Parliamentarians who passed the law 43 years ago, but so it is. Might their present-day successors have the courage to undo the damage? At least for future generations? And will they stand against the campaign similarly to cheapen the end of life? I profoundly hope so.