Abortion - there's just no getting away from it!

Public pronouncements - albeit expressing personal points of view - by three Cabinet Ministers, have re-ignited the debate on abortion at a Parliamentary level.

Culture Secretary Maria Miller, who is also the minister for women, has stated that she would like a 20 week limit.  Speaking on this morning's Today programme on BBC4 radio, Home Secretary Theresa May said she, also, believed there was scope to reduce the limit on when a termination can take place, to 20 weeks into a pregnancy.  Earlier in the week the new Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, went even further, saying he believed the limit should be cut to 12 weeks - half the present maximum.

However, the most interesting comment came from Mr Hunt.  According to reports, he favours the 12-week limit as this is his view "... about that incredibly difficult question about the moment that we should deem life to start"  and that "... my view is that 12 weeks is the right point for it,".

To the best of my knowledge, the Health Secretary is neither a medical practitioner, nor a biologist (perhaps he should be; but that's another subject altogether!).  I certainly claim no professional expertise in either field.  What I know is that only that which is alive is capable of organic growth.

This leads me to ask what has been happening in the womb during the first 12 weeks of gestation?  The answer, surely, is that a process of growth has been taking place.  Indeed, that process commences as soon as the sperm penetrates the egg, and mitosis takes place.  The only difference between that moment and forty weeks later is development.

Many of us agree with Mr Hunt that abortion ought not to take place once life has begun.  We differ with him, however, in our understanding of when that happens! 

So-called "women's choice" is actually whether, or not, to murder the most indefensible, in the very place in which it should be safest.

Political Opportunism?

It has been reported that, in the apparently escalating row between senior Police Officers in England, and Westminster politicians, the Home Secretary has insisted that it is her job to tell Police Forces "what the public want them to do", and that this is that "the public wanted them to get tough".  This, I suspect, is just the kind of political oppotunism that has, sadly, become the norm with modern (career) politicians.

However, as a Police Force Chaplain, a taxpayer, and a concerned subject of HM the Queen, I am willing to accept the Home Secretary's description of her responsibility.  What I would wish to suggest to her is that the allegedly timid response of the police at the outbreak of the violence in London was a direct result of the 'politically correct' culture that has invaded every aspect of public (and, indeed, private) life throughout the UK.  My late father served with the RUC, and he would be horrified at the way in which the hands of his successors have been so effectively tied (or should that, in context, be 'cuffed'?!) so that an officer is as likely to be charged with assault as is the person who is being restrained/detained.

One of the assurances that I seem to recall the PM giving during the campaigning that led up to the last General Election was that the Human Rights legislation would be, if not scrapped, at least amended in order to ensure that criminals would be dealt with firmly. Perhaps officers, at every level, needed the 'assurance' that they had some backing from the government before providing the response that the public did (and do) indeed want.  It might help defuse the current row if the Government were to bring forward, as a matter of urgency, legislation leading to the early repeal of the Human Rights Act, and assure the Police that they have the authority to get as 'tough' as the public want them to be.