2014: Not Our Best Work.....

The purpose of this blog and the accompanying website, book and ‘God Enquiry’ Course is to try to pursue the truth honestly and openly, regardless of where it might lead. Viewed in that spirit, I have to say that 2014 has had its fair share of truth-avoiding, truth-denying and truth-twisting moments.

The horrors perpetrated by the ‘Islamic State’ speak for themselves – except they have not been allowed to do so. Instead their ghastly actions and equally ghastly philosophy have been used by many to justify various degrees of anti-Islamic sentiment.  Mexican drug cartels have killed more people this year than have the Islamic State, they have tortured, raped and beheaded more victims and they pose a further and immediate threat to the lives, health and welfare of thousands of Americans through illicit drugs, prostitution and ‘organised crime’ They rarely hit any of the pages of our newspapers, never mind the front pages. As far as I am aware there is no public outcry against Mexicans, Roman Catholics or Spanish speaking people, and yet the actions of the Islamic State are,  in many quarters, deemed to be symptomatic of ‘the real face’ of Islam. I wonder why.

‘Christian bakers’ and ‘gay cakes’ in Northern Ireland provided the catalyst for Christian moral outrage and cries of victimisation in Northern Ireland, masked in apparently reasonable appeals to human rights provisions.  I am uncomfortable with a society that cannot find a way of embracing a pluralism that is generous and that does not require recourse to the courts in order to settle such disputes, but I am even more uncomfortable with the sight of churches that have failed to be at all generous in their treatment of LGBT individuals now calling ‘foul’ when they think that the tables might have turned. Nice way of sharing God’s love.

Ebola has come and gone – except it hasn’t. We were whipped into a frenzy of concern a few short months ago as images of dying Africans hit our TV screens. The concern, however, was much less for them than it was for ourselves, in case the virus hitched a ride on an airplane and landed in our airspace.  A communal sigh of relief was permitted just in time for Christmas shopping to begin; there is unlikely to be an ongoing crisis after all….except in West Africa, of course.

Oh yes….there was Gaza; so distant in the media memory that it might as well have happened around the same time that Herod was doing his bit of innocents-slaughtering. The shelling seems to have stopped, water and electricity have been turned on again and across in the West Bank the Christmas nativity celebrations were not disrupted.  Well, that’s all right then…..

Anyone holding their breath for 2015?

Should Foetuses have Rights?

A recent UK court decision determined that a child born with foetal alcohol syndrome cannot receive financial compensation. The reason given was that ‘an essential ingredient for a crime to be committed is the infliction of grievous bodily harm on a person - grievous bodily harm on a foetus will not suffice’. The child in question, a seven year old girl, has significant health problems as a result of her mother consuming around twice the recommended weekly alcohol limit for non-pregnant women every day.

That the child is not entitled to any compensation seems harsh, given that victims of thalidomide have, quite rightly, been given compensation. The difference in the cases, however, is important: thalidomide victims resulted from government failure properly to regulate the use of the pregnancy-sickness drug; foetal alcohol syndrome compensation would, it seems, have required an acknowledgment that a pregnant woman had committed a crime by drinking to excess during pregnancy.

While no one has suggested that it is sensible for a pregnant woman to consume other than very modest amounts of alcohol (if any) during pregnancy, many have welcomed the court’s decision as a victory for every woman’s right to use her body as she chooses, whether pregnant or not.

I am torn on this issue. I firmly believe that everyone, female and male alike, ought to have primary rights over the use of their bodies and that such rights ought only to be limited in legally and ethically justifiable circumstances. I baulk at the idea that the State (or anyone else) ought to be able to dictate to a woman whether or not she must continue with a pregnancy while, at the same time I hope that in most circumstances most pregnant women will choose to bestow the amazing gift of childhood on the developing lives within them.

If rights are based on addressing ‘interests’ rather than on enabling personal choice it can be argued that foetuses, like children, adults and animals have interests that ought to be protected by law. This would mean balancing some of the rights of adults with the rights of foetuses. If a woman chose to continue with a pregnancy, that choice would entail accepting certain limitations on her subsequent actions. Similarly, if male violence resulted in a miscarriage, the aggressor would be guilty not only of assaulting a woman, but also of causing the death of her foetus.

It is not my intention to impinge on women’s rights. Many of our freedoms, however, are correctly limited to some extent. It should be possible to ensure that a foetal rights/protection law did not supersede the Abortion Act (that is a different issue) and that harm caused by addiction was not treated as a criminal, but as a civil offence. My suggested solution might not be the correct one, but it cannot be right that one young girl and others like her, both female and male, have fewer protections than are properly afforded to our pets.