2012年10月8日星期一

Abortion debate demands definition of life beginning


Maria Miller, Culture Secretary at Westminster, who is also the Minister for Women, has stated she would like a 20-week limit.
At the weekend 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.
The new Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, went even further, saying he believed the limit should be cut to 12 weeks – half the present maximum.
The most interesting comment came from Mr Hunt. According to reports, he favours the 12-week limit as it is "... about that incredibly difficult question about the moment we should deem life to start" and "... my view is that 12 weeks is the right point for it".
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 40 weeks later is development.
Many of us agree with Mr Hunt that abortion ought not to take place once life has begun.
We seem to differ with him, however, in our understanding of when that happens.
A so-called "woman's choice" is actually whether to murder the most indefensible in the very place in which it should be safest.
Rev C Brian Ross,
253 Shields Road,
Motherwell.

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