From the editor’s desk

Not a scientific question at all

There is something peculiar about the current proceedings of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which is taking evidence on whether there is a need for a change in the abortion law. Not only has the committee decided to disregard moral and ethical arguments and concentrate only on the "scientific evidence", but a sustained attempt has been made to discredit those expert witnesses who happen to hold views against abortion or who belong to pro-life organisations.

The issue is shortly to come before Parliament in the form of amendments to the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill. MPs - like the public in general - fall roughly into three categories: those for whom the foetus is a form of human life that must be accorded the protection of the law; those for whom a woman's right to choose whether to remain pregnant is paramount; and those who could be swayed either way by evidence and argument. It is this third group that is most likely to be influenced by progress in obstetric care, which has given a baby born at 24 weeks into pregnancy a fighting chance of survival. So the question arises: is it wrong to abort a baby that could exist independently of its mother's womb? It is easy to imagine two pregnant women side by side in a maternity hospital, one giving birth to a premature baby whom doctors will do their utmost to save, the other having a similar baby destroyed in the womb, possibly by the same doctors.

It is absurd for the committee to think that ethics can be left out of the equation. Indeed, in any other area of science and medicine the idea that the use to which science is put has no moral implications would be rejected as outrageous. But this is abortion, where almost no one thinks straight and the grossest partisanship is accepted as objective neutrality. Clearly, to the majority on the committee, to be pro-abortion is normal and those who oppose it are somehow weird, religious fundamentalists or worse. It is presumably to hold them at bay that the committee has decided to pretend there is such a thing as "scientific evidence" that has no moral dimension.

The other factor often argued as indicating the need for an abortion age limit below the present 24 weeks is the public's strong emotional response to three-dimensional pictures of babies moving in the womb. It is only recently that technology that has made such images so vivid, and they have brought home the humanity of a baby living inside the womb.

This sudden realisation of what abortion is all about has persuaded some people to want to see the age limit drastically reduced, even down to 12 weeks.

It is ridiculous for this committee of MPs to pretend that that reaction is anything but an intuitive moral judgement, a recognition of human solidarity between the born and the unborn. The rest of the House of Commons should see through this disingenuous bias, and approach the debate on the abortion amendments to the embryology bill as one of the great moral issues of the age - what is the right to life of unborn human beings? That is not a question science can even begin to answer.