From the editor’s desk

A welcome pastoral approach

The joint statement on abortion from the two cardinals of the Catholic Church in Britain, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster and Cardinal Keith O'Brien of Edinburgh, signals a welcome change of tone in the Church's treatment of this vexed issue. Speaking on behalf of their two bishops' conferences, the cardinals recognise much more explicitly than previous Church statements that the debate has to be won outside Parliament before it can be won inside. Indeed, they suggest that a change in public attitudes would reduce the abortion rate even if the law remained the same. Nevertheless, incremental changes to the law, such as reducing the time limit on abortions below the 24 weeks the law currently allows, are still worth fighting for.

But even more notable than this is their compassionate recognition that women sometimes see abortion as a desperate solution to a desperate situation. "For many women," they say, "it is one in which they, perhaps even as much as their unborn child, will have been the victim. This is why we believe that abortion is not only a personal choice, it is about the choices our society makes to support women, their partners and families in these situations."

The late Cardinal Winning of Glasgow sometimes spoke of abortion as "murder", a word full of blame and judgement. Yet he was outstanding in the help he gave to desperate women, and the two cardinals clearly wish to build on his example and offer the Church's practical and pastoral support to isolated and frightened women who are pregnant in unfavourable circumstances. As the cardinals point out, far from being pro-choice, abortion is often about women who feel that they have no choice. There is a lot more the Church and other institutions can do to change that.

The Government has now lined up behind the British Medical Association and other professional bodies in saying that advances in paediatric care for premature babies do not indicate the need for a lower abortion time limit, an issue that may well come to Parliament in the form of an amendment to the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill. MPs may yet be persuaded otherwise, but the cardinals acknowledge that the likelihood of abortion being made unlawful in all cases is unrealistic. This is a sensible reading of the public mood.

If the Church is looking for a fresh approach to abortion it needs to anticipate other counter-arguments, such as that mentioned by Lord Steel in an interview to mark the fortieth anniversary of his abortion law reform bill becoming law. The Catholic Church does not help its case against abortion by opposing contraception, he stated, and it may be significant that the two cardinals, perhaps aware of the force of that objection, do not mention contraception in their statement. More difficult still is the sort of case discussed by Tina Beattie in this edition of The Tablet: pregnancy resulting from rape by an enemy during conflict in Bosnia. The same dilemma - when pregnancy results not from an act of love but from an act of hate - crops up repeatedly in Darfur. These issues need more debate, not just among the supporters of abortion but inside the Catholic Church itself. New situations produce new problems, for which standard responses are not always adequate.