THE BISHOPS, THE HOUSE OF LORDS AND ABORTION

Twenty-six Anglican bishops sit in the House of Lords. Five of them - Canterbury, York, Durham, London and Winchester - do so ex officio. The remainder are chosen by seniority. Between them they are uniquely placed to promote Judaeo-Christian values in the nation's life. Alas, over the last thirty-five years they have done little to do so.

An archbishop of Canterbury, Donald Coggan, once spoke of the 'runaway bus' of abortion, but did little about it. As bishop of Birmingham, Hugh Montefiore in 1989 introduced a bill to reduce the effective upper age-limit for abortion from 28 to 24 weeks, but withdrew so feebly that some suspected it had been part of the manoeuvring which resulted in the disastrous 1990 Act, which imposed a 24-week limit for most cases but allowed some abortion up to birth.

Many, no most, of the spiritual peers, the 'lord' bishops, have never spoken in the House on 'life, issues and have been good at ducking them, either by being discreetly absent at crucial votes or by abstaining. The few who have had the courage to speak and vote prolife have usually been matched by colleagues speaking and voting the other way.

Worst of all, on three key occasions Anglican bishops have exercised decisive and disastrous influence in the Upper House. In 1967 the then archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, spoke powerfully in favour of David Steel's abortion bill and thereby did much to ensure its passage through the Lords. Whether he realised what was being unleashed we cannot know; he may have honestly believed that the Act would simply clarify the law. But he raised no moral objections to it then or subsequently.

Similarly, in 1990 York's Archbishop John Habgood almost single-handedly swung the voting in the Upper House in favour of sanctioning IVF and all forms of embryo abuse. Mixing some dated philosophising about when human life begins (we cannot know, he declared, because becoming human is a process) with a seriously misleading account of Christian teaching down the centuries on when the soul enters the body and what the Fathers and Scholastics had said about human life in its earliest stages, he arrived at the following conclusion, namely, that the human embryo is not really human and has no absolute moral status.

For many peers, especially waverers, that was enough. They could go off to dinner with their minds made up - returning simply to vote later that evening.

In January 2001 the Lords voted on cloning. Bishop Harries of Oxford, chairman of the Board of Social Responsibility (which, like the synod, has performed worse than disappointingly on abortion and related issues) gave a speech which echoed much of what Lord Habgood had said eleven years previously. It had been bad enough to endure the latter's muddled utterances then, especially since scholars like Professor John Finnis had repeatedly shown that the handful of moral theologians on whom people like the former archbishop of York relied had got it all badly wrong.

But here we were again, with the old mixture of misunderstanding and half-truths served up with bland confidence.

It was not until the nineteenth century, the bishop claimed, that the present hardline Catholic position was 'firmed up'. Wrong. Badly wrong. The inviolable status of human life from its beginning was proclaimed by the Church from earliest times. At least six early councils, for instance, condemned all abortion, as did the first Christian statement on moral conduct, the Didaché (c.100). When Pius IX imposed excommunication for all abortion in 1869 he was restoring an old penalty, not inventing a new one. Contrary to what Bishop Harries told the Lords, he was not 'firming up.'

Authorities like Augustine and Aquinas, misled largely by Aristotle, did indeed believe - as the bishop said -that abortion before the new life had been 'formed' i.e. ensouled, could not be regarded as homicide, because the victim (in their judgement) was not yet fully human. But they and all who held similar views (there was not unanimity on this matter among the Fathers or Scholastics) were adamant that to kill a not-yet-but-on-the-way-to-becoming-fully human being was gravely wrong. It was lamentable for the bishop to conclude (as Lord Habgood had previously concluded) that 'the early embryo does not have an absolute status according to ... Western tradition.' It certainly does, and in the Eastern as well.

The embryo, the bishop said, does not have an absolute status. It has a 'special 'status, however.

And what does that mean? It means that embryonic human beings can be deliberately manufactured in the laboratory, cannibalised by stripping off their stem cells and killed. If need be. If this is the way to medical advances this is justified, he declared.

In practice, therefore 'special status' will mean no status. Curiously, when the time came to vote on 22 January Bishop Harries abstained, even though he had shown his hand so clearly. Two brother-bishops courageously voted prolife. The rest either abstained or were absent.

Thanks to his inaction the bishop could qualify for appointment as 'neutral' chairman of the Select Committee subsequently set up to advise the House on stem cell research. and cloning. But for Anglican prolifers his performance has been a cause of profound shame. They and other Christians, not to mention prolife Jews, Muslims and Sikhs, will be saddened that yet another opportunity to proclaim the message of life was rejected.

There are consolations, however. The Evangelical C of E group Reform have protested loudly at Bishop Harries' account of Christian teaching on the sanctity of all preborn human life; and the Christian Institute, whose publications have won much applause, is now another powerful prolife voice from within the Established Church.

Published in Life News, Issue no. 36 - Spring 2001 (25p), Newbold Terrace, Leamington Spa, CV32 4EA Visit their website www.lifeuk.org