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When is a life not a life?
MPs vote on Tuesday on the various amendments on abortion that have been tacked on to the The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.
These variously suggest the current 24-weeks limit on termination should be reduced to 22, 20, 18, 16 or even 13 weeks.
Those opposed to abortion seek to lower the upper limit, beyond which abortion should not be permitted. They say life starts far earlier than 24 weeks and their case has been strengthened by new images showing foetuses as young as 16 weeks showing signs of relatively developed behaviour.
Proponents of a woman’s right to choose say those who have abortions later in a pregnancy are often in desperate circumstances, maybe having lost a partner through death or separation, or suffering from domestic violence or poverty.
A poll in the Guardian suggests MPs will reject calls to lower the limit, while you can read a round-up of press comment ahead of the vote here.
What is your opinion?
Is hybrid embryo research “monstrous?”
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill which MPs are debating today and on Tuesday allows the creation of four types of human-animal hybrid embryos for the purposes of research, including Cytoplasmic hybrids, created by transferring the nucleus of a human cell into an empty animal cell.
This is the main type of hybrid embryo that scientists want to use — because of a shortage of donated human eggs — to create embryonic stem cells to find cures for conditions like Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis.
Gordon Brown launched an impassioned defence of the need for hybrid embryos over the weekend, calling it an “inherently moral endeavour.” His younger son Fraser has cystic fibrosis, a condition which could benefit from such embryo research.
But some critics are horrified by such “Frankenstein science.” Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland says hybrid embryo research is “monstrous” and should be banned.
Which side do you think is right?
Steve Bowen:
Your comment makes me want to shake your hand. Thank you.
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The Wall
An embryo does not have an “undeniable right to life”, If it did we wouldn’t be having the debate. The law as it stands denies such a right up to 24 weeks. The facts are that foetal development is a gradual spectrum of complexity which at some point leads to a concious self aware human being. When that foetus reaches that point is debatable and only reconcilable through the science. As a society we have to decide a point at which stage of development the foetus’s rights outway the mother’s, and I suppose, what adverse consequences to the mother are serious enough to warrant termination at a particular time. We are all prone to the “ick” factor and some of us to delusions of the divine but neither of these are rational ways to answer these complex questions.