April 27, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Dr. Joseph Shaw, a research fellow at Oxford’s St. Benet Hall and chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, has actually written a solid critique of a campaign spearheaded by dissident British theologian Tina Beattie urging the Polish bishops not to support the most recent proposed abortion ban.
In his essay, presented below, Dr. Shaw writes that the “Beattie Petition” selectively and misleadingly quotes the Second Vatican Council; fails to acknowledge the benefits of criminalizing abortion; and illogically suggests that an enhance in contraception will certainly reduce abortion in cases of rape, fetal disability, and threats to the mother’s life. Furthermore, Shaw writes that the petition is incompatible along with Catholic doctrine since it is written along with the presumption that abortion is not constantly an act of injustice toward the pre-born child.
Polish law currently allows abortion in cases of rape, as quickly as the baby has actually a disability, or as quickly as the mother’s life is in danger, and the proposed ban would certainly eliminate these exceptions.
Shaw skewers the petition signers’ appeals to compassion and mercy in their argument for abortion. “It is difficult to see ‘mercy, forgiveness, and compassion’ at job in the decision to abort a disabled or sick child,” he writes.
***
A response to the Beattie Petition, by Dr. Joseph Shaw
Executive summary
The ‘Open Letter from Concerned Catholics’ (the ‘Beattie Petition’) directed to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Poland attempts to discourage the Polish Bishops in their support for the full criminalisation of abortion in their country. It claims that, due to the fact that in particular hard cases women are faced along with ‘agonizing decisions’ concerning abortion, its criminalisation is contrary to a ‘woman’s freedom of conscience’. It is a principle of Catholic teaching, and of common sense, however, that freedom of conscience does not imply a freedom to inflict injustice on others, and that the State is obliged to protect the innocent. The Beattie Petition attempts to confuse matters by the selective quotation of Vatican II’s Dignitatis humanae, ignoring this limitation on freedom of conscience, and ignoring the condemnation of abortion by Vatican II in Gaudium et spes, not only as a sin on the conscience of the individual, however as a crime to be ‘guarded against’. Finally, the Beattie Petition fails to acknowledge the good consequences of the criminalisation, even if the law is only imperfectly enforced, notably in reducing the number of abortions, and freeing the medical occupation from official involvement in a procedure contrary to the fairly nature of the medical vocation.
Introduction
An ‘Open Letter’ or petition has actually been publicised calling on the Catholic Bishops of Poland to withdraw their support for a legislative initiative to criminalise all abortion. The signatures are arranged in alphabetical order, however the second name, Tina Beattie, Professor of Catholic Studies at Roehampton, is one of the fairly few which will certainly be widely recognised, and it will certainly be convenient to refer to the document as ‘the Beattie Petition’. The text, purporting to come from signatories that ‘respect the Church’s moral stance versus abortion’, is a disgraceful, however wholly unsuccessful, attempt to justify a failure to protect the unborn. It’s central contention, that abortion is not constantly an act of injustice towards innocent life deserving of legal protection, cannot overcome, and only ignore, Pope St John Paul II’s powerful declaration the Church’s infallible teaching on abortion, in his 1995 Encyclical Evanglium vitae §57:
Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion along with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is constantly gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.
I.
Before analysing the Petition, it is well to think about just what legislation can easily chance to achieve on the subject of abortion. The answer is simple: the criminalisation of abortion will certainly reliably suppress the openly practiced, legal abortion industry.
Abortion’s proponents, including the Beattie Petition, invariably argue that ‘driving abortion underground’ is of no benefit, however this is far from being the case. Most obviously, in times and places where abortion has actually been illegal, however where the availability of illegal abortion has actually been widely known, and efforts to stamp out illegal abortion far from vigorous, the number of abortions actually carried out has actually been fairly small compared along with the number performed as quickly as abortion has actually been decriminalised, even under apparently restrictive legal regimes.
There are in addition three others crucial benefits of criminalisation.
First, the abortion industry’s legal existence creates permanent tension for the easing of restrictions on abortion, by its support for political campaigning in favour of abortion; similarly, its existence acts as an advertisement of its services, even if some forms of open advertisement are not permitted.
Second, the abortion industry, as countless examples from about the globe have actually demonstrated in recent years, has actually scant regard for the legal limitations under which it is supposed to operate, or for the safety of its clients. Indeed, it is additionally a fallacy, exposed in the most painful manner by recent criminal convictions in the United States that, unsafe and even illegal abortions, along with poorly trained abortionists and in unsanitary conditions, necessarily disappear as quickly as abortion is legalised.
Third, the existence of legal abortion is corrosive to the ethos of the medical profession, whose training and method is obliged to take account of abortion as a supposedly legitimate procedure. In practice, where abortion is legal and hospitals carry it out, administrators will certainly put tension on practioners to perform this unpopular procedure, and will certainly make certain that it is included in medical training. A section, at least, of the medical occupation will, frequently versus their will, necessarily become involved in abortion, and its putative legitimacy will certainly have actually to be taken in to account in any kind of discussion of medical ethics, undermining a right understanding of the role of the doctor in relation to his or her patients, in the tradition of the Hippocratic Oath and of Catholic teaching on the Natural Law.
II.
The central contention of the Beattie petition bears on an additional benefit of criminalisation, which is the essential of all: its effect on women in crisis pregnancies. The Petition claims:
We appreciate the complex ethical challenges involved in any kind of intentionally abortive act. However, we additionally believe that our Catholic faith calls us to be attentive to suffering in all its forms, and to respond along with trust in the mercy, forgiveness and compassion of God as quickly as faced along with with [sic] profound moral dilemmas that offer no clear solution. In situations where abortion is deemed essential – such as those currently permitted under Polish law – we believe that access to early, safe and legal abortion is essential.
The cases currently permitted by Polish law are those where a pregnancy is the result of rape; where the mother’s life is endangered by the pregnancy; and where the unborn youngster is severely disabled or terminally ill. It is these cases alone which will certainly be affected by a finish ban, and which are addressed by the Beattie Petition.
It is difficult to see ‘mercy, forgiveness, and compassion’ at job in the decision to abort a disabled or sick child, particularly as quickly as the serious psychological and bodily dangers abortion, compared along with childbirth, has actually for mothers. Abortion is the favored answer, rather, of a medical and social system which would certainly very not be burdened by the task of supporting mothers and their kids in these difficult circumstances.
When a youngster is conceived in rape, the motivation of the rape victim and her friends and family in seeking abortion is basic to understand. It is just as clear, however, that it can easily never be a healing choice for a mother to consent to the destruction of her own child. The testimony of numerous women to the psychological trauma caused by abortion does not encourage the view that abortion is an basic means out for victims of rape.
The Petition focuses, instead, on the case of mothers whose good health in endangered by continuing a pregnancy. In this case, the question arises of whether, in the context of modern medicine, such cases actually occur. The 2012 Dublin Declaration on Maternal good health states:
As endured practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynaecology, we affirm that direct abortion – the purposeful destruction of the unborn youngster – is not medically essential to save the life of a woman.
This has actually been signed by a lot more compared to a thousand medical practioners. The Declaration clearly distinguishes, as the Catholic moral tradition does, and as laws restricting abortion often do, between abortion, as a procedure aiming at the death of an unborn child, and the medical treatment of a pregnant mother which might endanger the child’s life. In the Catholic tradition, as in the law, the latter can easily frequently be legitimate, taking account of the seriousness of the threat to the mother, the opportunity of alternative treatments, and so on.
III.
The Beattie Petition appeals to the tragic circumstances implied in each of these cases, along with the implication that offering the opportunity of abortion is the compassionate thing to do. For a mother in a crisis pregnancy, in some cases traumatised by rape, in others cases seriously ill, or struggling to come to terms along with the news that her youngster is severely disabled, the offer of abortion is not a compassionate intervention. as quickly as offered, perhaps along with the encouragement of doctors or family members, it will certainly generally present itself as a recommendation. Love all medical recommendations, it will certainly in such circumstances require a special strength of character to resist it, particularly as quickly as accompanied by the implied threat: if you don’t abort, the baby will certainly remind you of the rape, the baby will certainly be disabled, the baby will certainly kill you: claims which will certainly not necessarily be true. Such insight could be accompanied by pressure, of a subtle or not so subtle kind, from partners or family members, that might for a variety of reasons prefer the baby not to exist. The open door to abortion will certainly distract the attention of all involved from the alternative possibilities: of accepting the unique and sacred character of the child’s life, and of coming to terms along with the troubles implied by the pregnancy along with the support of doctors, family members, and where proper the state. Offering abortion to mothers in these cases can, in practice, be hard to distinguish from dispatching them down a pathway of convenience for others, a pathway in which the complications of a crisis pregnancy are swept aside, and the mother is left to cope along with the trauma of abortion instead, a trauma the existence of which the advocates of abortion, Love the signatories of the Beattie Petition, do not wish even to acknowledge.
It is precisely in these tragic circumstances, a lot more so compared to in cases where abortion is encouraged by apparently frivolous considerations, that the fact of abortion is apparent, as an injustice not only to the unborn, however to the mother. Legal abortion opens up the most vulnerable women of all to tension to consent to a crime versus their unborn child, and versus themselves. The criminalisation of abortion, as proposed today in Poland, is a step towards the protection of women and the unborn alike.
IV.
Two others claims of the Beattie Petition ought to briefly be considered. Initial is the claim that abortion could be low by higher availability of contraception:
Finally, there is a physique of evidence to prove to that the most effective means to avoid abortion is to respect women’s human dignity and freedom of conscience along with regard to reproductive decisions, by guaranteeing access to reliable means of birth control.
Such evidence as is frequently cited is far from decisive, however; just what is widely observed and agreed is that the majority of women seeking abortion had been using contraception. The connection between a contraceptive culture and the necessity for abortion was set out by Pope St John Paul II in Evangelium vitae (1995) §13. It is strange, in any kind of case, that this claim ought to be believed to have actually bearing on the cases of pregnancy resulting from rape, or where abortion is suggested since an unborn youngster is disabled, or the pregnancy is supposedly a danger to the mother’s life. yet rare or common such cases might be, reliable contraception is not going to avoid them arising.
The second claim is the alleged relevance of religious freedom, and Dignatatis humanae, the Declaration on Religious Liberty of the Second Vatican Council, §2. This section deals along with the freedom to profess religious beliefs. any kind of understanding of religious freedom need to distinguish between the manifestation of beliefs in harmless ways, and the alleged manifestation of religious beliefs in methods which are unjust to others, particularly others that are do not, or cannot, consent to this treatment. just what is unjust must, in turn, necessarily be assessed objectively. Dignitatis humanae makes precisely this distinction, in §7, and ignoring this naked truth is an indication of a lack of intellectual integrity in the Beattie Petition:
The right to religious freedom is exercised in human society: hence its physical exercise is subject to certain regulatory norms. In the use of all freedoms the moral principle of personal and social responsibility is to be observed. In the physical exercise of their rights, personal men and social groups are bound by the moral law to have actually respect both for the rights of others and for their own duties toward others and for the common welfare of all. Men are to deal along with their fellows in justice and civility.
As a matter of fact, the Second Vatican Council directly addressed the issue of abortion, in the Dogmatic Constitution Gaudium et spes, §51, which stressed the obligation to guard versus just what is a crime, and not simply a private sin:
For God, the Lord of life, has actually conferred on men the surpassing ministry of safeguarding life in a manner which is worthy of man. Therefore from the moment of its conception life need to be guarded along with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes.
The Beattie Petition additionally includes an appeal to ‘the call to mercy and compassion mercy’ of Pope Francis. The petitioners can easily locate no comfort, however, in the Holy Father’s most recent publication, the Post-Synodal Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (2016) §83:
So excellent is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent youngster growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own physique can easily justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can easily never be considered the “property” of an additional human being.
