Some years back, His Grace accepted an invitation to speak to a group of the gathered faithful in Northern Ireland. As is his wont, he had carefully prepared his speech, crafted its content and honed its verbiage. He was quite satisfied with what he was going to say (though he cannot recall now precisely what that was). But on the aeroplane to Belfast, he was reading a newspaper which hijacked his entire mindset.The article which so offended and infected his intended speech concerned a prisoner, incarcerated for some unmemorable misdemeanour, who had qualified for and undergone ‘gender realignment’ (male to female) surgery whilst a guest of Her Majesty.
On the NHS, of course.
As if this were not sufficiently irritating, the prisoner had subsequently changed his mind, and had the surgery reversed.
Again, on the NHS (ie the taxpayer).
To be honest, His Grace truly cannot recall the matter of his original speech, or even what the gathered faithful of North Down had asked him to speak about. But he does recall the impromptu extemporisation and fulsome condemnation of this sort of approach to taxpayer-funded ‘healthcare’.
He had a similar reaction when he read in The Times of the ‘dozens of young women’ who undergo months and sometimes years of very expensive IVF treatment (courtesy of the taxpayer), finally become pregnant, and then decide to abort their child ‘because they have changed their minds about becoming a mother’:
Data obtained from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority reveal that an average of 80 abortions are carried out in England Wales and Scotland each year following IVF treatment. Up to half of these involve prospective mothers aged 18-34. These women — usually the healthiest — are the least likely to conceive babies with abnormalities, suggesting a “social” reason may have led to the decision.Setting aside for a moment why women as young as 18 might be undergoing IVF treatment, and further setting aside that these 80 abortions really are just drops of blood in the annual ocean of slaughter, the scandal is that the NHS now appears to be complicit in the murder of wanted babies.
Even the pro-abortionists amongst His Grace’s readers and communicants might find this rather sickening. From a purely utilitarian perspective, the Pro-Lifer’s have no problem grasping the concept of seeking to abort that which is not and never has been wanted: it is just a bunch of cells, parasitical upon the host woman who has the ‘right’ in law to do with her body as she wishes.
But abortion which terminates the life of a child which has not only been planned but invasively procured through intervention in nature’s barren course is not only unethical, it is barbaric.
If the NHS is to survive in the future (that is, be affordable), it is precisely this sort of grotesque practice which needs to be curtailed. There may be no appetite amongst our legislators to outlaw abortion altogether, but it is a certain fact that there now is a sizeable movement now in favour of reform.
Perhaps a woman who undergoes IVF ought to feel the material cost as well as the emotional one. Developing babies in the womb are not commodities to be bought one day and discarded the next like unfashionable bags and shoes: having children is not a human right.
