HUMAN EMBRYO ABUSE

Q. In what way do you allege that human embryos are being abused?
A. Under the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, it is legal in the U.K. to do experiments on human embryos up to 14 days from fertilisation. Embryos up to this age are also thrown away or frozen and then compulsorily destroyed after five years, or otherwise mistreated in the course of in vitro fertilisation techniques.

Q. But embryos at this stage cannot feel pain, and if it is in a good cause, for example to give an infertile couple a much-wanted baby, surely there is no harm in it?

A. There is no question of feeling pain so early (though many later abortions are carried out without anaesthetic on babies who can certainly feel pain). The motives of experimenters may be good, though some are seeking more effective ways of ending the lives of unintentionally conceived children as early as possible e.g. by the so-called "morning after" pill. Even with the best intentions however, and even painlessly, it can never be right deliberately to end an innocent human life, however young, or to use one human being as a guinea pig for the benefit of another. We would not doubt this for a moment if it were "unwanted" children in Chinese orphanages who were being used, even if we were certain that they were feeling no pain of any kind.

Q. Surely a new human life only starts at 14 days after fertilisation, so it is all right to experiment on early embryos?

A. Medical textbooks recognise fertilisation, when a sperm fuses with an ovum, as the start of a new life. This single cell is a whole human being, not a part of the father or mother, whether it is created in a woman's body or on a laboratory slide.

HUMAN CLONING

Q. What is cloning?

A. An unfertilised ovum has its nucleus replaced by the nucleus of an adult cell. The resulting embryo is a twin of the donor of the nucleus and has identical DNA.

Q. Is the ProLife Party against human cloning?

A. Yes, we are totally opposed to the cloning of human beings, either with the intention of producing a live baby, or with the intention of taking cells from the clone embryo, who dies in the process (so-called "therapeutic" cloning). Both kinds of cloning would involve using human embryos for experimentation (see above). There are many other objections to each kind of cloning.

Q. Why are you against "therapeutic" cloning?

A. The suggestion that a human should be created, grown for some days, and then harvested for spare parts, is a gross assault on human dignity. Of course there is no objection to the cultivation of for example someone's skin cells for his own benefit, but to create what is in effect a tiny twin sibling simply to be used, is very wrong. The new life is that of a real human being, as human as you or I are now, or were at that stage of our lives.

Q. Why are you against cloning for birth/where the clone will be born?

A. There are several drawbacks, apart from the destruction of human embryos which would necessarily happen during prior experimentation. The process is very risky. Many deformed lambs were produced in the making of Dolly the cloned sheep. Cloning would confuse family relationships harmfully, the baby being genetically the sibling of the DNA donor. It is a further step in the direction of "commodification", of treating a baby as a commodity, a thing to be made to order and rejected if not as planned, rather than as an equal human being.

ABORTION

Q. Is the ProLife Party against all abortion?

A. Yes, we are against the deliberate ending of any innocent human life right from its start when a sperm and an ovum unite to make a new human being. Abortion is also harmful to women, who often regret it and suffer in mind and body.

Q. What about women who have had an abortion?

A. We do not judge or blame or condemn women who have had an abortion. We understand the pressures, the lack of accurate information and support and time to think clearly, which may have led to a rushed and often bitterly regretted decision.

Q. Is the ProLife Party against abortion even to save the mother's life?

A. Very rarely an operation to save the mother's life, such as the removal of a cancerous womb, or a damaged fallopian tube in an ectopic pregnancy, must inevitably result in the unwanted side-effect of the baby's death. This is very sad but it is not an abortion, it is not the deliberate ending of a life, it has never been illegal, and no one is against it. In other, still rare, cases, doctors may be able to save mother and baby by letting the pregnancy continue until the baby can survive outside the womb. Improved medical knowledge has practically ended the old choice between saving mother or baby, though there may still be very occasional cases where a difficult choice may need to be made in balancing the mother's health and the baby's.

Q. What if the mother is very young?

A. Apart from the obvious fact that it can never be right to take a child's life, the quick fix of abortion is particularly harmful for very young girls, both mentally and physically. Positive practical help can save the baby's life and the mother's health and happiness.

Q. What if the pregnancy resulted from rape?

A. Abortion does not undo the rape; it adds another horrible experience, leaving the woman feeling doubly a victim. Putting aside the unfairness of an innocent child being killed for her father's crime, there is some evidence that it is better psychologically for the woman if she can be helped to continue the pregnancy, legitimately seeing herself as a heroine who has taken charge of the situation and protected her child. She can then if she wishes hand over the baby to loving adoptive parents as a positive closure to her dreadful experience, or choose to keep the baby herself. In real life, as opposed to fiction, violent rape is extraordinarily unlikely to result in pregnancy, and women tend to love their babies even if they hate the father. (One of the worst cruelties of slavery was that children fathered on slaves by their masters were sold separately from their loving mothers.) It is also extremely difficult to prove the truth or falsehood of an allegation of rape. Roe v. Wade, which led to a million abortions a year in the U.S.A., was based on a case where a woman claimed to have been raped but admitted fifteen years later that she had lied. Rape cases make up a very small proportion of the hundreds of thousands of abortions every year in the U.K.

Q. What if the baby is disabled?

A. A disabled baby is a human being who needs extra help. In 2002, out of a total of 184,993 abortions performed in England and Wales, 1863 were for suspected handicap. Some of these babies will have been perfectly healthy, others only slightly disabled. What message are we sending to handicapped children and adults and people injured in e.g. road accidents, if we cull pre-born babies as "sub-standard"? The vast majority given help are as likely to lead happy fulfilled lives as those who think of themselves as able-bodied. Organisations representing the disabled particularly object to this discrimination. Some of the babies will have had no or very slight handicaps. Many babies miscarry as a result of procedures aimed at discovering disabilities. Of course if we say that abortion of the handicapped is wrong, we are duty bound to offer help to them and their families.

Q. What about women's rights?

A. We are totally in favour of a woman's rights over her own body, her right to give or refuse consent to sexual intercourse. We are against a woman's "right" to choose to abort her baby for the same reason as we are against a man's "right" to beat his wife, or anyone's "right" to keep a slave, namely that this infringes the rights of another human being.

Q. If abortion is illegal, won't women die from botched back-street abortions?

A. We are just as much against illegal as against legal abortions, but this question is based on the inaccurate assumption that legalising abortion has saved women's lives. Figures quoted for illegal abortions before 1967 were deliberately exaggerated. The horror stories come from the 1930s and 1940s. After that, and well before the 1967 Abortion Act, deaths recorded as from illegal abortions, from all maternity-related problems (which may of course include illegal abortions not recorded as such) and of women of child-bearing age in general, were all coming down in number at a rate which continued unchanged after the Act. This applies to other countries in the developed world, regardless of when they made abortion easier (or even in four cases harder) to get. It must be the result of better medicine, probably mainly antibiotics. Most women will not risk an illegal operation, knowing it to be risky, though in fact legal abortions are not as safe as they think. Many women who have legal abortions have complications needing treatment in hospital, many more go to the doctor for physical or psychiatric help, and the increased risk of suicide after abortion compared with giving birth means that more, not fewer, women die.

EUTHANASIA

Q. If someone is old and ill and unhappy and wants to die, why should they not be allowed to do so with dignity instead of lingering on in pain?

A. This sounds fine but the reality is somewhat different. The truth is that other people would be choosing death for a particularly vulnerable group. People who are unhappy need comfort; those who are clinically depressed need treatment; the old are as likely to want to go on living as the young, if given support. Very few people are really unable to end their own lives if they wish, but only a small proportion actually choose to do so. The Hospice Movement has stated that pain can nearly always be controlled without making the patient unconscious (which would be a last resort). It is perfectly legal and not in any way against a traditional respect for human life, to give strong painkillers if needed by a dying person even when they may shorten life. It is not legal, and is in fact murder, to give a drug with the purpose of shortening life. Euthanasia has been endemic in Holland for some time and has now been legalised. The result is that old people are afraid to go into hospital for fear of being killed, and that doctors openly admit to deliberately shortening human lives, often not even fulfilling the requirements of the law.

Q. Surely a doctor should end a patient's life if asked?

A. A doctor would not accede to a request to amputate a healthy limb for reasons that seemed good to the patient. He or she would offer psychiatric and other help. Similarly a doctor should not acquiesce in a patient's view that his or her life is worthless. For over two and a half thousand years, doctors have understood that they should use their knowledge to save life and health, not destroy them.

Q. Does the PLA mean that the medical profession should keep everyone alive for as long as possible by any means and whatever their suffering?

A. No one has a duty to use all possible means to support a patient's life. Some treatments may be withheld as too burdensome for what they can achieve. A conscious informed patient who is mentally competent is legally entitled to refuse treatment . However, where the aim is to make the patient die, by withholding treatment, food or fluids, this is euthanasia and is morally wrong. This so-called "passive euthanasia" as in the Bland case causes a painful and sometimes lingering
death.

SINGLE ISSUE POLITICS

    Objection: Politics is more complicated than the PLA implies. Prolife issues are only one among many important factors which should decide how people vote.

    Answer: The right to be allowed to go on living is the most basic right. Human beings cannot enjoy other important rights such as free speech, education, health care, and so on, if their lives can summarily be ended. Single-issue politics played a large part in the movement for civil rights for black people in the Southern United States in the 1960s. This one issue was thought so important that many voted contrary to their usual allegiance.     What issue would you think important enough to alter your usual voting pattern? Slavery? War? The deliberate killing of innocent children?

    Objection: Why is a new party needed? Surely anyone who cares can vote for a more or less prolife candidate from one of the major parties?