Is it only Catholics who care about the unborn? asks Gavin Ashenden
One of the more horrific parts of Catholic history in these islands was the extent to which the English state went to outlaw the Catholic Mass. The arrest, torture and execution of Catholics left a deep stain on the conscience and reputation of the state.
Thankfully, in parallel with the changes in European history, there has been a slow but steady and welcome improvement in the way the state has treated Catholics since the horrendous recusancy laws led to the martyrdoms.
However, this direction of travel was suddenly and one might say, perversely, reversed when Bournemouth city council erected a sign near an abortion clinic delineating a so-called “safe-zone”, and prohibiting a number of practices in an area surrounding it. And of course yesterday MPs voted for such safe zones to appear across the whole country.
Obviously, and to some extent understandably, the main intention is to protect women making their way to the abortion clinic from harassment. But two things are odd;- the first is the assumptions about what constitutes harassment and the second is the way in which the prohibitions are framed.
There is a delicate balance in a civilised society between freedom of speech, freedom of protest and the rights of citizens not to be harassed. The hesitancy of the police to arrest climate change protestors blocking ambulances from hospitals has caused both alarm and debate. The balance was clearly tipped in favour of the protestors to fury and frustration of other citizens.
But the abortion debate seems to have a serious imbalance as well. Two entirely opposed world views find themselves directly opposed. On the secular side there is a passionate determination to allow and encourage a woman to exercise complete control over her body; and on the protestors’ side there is the horror that in so doing the worst kind of child abuse is perpetrated, amounting, since it involves the destruction of a sentient human being, to a form of murder.
In the past protestors have tried to shock pregnant women into a realisation that they are not simply evacuating themselves of a clump of cells, but displaying the graphic and recognisably horrific pictures of the dismembering of the embryonic baby. It is not surprising that to avoid such disturbing confrontations with the reality of the procedure the Council in their first paragraph prohibited: “protesting, namely engaging in an act of approval/disapproval ..with respect to issues related to abortion services, by any means.”
Given the shock a dismembered child in the womb can invoke, one might indeed expect the display of images to be prohibited, so the sign continues: “This includes..graphic, verbal or written means”. But the Council wanted and did go much further and added “prayer or counselling.”
The concept of making prayer illegal pushes the boundaries to places they should not go. Presumably the legislators want people not to kneel down on the roadside, but they are stuck with how to define someone in the act of prayer. So instead of taking the considerable trouble to define a bodily posture, they have gone for the simple but jurisprudentially simplistic and offensive blanket ban on prayer.
On examination this is ridiculous. I like many, do much of my praying under my breath while I am standing or walking. Not on the same scale as the central figure in the ‘Way of the Pilgrim’ who walked across Russia praying the Jesus Prayer, but simply to make the point that if we follow St Paul trying to pray at all time ‘in the Spirit’ just how does the state think it can control or legislate such things? How can Council officials even begin to know when I am praying. How do they even know if I am holding a rosary between my fingers if I am at that moment praying or just holding it.
I was told of an account where a protestor in the USA was arrested for praying in a prohibited zone. On complaining that the arresting office did not know what he was praying for (or against) the officer retorted, it doesn’t matter. “Praying of any kind is illegal here.” We have moved from needing to have intention to be guilty of a crime, and from being innocent until proven guilty, to simply being declared guilty because one does not accept the state’s moral strictures.
Perhaps because of all Christians it is Catholics who have the clearest understanding that life begins at conception, and so the being in the womb is a child from the earliest moments, the people coming to pray outside or near abortion clinics are likely to be Catholics. The offensive public signage seems to presume that.
So the list of prohibitions continues:”holding vigils where members audibly pray, recite Scripture, genuflect, sprinkle holy water on the ground or cross themselves.”
Is it too facetious to be completely caught up with the display of metaphysical hubris that the councillors have lured themselves into? Can they or some enforcement officer tell the difference between holy water and profane water? Would it be a defence to say at the trial that the water spilt on the ground was unblessed rain water?
But crossing oneself anywhere on Opher Road or Porchester Road, two roads in the ‘safe zone’ in Bournemouth, has become a criminal offence, which is as draconian as it is extraordinary.
We are entitled to ask questions about the proportionality of it. Why is secular culture so determined to promote the annihilation of its children that it is willing to frame such offensive and nonsensical laws?
Why is it just Catholics who have shrugged off the feminist propaganda? Is there no one concerned that in killing eight million of our children we have given ourselves problems about even mundane but important considerations like creating a work force to look after the elderly and contribute to the economy?
It is acceptable to everyone that having failed to allow enough children to be born to replace our own civilisation we are importing millions of people from what are alien cultures for whom assimilation is problematic? Are there no other people who feel that death is not the best form of contraception? Has it not struck any of our elder statesmen that our society seems literally to have developed a death wish? Why is it only or mainly Catholics who are willing to protest, argue, witness and pray for the unborn?
And how fixated on its own propaganda and self-destruction has a society become that decides in what must be a form of desperation to ban prayer, genuflection and crossing oneself?
Could there be any greater compliment expressed towards the responsibility and influence that living and acting as a Catholic entails than this dreadful sign? It makes one want to reach afresh for the holy water, to flex ones knees again, and to make the sign of the cross while praying under one’s breath. If it’s that effective, let’s do it – even if we have to risk prosecution to remind a state where the proper balances and boundaries of civilised behaviour lie in this propaganda driven society.
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