I can only ever recall one serious instance of moral cowardice in my life of which I am deeply ashamed. It occurred sometime between 1978 and 1983, in which years I was a Swillington Branch delegate to the General Management Committee (GMC) of the old Normanton Constituency Labour Party (CLP), which I joined aged 15. Normanton’s Labour MP was Albert Roberts, bosom buddy of the fascist Caudillo of Spain, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, and of the disgraced Pontefract architect John Poulson; a one-man argument for the mandatory reselection of MPs. Reselection was one of the great issues along with the question of who elected the leader, who would write Labour’s manifesto, and what to do about unilateral nuclear disarmament, which caused most of Labour’s strife in the 1980s, and kept it out of power until the 1997 Blair landslide. It was none of those issues though that caused me any great heartache, apart from the fact that they helped keep Thatcher in power. No, the issue that troubled me deepest was abortion.
There was a significant and strong Catholic faction on Normanton’s GMC, which was deeply anti-abortion. One meeting, the issue of abortion rights came up and I found myself in the middle of what was by far the best, most heartfelt and sincere debate I have ever heard. I say “heard” because for once I kept my mouth shut (which is not a common character trait of mine). I am anything but a fence-sitter. The pro-choice side made their points with all sincerity and the pro-life side did the same, and at the end of it all I could not bring myself to vote either way. I was not alone. There were many in that room a lot older than me who looked as deeply troubled as I felt. We were all thinking the same. None of us liked the idea of killing babies, but equally none of us liked the idea of forcing a woman to bear a child conceived of rape.
So, I abstained, and abstention is, to me (unless it’s for reasons of genuine ignorance) an act of moral cowardice. And I’d still have to do the same today. I’ve revisited that debate any number of times in my head whenever abortion rights come up again for debate, and all the same points remain unresolved. It still gives me the same mental meltdown. For anyone therefore who wants to say I’m morally defective in that regard, yes, hands up, I am. I really don’t know what the answer is. To another related question however, I do know the answer, and that concerns those professed Christians who silently pray outside abortion clinics, some of whom the police have arrested, and over which activity the government is now looking at new legislation. (N.B for those interested in balance, TNC’s editor has already covered the other side of the argument).
No Christian genuinely believes that God hears their prayers any better from the street outside an abortion clinic than he does from their own home or from the inside of a church. It’s not like God’s mobile phone network has blackspots with no signal. If those doing the silent praying are honest (and as Christians they should be), they should be truthful enough to admit that they pray outside abortion clinics to put personal individual pressure on any woman going there. And that, really, is despicable. I do not believe any woman has her baby aborted without at least some twinge of regret, and in most cases a much deeper, greater, lasting sadness that stays with them all their lives.
To me, anyone who wants to add to their misery is evil, and whilst they may profess to be Christians, I would suggest that their practice is somewhat short of their theory. Mentally beating up distressed women in the street is every bit as unedifying as allowing a cosmetically modified male do it in an Olympic boxing ring, and when it’s done by those who think themselves morally superior, it’s actually a lot worse. I believe in free speech, and I do not believe the police should arrest anyone silently praying for anything anywhere. But, if you are one of those engaged in silent prayer outside abortion clinics, I pray that you will consider seriously what being Christian is really all about.
Neil F. Liversidge is an Independent Financial Adviser running his own firm in Castleford, West Riding Personal Financial Solutions Ltd, www.wrpfs.com. For 39 years until 2017 he was a member of the Labour Party. A Brexiteer, he voted Conservative in 2019 and is now a member of Reform UK, the New Culture Forum, and the Free Speech Union.
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Oh come on, Neil, how many of the women having abortions today are rape victims? For most, it’s just a really poor contraceptive choice.
You are of course entitled to your opinion, but you and those who claim that abortion is ‘mostly’ being used as a from of contraception are so wrong. I would bet my house (if I had one) that you have never been in a position to make the decision whether to
have an abortion or not, and have not the slightest idea what it is like. There are many reasons why a woman decides to go through the procedure – and actually you don’t just walk in singing and dancing after a heavy night and get one (unless you are talking about the so called ‘morning after’ pill. And even then, believe me, singing and dancing is not usually part of the quite unpleasant process. A surgical abortion requires the agreement of two separate doctors and ‘counselling’, unless you can afford to go to a private clinic where you are also counselled. No contraceptive is 100% guaranteed effective, and it does take two people, usually a man and a woman to create a baby. The responsibility is, in 99.9% of cases down to the woman. But do feel free to self righteously opine on something you clearly know little about.
That’s a very valid thought which hadn’t really ever occured to me, but is nevertheless still flawed in that the implied intimidation of women going into the clinic would depend on them a) realising that the silently praying person outside was actually praying and that b) they had any Faith themselves and belief in prayer as not being just a delusion of talking to a higher power.
The arrest or moving on by Police though is an infringement of anyone’s right to be in a public place doing nothing illegal (silent praying is in this case as irrelevant as claiming to be silently saying the times tables) – true it has implications in this particular location but has far wider implications for freedom. Did those queuing outside covid vax centres feel intimidated by those staring at the spectacle with derision (and possibly silently praying that people weren’t so easily manipulated)?
There are some valid points in all the above comments, but, whatever the detail, the author’s main contention – namely that targeted public praying does often seem like gratuitous virtue-signalling – still seems honest and valid. As a democracy, can we just accept that?