Here is a contention that may rattle a few tea cups. It is that on the whole the Left is keener on killing people than the Right.
Of course I don’t mean the Far Left and the Far Right. Stalin and Mao were just as addicted to mass murder as Hitler. They were all equally blind to Christian teaching about the sanctity of human life.
Far Left and Far Right in fact share a great deal in common: a belief in the overweening power of the State; a disregard for individual liberty; and an eagerness to use armed force to settle disputes.
No, when I say that the Left is keener on killing people than the Right, I am thinking of softer, more moderate Britain – of Labour and the Lib Dems on the Left, and of the Tories on the Right. I’m not sure where Reform fits in.
Protection
I believe the overwhelming support of Labour MPs in changing abortion laws on Tuesday, and the endorsement of the Assisted Dying Bill by many of the same people expected in the final debate tomorrow in the House of Commons, validate my argument.
The odd thing is that people on the Left often think that they are nicer, kinder and morally superior to those on the Right. They will be flabbergasted by the idea that they could in any way be judged to be less humane.
Equally, many people on the Right have got used to the notion that, although they are better at running things because they are hard-headed and practical, they may be more heartless than their counterparts on the Left.
Such a view is hardly borne out by what happened in the Commons on Tuesday when, in what was officially a free (i.e. unwhipped) vote, hundreds of Labour MPs, including 11 Cabinet ministers, backed an extraordinary change in our abortion laws.
Members voted 379 to 137 to support an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill (introduced by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi) that will decriminalise abortion. This means that a pregnant woman will no longer face prosecution if she aborts her own baby, whether by drugs or some other means, at any stage up to birth.
At present, abortion cannot legally be approved by doctors if the foetus is more than 24 weeks old, which is about the time at which it is capable of surviving outside the womb. That will continue to be the case.
But unless the amendment is thrown out by the Lords or changed when the Crime and Policing Bill returns to the Commons – eventualities that are thought unlikely – a woman will be legally entitled to end the life of a perfectly viable baby of even 40 weeks without any prospect of punishment.
One may of course wonder how often this will happen. Not very, I would guess – and certainly hope. The vast majority of women who have an abortion do so before 24 weeks.
Nonetheless, Tuesday’s vote – which took place after a pitifully short and intellectually barren debate – essentially deprives unborn babies, however developed they may be, of the law’s protection.
MPs were evidently swayed by the case of Nicola Packer, which was cited by Ms Antoniazzi. Ms Packer was cleared last month of ‘unlawfully administering herself’ with abortion pills at home in 2020 when she was about 26 weeks pregnant. Her baby was stillborn.
A tragic case, and probably not a very common one. Only six women have appeared in court charged with ending or attempting to end their own pregnancy in the past three years. The old adage that hard cases make bad law appears not to have weighed on MPs.
Until Tuesday, the law had balanced the rights of the mother against those of the foetus. After Tuesday, the rights of the mother are paramount, and those of the unborn baby abolished.
No one can know how many more cases of late-term abortion there will be. Possibly not very many. But setting the rights of a 40-week baby at nought is a monumental philosophical development.
At the very least there should have been a proper public debate before this quickfire parliamentary ambush took place. Where, for example, is the Established Church in all this? Does it have a view – or is it wholly preoccupied with finding the next Archbishop of Canterbury?
The Church of England has also been pretty quiet about the Assisted Dying Bill. This is championed by Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater, a fluent and personable advocate, and hitherto supported by many Labour MPs (plus most Lib Dems and a few Tories). Without a huge Labour majority it couldn’t become law.
Sanctity
Admittedly, the issues are somewhat less stark than in the case of the abortion amendment. It’s interesting that polls suggest most people are in favour of those who are very sick, and have no prospect of recovering, being allowed to end their own lives.
The telegenic Kim Leadbeater constantly reassures us that her Bill is full of safeguards. But we know that all the safeguards in the world can’t protect vulnerable, stricken people from feeling that impatient (and perhaps mercenary) relatives are anxious to be rid of them.
The experience of other countries also tells us that people who aren’t terminally sick, but simply sunk in despair or afflicted by mental illness, are sometimes able to avail themselves of assisted dying. We can be certain it would happen here, whatever Ms Leadbeater may say.
At the heart of my objections to the Bill is a belief in the sanctity of life. Sanctity is an old-fashioned word for some, and it may have little resonance in an irreligious society – or one might say in a Labour Party that has almost entirely forgotten its roots in Methodism.
Extreme
We could just agree, believers and non-believers, that life is infinitely valuable, and the deliberate ending of any life with the sanction of the State diminishes the sense of preciousness a civilised society should see in all human life.
It is of course not true that the whole Labour Party is indifferent. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who is a Muslim, has described the abortion amendment as ‘extreme’ and opposed it in a letter to constituents. For whatever reason, she did not vote against it in the Commons.
She also opposes the Assisted Dying Bill, which she has described as a ‘State death service’. She rightly feels that ‘faced with expensive or insufficient care, some may feel they have become too great a burden to their family, friends and society at large’.
Maybe there has been a shift of opinion among Labour MPs, so that tomorrow Kim Leadbeater’s Bill will be defeated. Last November’s 330 to 275 Commons vote in favour was relatively narrow. It won’t take many defections to undo it.
My suggestion that the Left is more relaxed about killing people than the Right is perhaps too sweeping. But on Tuesday over abortion, and so far over assisted dying, Labour has shown less respect for human life.
