“They agree on little else, but the heads of Northern Ireland’s four main parties are united in their determination to deny their countrywomen access to free abortion at home.” So says an outraged correspondent for The Economist , reporting on the failure of an initiative to extend Great Britain’s liberal abortion laws to Ulster.
The piece is an excellent specimen of that familiar synthesis of journalism and advocacy. The opponents of liberalization, you see, are not motivated by an obligation to defend the innocent but by some unaccountable desire to thwart the legitimate desires of “their countrywomen.” Since the legislators gave more weight to the rights of the unborn than to the safety of women who choose to break the law, all reasonable readers will dolefully shake their heads to see that “medical arguments were trumped by political ones.” We can only hope that the slow-tide of “tolerance” will wash away all the backward “attitudes” impeding reform.
This sort of transparent question-begging (which is clearly too blithe to be deliberate) shows how completely some cultural elites of have internalized the idea that abortion is a human right. But, more encouragingly, the consensus against abortion among Northern Ireland’s warring factions shows how widely intelligible is the claim that all human life, from conception to natural death, deserves the protection of the laws.
