Private beliefs, public morality

Universe Column for June 22nd 2001
David Alton
A reader has written to me rebuking me for recently publicising the voting records of the three party leaders on issues such as abortion, cloning and euthanasia. She says that these are purely private matters.
It is a curious thing in Britain but many of the things, which genuinely are private matters we take great delight in parading across daily newspapers. Meanwhile, issues that the public deserves to be told about are suppressed or concealed as official secrets.
How a politician votes in Parliament is not a private matter and those who want fundamental changes made in laws that destroy millions of lives are entitled to know how a politicians intends to vote.
The abortion issue, in particular, brings out some very mixed up attitudes.
Take the Dutch abortion ship as an example. Imagine the outcry if a group of paedophiles, drug pushers, pornographers, arms dealers or nazis decided to moor a ship just outside the Thames Estuary and proceeded to act in defiance of British law.
In Ireland there are still laws that protect the unborn child. Yet, Dutch abortionists acting on a self-proclaimed liberal mandate say they are entitled to violate the laws of another sovereign state.
I believe that British laws that allow a disabled baby to be killed as she is being born are evil. Imagine the reaction if I incited acts of violence against the abortionists involved in ending those lives; or if I encouraged foreign militants to do it for me.
The abortionists are false liberals.
These are the same people who proclaim the right of people to know their rights to an abortion while denying groups like the Pro-Life Alliance the right to a broadcast which would have illustrated what actually happens in an abortion.
Cardinal Hume was so right when he said that if showing what happens in an abortion is “distasteful” then maybe the act is so distasteful that we shouldn’t allow it in the first place. Thanks to Priests For Life it is, however, now possible to see the consequences of abortion via the internet (http//www.priestsforlife.org/resources/abortionimages/index.htm).
The Americans are ahead of us in more than respects than one.
In January 1973 the USA legalised abortion following the Roe v Wade case.  Jane Roe was the heroine of the liberal establishment.
Twenty eight years later Jane Roe and several other women are now suing the New Jersey State authorities because of the damage which abortion has done to their lives. They say that the abortion industry doesn’t care about women or the suffering, which they have experienced.
What interest I wonder will the Dutch abortionists have in the future well being of the women they entice to their ship? What legal redress will those women have in future years?
So to my irate correspondent,  I must insist, these are not private matters about which we should not inquire of our politicians. They are issues that cut to the very heart of our humanity.