LIFE Lines

Last week we looked at the possible psychological effects of abortion on women. Here's what the Royal College of Psychiatrists have to say on this topic:

The Daily Mail reports that men are twice as likely to be infected with chlamydia than women.

Food for thought.

On Friday 26th March, GMTV featured the heart-rending story of a woman who, after four abortions, cannot have children. Now of course there is no way of knowing whether the abortions contributed to the infertility (such adverse effects are rare but not unknown, as even abortion providers admit). But that is not really the point. Even if her history of terminations and her current infertility are physiologically unrelated, the psychological trauma that Karen faces is almost unimaginable.

Gonorrhoea, jokingly referred to by some as "go no where near" is worrying the health care professionals a bit more than usual. It is showing signs of resistance to the usual one dose of antibiotics used to clear up this niggling bacterial infection. This is potentially very serious.

You’re a young man. You don’t yet know what you’re about in life. Life is for enjoying, partying, hanging out with your girlfriend. You don’t think much further than that. One call though, and that all changes. It’s the voice of your girlfriend, but the tone is unfamiliar: “I’m pregnant. I’m having an abortion. It’s booked for Thursday.” She hangs up. No chance for discussion. You phone back, but she doesn’t answer.

One of the most common reactions that pro-lifers elicit when they outline their case against abortion is not hostility or derision (although they get quite enough of those to be going on with), but incomprehension. People who are very interested in “life issues” and care passionately about them tend to forget that the average person, if there is such a thing, doesn’t actually know very much about abortion, or spend much time thinking about it.

We have seen before on LifeLines how the lazy, much-parroted conventional opinion about overpopulation is based on some extremely shaky foundations.

Baroness Ilora Finlay, one of the country's leading specialists in care of the dying, tells a moving and impressive personal story about the triumph of life and hope over despair, making an unanswerable case against assisted suicide and euthanasia.

An extract:

"I will never regret that our law protected her; preventing her from ending her life when she was vulnerable to despair.