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Bernadette
came to her local LIFE House desperate for help. Fleeing domestic violence,
pregnant with her third child, and with nowhere else to turn, she didn’t think
it would be possible to over-come longstanding issues and repair her
relationship with her family.
Her Support Plan worked on building confidence
and self-esteem and together with her Support Worker, Bernadette developed a
valuable network of friends and family to ensure she was happy and safe when she
was ready to leave our care.
*not real name
Info for students
If you're reading this page, that means you're probably interested in finding out more about LIFE's ethical views on matters of life and death.
- Maybe you're broadly supportive of LIFE, but eager to find out more about the issues and keen to learn how to defend your views
- Maybe you agree with us on some issues but not others
- Maybe you disagree with us about everything
- Maybe you don't know what you think, or you feel like you need to find out more before you can make your mind up. Hopefully these pages will be helpful to you
Whichever of these categories you find yourself in, there will be something for you in these pages.
LIFE's values
The most important and influential part of LIFE's ethos is our opposition to all abortion on principle. This is based on our recognition of the fact that every single human life, from the very beginning, i.e. conception, to the very end, i.e. natural death, is uniquely valuable, precious and irreplaceable. This also means that we are opposed to destructive research on embryos, and artificial reproductive technologies that waste embryonic human life, and opposed to the legalisation of assisted suicide.
We do not judge individuals. We do say that particular acts are wrong because they infringe the rights and the dignity of others. But this is not the same as condemning an individual.
Just as important as what we are against is what we are for. LIFE has been called "the caring face of the pro-life movement" because we offer positive alternatives.
We say "yes" to life;
..."yes" to helping women in crisis pregnancy;
..."yes" to helping disabled children and their families;
..."yes" to optimism and hope and non-discrimination, and methods of helping infertile couples that respect human life.
The law
While there is not, strictly speaking, any legal “right” to abortion for anyone in the UK, the law allows abortion up to 24 weeks for most reasons, and right up to birth (40 weeks) if the child is disabled, as long as two doctors have attested “in good faith” that an abortion is medically necessary (a link to the full text of the Abortion Act can be found in the Resources section of the website).
Isn't this debate over?
Many people find the ongoing debate about abortion baffling. In the UK, we've had widely available legal abortion for more than forty years. Isn't this a done deal? Do we have to keep talking about this? Isn't this only an issue for religious extremists?
At LIFE we gently suggest that this is not the case. We cannot assume that what is legal is necessarily moral. Human history is full of examples of practices that we now view as totally unacceptable, but were once perfectly legal and indeed regarded as normal. Slavery is one such example. We must always look at law in the context of ethics. A law which denies the most basic and fundamental right of all - the right to life - is an unjust law.
Thinking through the "hard cases"
The first reaction many people have to hearing a new viewpoint is to ask questions. This is particularly true in the case of bioethical problems like abortion, that strike deep to the heart of our most cherished beliefs about individual freedom and the value of individual human lives.
What about cases where a woman is pregnant after rape, or is the victim of abuse in the family, or the child has a disability, or the woman's life is at risk?
How common are these hard cases?
The first thing to say about these “hard cases” is that they represent a tiny minority of all abortions in the UK. Pregnancy after rape and pregnancy after incest are extremely rare occurrences. Abortion for disability is not uncommon exactly, with over 2,000 per year, but it still makes up less than 2% of total UK abortions. Even abortions for under-18s make up fewer than 10% of the total. The vast majority of all abortions carried out in Britain are performed on healthy adult women, who are pregnant following consensual sex, who are carrying healthy babies. Obviously each case has its own unique characteristics, but whatever we think about the issue of abortion, we have to acknowledge that this is true. Often the “hard cases” are often used as a sort of smokescreen to try and avoid discussing this fact, which surely poses some searching questions about the way that we as a society approach sex.
Sounds harsh...
It might sound that way because it is stating a truth that people find uncomfortable. That does not mean that it is not worth thinking about, or that it can be ignored.
None of this means that we are dismissive of these cases. They are of course still incredibly difficult, and we absolutely understand why women make the choices they do in such situations. The important fact to remember, however, is that the human being conceived through rape, or incest, did not choose how he or she came into the world. It would be unfair and illogical to deny the humanity of an unborn child, simply because he or she was conceived through rape or incest. Why should the sins of the fathers be visited on the children? We do not deny the humanity of born people whose parents are murderers, or thieves, or rapists.
At LIFE are simply aiming to be honest and consistent about our core value: the value of every individual human life, from its very beginning to its very end. It would be irrational of us to make this value dependent on something that the individual human being in the womb cannot control for him or herself.
We believe that the truly compassionate response in such situations is to provide all the necessary support to women in such situations - counselling, emotional support, and space to explore options that are often overlooked, such as adoption. An abortion will not make the trauma of rape or incest go away. Many women have found that under such circumstances abortion simple introduces further trauma into an already tragic situation, and other women who do continue with a pregnancy resulting from rape find that the child actually represents something good and wonderful from something terrible.
What about abortion to save the mother's life? An excellent question. There are a few cases where the preservation of the mother's life requires an intervention that will almost certainly result in the death of the unborn child, e.g. if a pregnant woman with cancer needs to have chemotherapy. In this case the operation or treatment is not strictly speaking an abortion, since its intention is not to end the child's life; the doctor performing the procedure is not seeking the child's death as the desired outcome of the operation. This is a very important distinction. An abortion is a direct attack on the unborn child with the intent of ending its life. Further questions: abortion