Casual infanticide

This week the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists published a report in which it asserted that foetuses in the womb are incapable of feeling pain until at least 24 weeks into the gestation period. On this basis, the College could see no reason to lower the UK's current 24 week limit for termination of a pregnancy (the highest such limit in Europe, incidentally).

Reaction from the anti-abortion side has (so far) reflected sorrow rather than anger, but the "right to choose" crowd has reacted with something close to triumphalism. I saw one "expert" on the BBC News saying that the possibility that pain might be felt by the foetus was irrelevant in all cases, since it would be perfectly simple to administer an anaesthetic before carrying out the termination! I didn't catch this gent's name, but I assume he has no problems with the truly loathsome practice of "partial birth abortion". (Do NOT open the link if you are squeamish).

Then it got worse. The Times saw fit to publish an article by one of its business writers, Antonia Senior, in which she argued that for sure, abortion is murder, but it's still OK to do it. Ms Senior states that women's rights are the only cause for which she'd be prepared to die. Although having a baby of her own has given her pause for thought, she still thinks that those rights trump all (and she means ALL) other considerations.

The Times has its paywall up now, but here's the final, shameful paragraph:

As ever, when an issue we thought was black and white becomes more nuanced, the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.

I assume the last sentence was lifted from an al-Qaeda brochure that Ms Senior just happened to be leafing through when she was thinking about abortion. Aside from helpless foetuses, just who else would Ms Senior think it was acceptable to kill in defence of her "rights"? The online respondents to the article, most of whom think that Ms Senior is wrong, and some of whom think she's off her trolley? The Pope? Me??

It's an appalling article, and I'm not sure how it got past the editors at The Times. It will be interesting to see what kind of response the paper allows onto its letters page in the next day or two.