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Editorial
HFE Bill – Britain’s Shame
The contempt for human life shown by the British Government and many members of the House of Commons, some of whom did not even need to support the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill since they had a free vote, goes beyond the dreams of Dr. Mengele and the Nazi doctors hanged at Nuremberg. Some Peers, also, enthusiastically backed inhumanity in the name of Science. Human nature itself is to be tested to destruction. The list of techniques permitted by the Bill reads like something from an old-fashioned horror film . Along the way, MP’s opted to continue allowing abortion of disabled, unborn children up to the time of birth.
As the final vote on the Bill has been postponed to October, it is not yet known whether the proposal by Dr. Evan Harris, MP, to make consideration of the patient’s health unnecessary when recommending abortion, will be added to the new law.
The Annual Representative Meeting of the British Medical Association last July gives some grounds for hope. Dr. Philip Howard’s notable contribution in defence of the rights of conscience carried the day.
Dr. Peggy Norris, one of the founders of the Doctors’ Federation, who died on 8th December 2007, spoke at a conference in Israel in 1994 on the subject “Hitler or Hippocrates?” It is the Hippocratic conscience which needs to be safeguarded, not for the sake of religious practitioners but for the sake of the patients. |
