Ultrasound scans in pregnancy
A friend has drawn attention to the significance of ultrasound scans in pregnancy, introduced and developed by the Scottish physician Ian Donald in Glasgow from the late 1950s onwards. In some cases, the baby’s heart-beat can now be detected by ultrasound as early as the fifth week of pregnancy. Ultrasound can be put to good uses in detecting difficulties in pregnancy which may then be addressed, or to evil uses in identifying disabled children, or children of the “wrong” sex, who can then be killed.
One consequence of the widespread use of ultrasound scans is that multitudes of people nowadays have a clear idea of what is happening in abortion. They can no longer hide behind a veil of ignorance. It is obvious from the marvellously detailed scans that what is being killed is a living human being. Yet fallen man is a murderer by nature, and the killing goes on. There are outcries over the brutalities of Russian troops in the Ukraine, but no outcry over the brutality of doctors and parents killing 20 000 defenceless unborn children a month in Britain. The Russians devise more effective weapons for killing people, but our politicians have recently approved legislation for the easier killing of our own unborn children. If the Lord should bring appalling slaughter upon our land, it is only what we have done to a total of nearly ten million of our children, and what we manifestly deserve ourselves.
DWBS
DIY Abortion
It was reported in the April 2022 edition of this Magazine that the temporary regulations, brought in during the pandemic, to permit abortions to be carried out at home were to be extended in England and Scotland until the end of August this year. (The regulations allow for pills to be prescribed by telephone or video consultation, not by a face-to-face appointment, to women and girls who think they are less than ten weeks pregnant.) The Welsh Assembly had, however, decided to make the provision permanent. We ended the report by saying, “We should pray that the Scottish and Westminster governments do not do another about turn and follow the example of the Welsh Assembly”.
We must now report that when the Health and Care Bill was presented to the House of Lords for scrutiny, an amendment was proposed by Baroness Sugg calling for the permanent continuance of the scheme. Sadly, when the Bill was returned to the House of Commons this amendment was agreed and carried on a free vote of 215 to 188.
In the House of Commons debate, Sir Edward Leigh, Conservative, said, “More than 10 000 women who took at least one abortion pill at home provided by the NHS in 2020 needed hospital treatment”. Carla Lockhart, DUP, said, “The changes to allow abortions at home were introduced without parliamentary scrutiny or public consultation. As it stands, abortion providers are unable to guarantee that they know who takes the pills, when or where they are taken, or whether an adult is present, given the risk of complications such as the delivery of live babies”. She added, “Abortion harms the voiceless, the vulnerable in our society, and it harms women and girls”.
Voice for Justice UK say, “One in 17 women who take the pills will subsequently require hospital treatment, including surgery for things such as incomplete abortion, haemorrhage, and infection or sepsis”.
The insistence on a woman’s right to choose (to abort her child), is a direct attack on God and His law. We have the morning-after pill, DIY abortion pills and, in some areas of the UK, the right to abort up to the day of birth for babies with certain disabilities. We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14). The womb was designed as a place of safety to nurture the unborn child, and yet the speed with which this law has been introduced without proper scrutiny is a shameful witness to the dreadful moral position we are in as a nation. To murder God’s creation in the womb as a “life choice” is a particularly grotesque act of wickedness. FRD