Letter: None of us have the right to decide when to terminate life - at the beginning or at the end
A letter from Gordon McNeill:
Are we ever amazed by the depth to which our society has fallen morally?
Last week our Parliament was asked to vote on bills, or amendments to bills brought before it, on abortion law and assisted suicide.
Two female MPs, Stella Creasy and Tonia Antoniazzi brought amendments to the abortion law which would mean women would no longer be prosecuted for ending their own pregnancies.
The heart grieves that two women, both mothers of children themselves, can have such a callous disregard for life as to want such a change when there is no legitimate reason for it to happen.
A life for a life has long since ceased to be the rule.
Following on from that, some days later, Kim Leadbetter’s bill to introduce assisted suicide into law was debated.
Here we are, at both ends of the spectrum of life where there is a desire to extinguish that life.
How, I ask first of all, can any woman who has gone through a pregnancy and witnessed the miracle of a new life, then promote the extinguishing of that life in another before it can enter the world.
And, let us note, that the infant is a living human being even though still within the womb. Do we really believe that children are born just through some chance reaction of cells and molecules interacting? Is there no Creator who ordained the miracle of conception for the increase of the human race?
Then we have the originator of the bill for assisted suicide wanting to encourage others to be the judge at the END of life.
Who makes the decision? If the dying person is too weak to be coherent, do the family decide? Does a medical intervener advise that the life be terminated?
God is the judge. He brought the life into the world and He knows the time of that soul’s departure from life. Of course it is painful to watch a loved one suffer but none of us are given the right to decide when that loved one passes out into eternity.
Our society has, apparently, lost all sense of the value of life and the source of all life, God our Creator.
May He judge, or forgive, those who endeavour to take His place in the dispensing of life and death.
Gordon McNeill, Portadown