The Eugenic Resurgence and Abortion

SIR: I thank Dr Renton-Power (Letters, October 2013) for his observations concerning my article (September 2013) on the corrupting influence of utilitarianism in paediatric hospitals. It is no surprise that some in my circle of acquaintances increasingly seek out experienced doctors who respect the old Hippocratic values he affirms.

A recent editorial in the science journal Nature (issue of September 12, 2013) flagged several concerns regarding genetic screening resembling those aired in my Quadrant piece, but included a shocking technical detail I overlooked: “Increasing the number of conditions being screened for will necessarily cause more false positives—as many as twenty for every true positive, according to one estimate.” Any other diagnostic lab that gave the wrong answer 95 per cent of the time would be closed in a heartbeat.

Samuel Beaux’s assertion (Letters, November 2013) that the Eugenic Resurgence under way in modern hospitals is unrelated to the abolition of social and legal restraints upon abortion is not credible. The duplicitous practices in which paediatric hospitals now engage—their PR offices regularly bombard us with pious television news stories showcasing heroic efforts to extend the lives of premature newborns or juvenile leukaemia victims, while on a separate floor of the hospital they maintain shadowy facilities dedicated to the in utero eradication of carriers of even mild genetic disease—would not have come about if long-standing medical taboos on the practice of abortion had been upheld. My diagnosis of the cause of this situation—that modern medicine is experiencing a deepening missional crisis fostered by its disconnection from the humane Judeo-Christian values that long sustained Western healthcare—is as plausible an explanation as any for how we found ourselves in this predicament.

It is also reasonable to propose that an assertive “hard” secularism that will not acknowledge the formative influence theistic convictions exerted on the medical enterprise will struggle to view the unborn human in sane ways that guard against arbitrariness and selectivity in healthcare delivery. Mr Beaux’s eagerness to stress the biological differences between embryo, foetus, baby and child understandably quells any unease we might feel in taking an unborn life, yet this stance disregards scientific evidence for the genetic unity of an individual throughout every stage of human development. Since an individual of any age displays the same unique genome it possessed in utero, in genetic terms an embryo or foetus is just as fully human as a grown-up adult. The belief that unborn individuals are less human than those outside the womb is justified by bad philosophy, not sound science.

Phil Burcham
Beckenham, WA

SIR: Samuel Beaux takes Philip Burcham to task for either being unaware of “the difference between the words embryo, foetus, child, baby and infant” or for ignoring or brushing away the differences. All these words are merely names given to the various stages of each and every person. Mr Beaux could have continued with toddler, school child, teenager, adult, middle-aged person, old person. Every old person was once an embryo and every embryo, unless prevented, will become an old person just as every child will become a teenager unless prevented. Each is the same human entity, to avoid weighted words, with all the characteristics appropriate to its stage of development.

Mr Beaux may object to the words used by Mr Burcham on the ground that they are emotional (I don’t) but to say that they are “appallingly inaccurate” is itself appallingly inaccurate. It is very hard to find a formula of words to describe what happens in an abortion which isn’t going to offend someone, because that is the nature of the process.

Frank Pulsford
Aspley, Qld

Sir: Samuel Beaux was clearly unsettled by Philip Burcham’s article on genetic counselling and eugenic abortion. On the one hand, Beaux says he found Burcham’s article “moving and persuasive” (at least “initially”). He acknowledges the “multi-generational loss of human potential that would have occurred” if Burcham’s grandmother had “succumbed to genetic counselling”, and he agrees that Burcham “seems to be correct in identifying such genetic counselling as potential neo-eugenics”. (Though he does not explain why he needs the modifier “potential”. If “this sorry development in medical counselling” in seeking out defective humans early in their lives so that they can be killed is not simply eugenics, what is it?)

But on the other hand, Beaux is outraged by Burcham’s rejection, not just of abortions performed because the child is in some way defective, but of all abortions. Beaux finds this so confronting that he accuses Burcham of what amounts to academic incompetence at best, perhaps even academic malpractice. Beaux writes: “The use of such expressions as ‘termination of defective infants’, ‘aborting Jessie’s three frail babies’, and ‘doctor as killer of unwanted or defective children’ was appallingly inaccurate. A professor who is a ‘medical researcher and academic’ is surely aware of the difference between the words embryo, foetus, child, baby and infant.”

Where is the inaccuracy? Humans, like possums and wombats, are organisms. Any organism undergoes major changes in size, appearance and capacities during its life cycle, but throughout these changes it remains the same organism. There is no intermediate point during that life cycle at which a non-wombat becomes a wombat. A wombat foetus or a wombat embryo is a young, living wombat, a separate member of the species. Consequently, if I “terminate the pregnancy” of a wombat, I will not have prevented a wombat from coming into existence; I will have killed a living wombat, early in his or her life.

It is not, then, Burcham who is failing to be “aware of the difference” between human embryos, foetuses, infants and children (or, we might add, adolescents, adults, and in due course geriatrics), it is Beaux who is refusing to confront the continuity, the abiding identity of the human organism as he or she moves from one stage to the next in the human life cycle.

Ted Watt
Claremont, WA

The Plan to Rebury Arthur Phillip

SIR: Readers of James Spigelman’s warm tribute to Arthur Phillip (October 2013) may be interested to know of a plan by a former New South Wales government to exhume Phillip’s remains from his grave in Bathampton, in Somerset, and rebury them in Sydney.

The plan was the brainchild of the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who persuaded the then premier, Bob Carr, to endorse the scheme in 2001. Working in the New South Wales Cabinet Office at the time, I was asked (as the phrase goes) to take carriage of the project, a task I embraced with some misgivings while fully sharing Geoffrey’s unbounded admiration for Phillip and Bob Carr’s evident enthusiasm.

We were encouraged when the Bishop of Bath and Wells gave his blessing in principle to the removal of Phillip and the Royal Botanic Gardens Trust agreed to set aside a suitable new burial place beside the Harbour. It was intended—it was integral to the plan—that the remains of an Aborigine, Yemmerrawannie, buried in a churchyard in Eltham, Kent, would also be repatriated and reburied beside Phillip. Yemmerrawannie and his better-known compatriot Bennelong were invited by Phillip in 1793 to accompany him on his return to England, where he introduced them to the highest social circles. Yemmerrawannie died in England of pneumonia in 1795 at the age of nineteen. The relocation of the two graves would be seen, we believed, as a powerful symbol of national reconciliation. Bob Carr gave an undertaking that the wishes of the Church would be respected in whatever rites of reburial might be agreed upon, and much thought was given to commissioning a monumental sculpture to mark the new burial place. Bob Ellis, as I recall, envisaged something on the scale of the Statue of Liberty. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Although the plan was never publicly announced, it was clear from the start that there would be strong opposition to it. And so it proved. Aboriginal people saw it, not surprisingly, as a reminder of the hated “invasion”. In England, the parish church in Bathampton, notwithstanding the agreement of their bishop, resisted Phillip’s removal. A memorial chapel in honour of Phillip had been erected in the church by a previous Australian government and drew many tourists to Bathampton.

These dilemmas were resolved for us when a forensic study, commissioned by Geoffrey to determine the precise location of the grave, made its report in 2002. No one was sure whether Phillip lay beneath the floor of the church or somewhere in its grounds. After careful investigation our forensic expert advised that the exact whereabouts of the grave were unclear; locating it would entail extensive excavation and scientific testing, with little prospect of success. In the circumstances Bob Carr had little choice but to call the project off, and all of us, I think Bob included, were relieved when he did so.

Evan Williams
Killara, NSW

Admiral Phillip

SIR: I thoroughly enjoyed James Spigelman’s excellent review of Michael Pembroke’s splendid biography of Captain Arthur Phillip, but there was a tiny error. Admiral of the Blue was not the most senior admiral’s rank; that was Admiral of the Red.

If any readers want to learn more about the eighteenth-century Royal Navy, they could do no better than to start with N.A.M. Rodger’s The Wooden World. On the subject of patronage, Rodger records that, even with the influence of his patron the Duke of Grafton, young Lieutenant Phillip still had to wait eighteen years before promotion to commander.

David Campbell
Forrest, ACT

One Man’s Bonegilla Experience

SIR: Peter Coleman’s review-article, “Reassessing the Iron Curtain II: The Displaced Persons of Bonegilla” (September 2013), was so interesting that I would like to request that he follow it with a fuller “First Person” essay about his own experience as a young tutor in that camp.

Suzanne Edgar
Garran, ACT

The Beliefs of Pope Francis

SIR: I should like to thank Mervyn Bendle for his helpful and informative article on Pope Francis (November 2013). Considering the rock Pope Francis was hewn from helps understand the man; what he says and what he does.

Personally I don’t warm to Pope Francis. I’ve lived under seven popes and this one doesn’t “pope” for me. I find him too lop-sided. In Luke’s Gospel (10:25–42) the story of the Good Samaritan in which a man is commended for action while others are condemned for their lack of social justice is immediately followed by the incident where Jesus upbraids Martha for her activity and commends her sister Mary for her inaction and contemplation. Two sides of the one coin that need to be kept in creative tension.

Yet it seems this Pope doesn’t care much for liturgy (I don’t mean “ritual”). During his Installation Mass as Pope he was caught looking at his watch a number of times as if he were impatient to get it over and done with, and it is a fact that Jesuits don’t have a liturgical tradition. They are not exposed to the discipline and formative influence of chanting the Divine Office in choir as other religious communities are. (A senior Australian Jesuit theologian once said to me, “During Holy Week we Jesuits wander around the sanctuary wondering what the hell we are doing and what comes next.”) Not exactly a tradition built on Lex orandi, lex credendi—the content of the faith is expressed for all to see in how we worship.

As well, many “social justice” types in the Catholic Church like to claim the Exodus as the rallying cry for their cause: liberation of the oppressed. But I have found over the years that often the most vocal of these social activists conveniently overlook the “why” of freedom. It’s all very well and good to cry “freedom”—but freedom for what? Exodus 5:1 makes the point clearly: “Afterwards Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.’”’ What created and brought into being the renewed and liberated people of God in the Exodus was their worship of the one true God, which incidentally many of them quickly abandoned in the name of “freedom”.

Pope Francis’s championing of the poor is to be commended and embraced but, like his namesake Francis of Assisi, I hope he is also mindful of the saint’s advice: “Preach often, and occasionally use words.” We are getting a lot of sermons and speeches from this Pope. And good stuff it is too. However, the history of the Church shows us that the best, the most effective and the most enduring sermons of the Doctors and the Saints have always been those preached on their knees. In the end, every crisis in the Catholic Church boils down to a crisis of contemplation. The hardest battle to win is prayer. And I suspect it’s the one a lot of people run away from; desert the battlefield. Perhaps that’s why there is so much injustice in the world.

Phillip Turnbull
Mount Nelson, Tas

Sir: Mervyn Bendle is right to alert us to the new Pope’s worrying left bias. One can sympathise with Francis I when he draws attention to the plight of the world’s poor, but his economic analysis of the causes of poverty and his advocacy of policy remedies deserve resolute refutation. When Francis attacks markets and money, he ignores the fact that markets only mirror the decisions of millions of co-operating individuals. When he rejects capitalism and globalisation, he overlooks the fact that this institutional arrangement has lifted more of his fellow humans out of poverty than any other. When he calls upon the young and “victim groups” to act directly and collectively to engineer radical social change, as he did in Brazil in July 2013, he preaches revolution and comes frighteningly close to mouthing the misguided and failed messages of primitive Marxist ideology. By rehabilitating Liberation Theology, which his predecessors rightly condemned, he rejects John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical Centesimus annus, which saw the “free market as the most efficient instrument for utilising resources and effectively responding to needs”.

There are two fundamental ways of overcoming poverty: One is the top-down, visible-hand method of taking from the rich and giving to the poor—the socialism of a stagnant world. The other is to foster economic growth, remove obstacles to free competition and innovation and to ensure that the poor can enhance their material lot by access to education and resources. This is the evolutionary path. It is demanding and time-consuming, but the only one that has ever worked sustainably. The visible-hand approach appeals to observers of an autocratic frame of mind. But what has it ever produced for the poor except disappointment? It has also often led to the persecution of the church. Francis should reflect on John Paul’s encyclical, which said that “the principal task of the State is to guarantee … security, so that those who work and produce can enjoy the fruits of their labours and thus feel encouraged to work efficiently and honestly”.

I have vivid memories of a long, heated discussion that I had in the 1980s in Lima, Peru, with a young Jesuit and fervent Liberation Theologian. I told him that an unforeseen side effect of the revolution he preached would be that the likes of him would be among the first to be killed. He cheerfully accepted that he might become a martyr. I cheerfully replied that, because of his gross rejection of fundamental economic verities and his culpable denial of the painful side effects of violent revolution for the poor, he would go to hell.

Wolfgang Kasper
Tura Beach, NSW

Vale Charles Copeman

SIR: I was sorry to read in the September issue of Quadrant that Charles Copeman had passed away. He will be sorely missed by his family and friends.

It does not surprise me that Charles described the Robe River dispute as “unpleasant at the time” for it certainly was. However, I had to smile when Jeremy Barlow is quoted in Adam Bisits’s article as saying that Charles was “prepared to speak out … and could present an argument very clearly and simply”. At Robe, despite requests, time and time again, that he conciliate with the unions the only word that came from his lips was No.

As you are well aware, Charles had contempt for the arbitration system. He saw it as his prerogative not to attend a compulsory conference called by the Chief Commissioner, and it was only after an inquiry into the circumstances of his absence that the Industrial Registrar took the matter to the Commission in Court Session, where he was fined.

Bruce Collier
via e-mail