merely a subject for Christians and other people of faith. Britain's political parties have all - to a varying extent - adopted anti-life postures. The Movement for Christian Democracy is right to counter this by insisting that a respect for life is a central political question.
Where They Stand: The Church
One of the clearest expositions of the position of British Evangelical Christians on life issues is to be found in John Stott's Issues Facing Christians Today.1 He says:
All Christian people believe that Almighty God is the only giver, sustainer and taker-away of life. On the one hand 'he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else', and 'in him we live and move and have our being'. On the other, as the psalmist says to God, 'when you take away their breath, they die and return to dust'. Indeed, whenever anybody dies, Christian faith struggles to affirm with Job: 'The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised'. To the Christian, then, both life giving and life taking are divine prerogatives.
Christians from a Catholic tradition would agree with the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Mother Teresa2:
Only God can decide life and death ... that is why abortion is such a terrible sin. You are not only killing life but putting self before God; yet people decide who has to live and who has to die. They want to make themselves Almighty God. They want to take the power of God in their hands. They want to say, 'I can do without God. I can decide.' That is the most devilish thing that a human hand can do ...
When she came to Westminster to urge support for my Bill to end late abortions, Mother Teresa told me that she believed our willingness to destroy unborn life made us an infinitely poorer country than India and is a shocking manifestation of violence: 'To me, the nations with legalised abortions are the poorest nations. The great destroyer of peace today is the crime against the innocent unborn child ... In