legalisation of destructive experiments on the embryo. He told the House of Lords: 'The argument is constantly made that such a conceptus might develop into one of us. Indeed, but there is a great difference between reading history backwards and trying to predict it forwards ... when you are trying to read history forwards you are simply talking of potentialities.'5 Another Anglican, the Maidstone MP, Ann Widdecombe, poured scorn on this proposition during a meeting which we both addressed in Bradford: 'I should like to be present at an Advent service at York Minster,' she said. 'No doubt the readings will be changed to suit these new circumstances: and the angel said unto Mary, Thou art with potentiality, and the conceptus leaped with joy in her womb.' Many Christians, especially Anglicans, will be looking to the new Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, to give a clear and faith-related lead on respect for life issues. During question time at the end of a meeting at the 1990 Greenbelt Festival for young Christians, an annual Arts festival which attracts around 18,000 young people, a young man said, 'It is easy for white middle-class Evangelicals to speak against abortion. They should take on tougher issues like the poll tax.' I told him he was wrong. Concern about these kind of issues is not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, I have never found that abortion or the defence of life is an 'easy' issue. My experience has been that a quiet life and fulfilment of political ambitions are easier to achieve by giving these questions a wide berth. Anyone who upholds that both divine sovereignty and human dignity are central to 'respect for life' issues, cannot stand aside and say nothing.
Where They Stand: The Politicians
The Archbishop of York's speech to the House of Lords was used by proexperiment, pro-abortion MPs as a Trojan Horse throughout the passage of the legislation. It is sadly ironic that the pro-experimentation lobby, while accusing its opponents of 'forcing religious views' upon others (in a democracy, where laws are determined by majority votes), relied so heavily on the exegesis of the Archbishop of York to bolster and promote its case. In their book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?,6 Francis Schaeffer and Everett Koop rightly traced 'the erosion of the sanctity of human life' to 'the loss of the Christian consensus'. There has also been an erosion of the political and medical consensus. Until the passage of the 1967 Abortion Act doctors upheld the Hippocratic Oath 'I will not give to a woman a pessary to procure abortion'; updated in 1948 at Geneva to say: 'I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception' and they believed that if they could not help their patients they would not harm them. The British Medical Association and the Royal Colleges of