The menace of unbridled science
In 1948, the World Medical Council (WMC) had an ethos enshrined in the Hippocratic Oath which had guided medical practice for the preceding 2,400 years.
The unborn were thus specifically included in the WMC Geneva Medical Convention and likewise in the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child; while abortionists were still regarded as criminals in most UN member states (excepting the Soviet bloc).
Considering the zeitgeist of 1948, it is historically certain that the UN founding fathers intended the word 'everyone' to include all human beings ie, no exclusion of the handicapped, unwanted or unborn.
How could they foresee that many countries while paying lip service to the Declaration of Human Rights would make a mockery of it, fabricating shameless legalistic rulings so as to exclude the weakest and most vulnerable members of the human race?
Or the sick joke that many of the UN's own agencies would be headed by officials who promote or condone the worldwide holocaust of the unborn.
How could they foresee that 50 years after Auschwitz, many doctors would abandon their role of healing and be prepared to kill their tiny defenceless second patients?
And this despite the spectacular ultrasonic evidence which has underscored as never before the unquestionable humanity of the unborn baby and hence its total claim to their protection.
Each year, May 8 commemorates the end of a terrible war in Europe and the final downfall of Hitler's Reich, a regime which was surely the most systematically evil in all recorded history.
Nevertheless the rise and fall of Hitler's Reich serves as a grim and constant warning for all nations, and especially for all advanced societies.
For this evil regime was not the product of some faraway primitive or savage tribe, but came to power in Germany, a leading scientific and technological society which, in 1930, was probably the most cultured nation in Europe.
The fiendish evil of Hitler's philosophy did not, alas, die with him.
Its spirit is alive and well today, especially in certain sections of the medical and research associations for, although their members may be kindly and benevolent, their attitudes and arguments concerning abortion and experimentation on the unborn would have been well understood and applauded by the infamous doctors of Dachau.
Though I am a scientist, I am appalled by this 'Brave New World' and its menacing threat of unbridled science free from all Hippocratic oaths, ethical or moral restraints.
Irrespective of personal opinions, beliefs, arbitrary definitions, or legalistic rulings, the life of every individual (human or animal) begins at conception.
This is an objective scientific fact, and if we (Christian, non-Christian or atheist) accept the universal moral principle that "we must not kill our fellow human", then we cannot condone the killing of a tiny unborn baby.
Respect for the sanctity of human life from conception until natural death is an essential and non-negotiable cornerstone of civilisation.
No amount of special pleading by well-intentioned, clever or even altruistic people can alter this simple fact; and society ignores it at its peril.
Once we allow this basic principle to be compromised (as it is by abortion, euthanasia, and the nightmarish tinkering with human embryos), then we are indeed taking the first step onto the same slippery slope which, 60 years ago, drew the intelligent and cultured German people inexorably downwards to the ultimate medical horrors of Dachau and Buchenwald.
CA O'Farrelly,
2, Oaklands Drive,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 6.
