FOR LIFE

The Bishop of Gozo has been on another of his excursions into the realm that many feel is the province of politicians, insofar as politicians are the ones meant to discourse on matters that concern "we, the citizens".

Actually, he's been on two, once concerning Sunday working, the other somewhat more impactful. On the former, he left me somewhat perplexed: considering that so many work on a Sunday, I'm not entirely sure why he got so hot under his dog-collar. In an ideal world, we would all take a fine rest on one day of the week, and there's no reason why it should not be Sunday, but that bucolic dream has long since evaporated in the face of reality, so the relevance of that rant is diluted, to put it mildly.

The other rant, though, is more worrying: His Grace segued from telling his flock how right he was about how proponents of divorce would be upping the ante (to an extent, he has a point) to pouring oodles of fire and brimstone on IVF and raising the spectre of abortion to heat it up.

Now, from a strictly scientific point of view, I am told he may have a technical point, but I would look at it differently.

Leave aside the argument whether you are a believer (and if you are, whether you should display a bit less arrogance in assuming that you understand your god to the extent that you can lay down the law about what said god demands of us) or whether you function in a belief-system that eschews belief in a higher being but mandates that you live in a society that requires that you behave positively.

In other words, whether you are an atheist, a Catholic or a Jedi Knight is irrelevant.

The bottom-line, to my mind, is the extent to which IVF is a positive or a negative thing: does the joy it gives couples who are unable to conceive outweigh the fact that some embryos, which presumably wouldn't have existed in the first place except as a part of the IVF process, will not survive it?

Is there no difference, from a moral (as opposed to a judgemental) stand-point between the procured abortion of a foetus living in a womb and the application of science to bringing life where life did not previously exist?

I am on record as being against abortion, though I would not presume to sit in judgment on anyone who resorts to it, but I find myself unable to bring the same sentiments to bear when IVF is concerned.