SIR – Sally Phillips asks, in her excellent and thought-provoking documentary on Down’s syndrome, whether “choice is always the wonderful thing it’s cracked up to be”, and she wonders “where all these individual choices are going to take us”; Madeleine Teahan concludes that we are travelling on a “high-speed eugenics train” (Comment, October 14).
She is right to be worried: Professor David Galton of the Eugenics Society’s successor body, the Galton Institute, in his book In Our Own Image: Eugenics and the Genetic Modification of People (2001), deplored historic abuses, but referred to abortion as the simplest of eugenic techniques, and saw the future of eugenics as based on choice.
Nobody is forced to have an abortion, and each abortion is undertaken for individual reasons, but all these individual choices help to deliver a medically approved, state-funded but self-imposed eugenics programme, under a virtuous patina of feminist choice.
Families with disabled children are already subjected to public disapproval for choosing not to abort, and the new, more accurate pre-natal test to be introduced by the NHS will make matters worse. But this too is part of the eugenics project; in 1934, Eugenics Society secretary CP Blacker looked forward to the creation of a “eugenic conscience” – public disapproval of mental “unfitness” leading to self-imposed eugenics. The Eugenics Society was one of the first supporters of abortion in the 1930s, kept the campaign going through its “lean years” and had significant influence on the 1967 Abortion Act.
We must hope and pray that Sally Phillips and her son Ollie will help to derail the eugenics train.
Yours faithfully,
Ann Farmer (Mrs)
Woodford Green, Essex
SIR – Ann Widdecombe’s article (Comment, October 14) supporting the Prime Minister’s pledge to reintroduce grammar schools claims this is “not merely sensible but it is scriptural”.
She refers to the Parable of the Talents and the success of our athletes in the Olympics as support for the idea that the selection of talented children at age 11 is justified by results.
Leaving aside the confusion caused by not comparing like with like, she elsewhere acknowledges that the children who “passed” varied in performance as they went through the grammar school, while some talented children who “failed” were condemned to “sit in disrupted classes” in an atmosphere lacking in aspiration – her sweeping description of life in secondary modern schools.
“There is nothing kind or Christian about that,” she observes. Indeed, there was not. I taught in a secondary modern school and we worked hard to give demoralised children some faith back in themselves.
I am proud to meet ex-pupils who, written off at 11, have become successful adults, some, indeed, high achievers.
Comprehensive education has gone from strength to strength. Pupils are encouraged to accept others as being equally worthy in the sight of God, though not equally talented.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Murphy
Sheffield
SIR – Dennis Sewell’s article (Cover story, October 14) about the new global battle over abortion reminds me of the abortion industry’s best-kept secret, and one which they fight like cats in a sack to conceal.
In September 2001, Parliament enacted the International Criminal Court Act 2001, which makes it a criminal offence in this country for a person to commit a crime against humanity. A crime against humanity is whatever international law says it is. Murder committed on a widespread scale or in a systematic manner falls into this category.
Ominously for the pro-abortion movement, the Nuremberg Military Tribunal which tried the “RuSHA” case in 1948 took jurisdiction over the matter of abortion as a species of murder, and it proceeded to confirm the indictment accordingly and to the trial of 10 defendants and punishment of two of them.
Yours faithfully,
Michael Petek
Brighton, East Sussex
SIR – Much has been written about the significance attached to the number 153 since ancient times, a number with intriguing mathematical properties which crops up frequently in the Bible, in our religious life, and in life generally.
There are 153 days between May 13, when Our Lady first appeared to the three children at Fatima, and October 13, the day of her last appearance 99 years ago. Similarly, there are 153 days between the second and the last apparition of Our Lady at Lourdes, from February 14 to July 16, 1858, with a total of 17 appearances in this interval.
The sum of the numbers one to 17 comes to 153. The Ave Maria, in Latin, is made up of 153 letters, and it is recited 153 times in the 15-decade rosary.
One morning, after His Resurrection, Our Lord called from the shore to his disciples in their boat on the Sea of Galilee. They had caught nothing all night, and He told them to throw their net out on the right side of the boat. As St John’s Gospel tells us, the net became so full of fish that it couldn’t be hauled onto the boat but rather had to be towed to the shore. Peter counted out a total of 153 “great” fish from the net. St Jerome tells us that this was the number of species of fish that had been identified by that time.
No doubt, St John’s point in recording this number is that Peter and the other Apostles, being “fishers of men” were being given a symbolic charge by the Risen Christ to bring in all the nations of the earth into the “great net” of the Kingdom of God.
It has been said that the ministry of Jesus lasted 153 weeks, and that during his ministry He blessed and cured a total of 153 people who were suffering in one way or another.
I pray that one day we will come to understand the meaning of this special number.
Yours faithfully,
Richard Symington
London SW17
SIR – Recently there has been discussion on the letters page about how consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary would bring world peace (Comment of the Week, October 14).
But peace cannot come from a ritual action alone. It will come only when human hearts are transformed by the love of God and souls are brought into harmony with him. Peace will come when injustice, which is ever a barrier to peace, is overcome. This project will be a long endeavour to be achieved by continual prayer, and it will be the fruits of many years of hard work and sacrifice.
By all means consecrate the world to Mary, but remember that doing so is only part of a larger, longer and more difficult process.
Yours faithfully,
Francis Beswick
Stretford, Greater Manchester
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