A Pro-life Special Relationship

Human Life Review, Winter 2008 by Short, Edward

Describing "the special relationship" between Britain and America in a speech at Harvard in 1943, Winston Churchill cited the things the two countries have in common: "Law, language, literature-these are considerable factors. Common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice, and above all a love of personal freedom . . . these are the common conceptions on both sides of the ocean among the English-speaking peoples."1 What Churchill did not include in this list is what ought to be our shared commitment to the life of the unborn. I say "ought" because, of course, it is not universally shared. Many in America and Britain are persuaded that what are called "reproductive rights" take precedence over the life of the unborn and that therefore abortion is defensible. (It is some relief to find that the dictionary of euphemism recently compiled by R. W. Holder and aptly titled "How Not to Say What You Mean" defines "reproductive freedom" as "the right to abort a healthy foetus.") As we all know, Britain's Abortion Act (1967) and America's Roe v. Wade ruling (1973) paved the way for an assault against unborn life that puts what Churchill characterized as our "marked regard for fair play" in a grotesque light. In Britain, 200,000 unborn children are killed each year; in America, the number is well over a million. Surely these are statistics that cry out for a renewed special relationship.

Fortunately, such a relationship has already been forged. J. P. McFadden, the founding editor of The Human Life Review, initiated cooperative partnerships with such pro-lifers from across the pond as Lynette Burrows and Mary Kenny. British pro-lifer Jack Scarisbrick is continuing that tradition by collaborating with many American pro-lifers, including Joel Brind, Professor of Human Biology and Endocrinology at Baruch College, City University of New York, and Father Joseph Koterski, S. J., Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University and editor of International Philosophical Quarterly. Prof. Brind has appeared at many LIFE conferences educating British pro-lifers on the abortion/breast cancer link (ABC) and Father Koterski, well-known for his pro-life conferences in the U.S., recently addressed LIFE audiences in Exeter, Bristol, Gloucester, and Bath, and conducted a seminar for LIFE Education Officers at LIFE'S headquarters.

Prof. Scarisbrick came to the pro-life movement over 40 years ago from a distinguished academic career. Educated at the John Fisher School in Surrey, he read History at Christ's College, Cambridge, after serving in the RAF He taught in the University of London, in Ghana, and in the U.S., and from 1969 to 1994 was Professor of History in the University of Warwick. Prof. Scarisbrick and his wife Nuala-who have two daughters and eight grandchildren-founded LIFE, Inc. in 1970.

What, then, is LIFE? It's a model pro-life agency that offers counseling, education, housing, and natural-fertility assistance to thousands of women and men each year. In addition to 33 LIFE houses, located throughout the U.K., the agency operates Zee's Place-Britain's, and perhaps the world's, first baby hospice, which provides 24-hour respite and terminal palliative care for children aged 0 to 5 with multiple special needs. Currently, LIFE operates Zöe's Place hospices in Liverpool, Middleborough, and Coventry, though their goal is to have one operating in every major urban center in the U.K.

Recently, I had the privilege to meet with Prof. Scarisbrick at his LIFE headquarters in Royal Leamington Spa, where he described the work that he and LIFE are doing to combat the scourge of abortion. My first introduction to his work, however, occurred years before when I was an undergraduate studying history and happened upon his magisterial biography of Henry VIII, a splendidly incisive account of the architect of the English Reformation. Nowhere else is the insatiable selfishness of the man more vividly presented. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, he acquired a huge treasure trove of land and endowment. But rather than apply it to charitable works, to poor relief or education, he took most of it for himself and sold the rest to courtiers, about whom William Cobbett memorably observed: "For cool, placid, unruffled impudence, there have been no people in the world to equal the 'Reformation' gentry."2 The divisions that Henry's confiscations caused affected all subsequent English history. But what struck me most in rereading the book recently was something one of the men of that sad generation said after the consequences of Henry's vandalism became clear: "Our posterity will wonder at us..."3 For all who have witnessed the ravages of abortion, these are chilling words-but ones that must return us to the fight for life.

Prof. Scarisbrick and LIFE will soon continue their fight for the unborn in a wonderful old assembly hall in Royal Leamington Spa, which is now being renovated to become their new headquarters. The hall has an interesting history. It was built in 1906 for the Catholic Apostolic Church, an offshoot of the Methodists that was founded by Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (170791). Instrumental in introducing Methodism to England's upper classes, Lady Huntingdon formed her own group known as "the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion" after breaking with John Wesley. Her preachers, according to the historian Paul Langford, "were seeking out sin, and not unreasonably thought it should be attacked most vigorously where it was strongest, in polite society. The early chapels of the Huntingdon Connexion were often in places of fashionable resort, Bath, Tunbridge, Margate, or at least in towns with assemblies, balls, and the regular attendance of the upper crust."4 Hence, it would have been natural for her successors to set up shop in Leamington Spa, with its fashionable pump room. Prof. Scarisbrick gave me a tour of the new site when we met and it is impressive, with great timber beams and space galore for his education, counseling, and housing departments, as well as a clinical area for his LIFE Fertility Care Program. Soon, Royal Leamington Spa will be famous for more than Queen Victoria stopping here for lunch on her railway journeys to Balmoral, or the future Napoleon III living briefly at 6 Clarendon Square: It will be the place where LIFE helped bring about an end to abortion in Britain.