This is a Guest Post by Zoe Ham. 

Defeating the Pro-Lifers?

I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there’s a question that’s been going round social media which supposedly defeats the pro-life argument.

It’s been posed by writer Patrick S. Tomlinson in a Twitter thread last week. (By the way, it’s worth noting that this is all coming up because this Friday is 50 years since the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act.) Anyway, here’s the scenario Tomlinson sets:

You’re in a fertility clinic. Why isn’t important. The fire alarm goes off. You run for the exit. As you run down this hallway, you hear a child screaming from behind a door. You throw open the door and find a five-year-old child crying for help.

They’re in one corner of the room. In the other corner, you spot a frozen container labeled “1000 Viable Human Embryos.” The smoke is rising. You start to choke. You know you can grab one or the other, but not both before you succumb to smoke inhalation and die, saving no one.’

Do you A) save the child, or B) save the thousand embryos? There is no “C.” “C” means you all die.

So there you go.

Tomlinson’s point is that most pro-lifers apparently default to choosing the 5 year-old, which therefore proves we don’t really think embryos are real humans.

I definitely hesitated when I first read it; what would I choose?

Because I really, really, believe each of those embryos are humans. Not just potential humans, but real human babies; just very tiny ones.

Now, I’m not writing this to persuade you of that position, but I do want to explain why that scenario misses something crucial out.

The Craziness of Life or Death Thought Experiments

Of course, some of the hesitancy comes because it’s just a crazy situation to be faced with. A scenario in which you end up having to pick some lives over others is always going to be agonising.

For example, if it was a choice between saving a five-year old or saving 10 five-year olds, whilst we’d probably all end up acknowledging saving 10 lives is greater on paper than saving one life, it would still be uncomfortable. It would still feel like we’re condemning that one life to death.

And in that situation, most of us would never actually want to pick just one option. But, yes, in theory we can see how it would be better to save 10 lives compared to just one life.

But that doesn’t explain all of my hesitancy.

An Alternative Scenario: The Labour Ward

Let me put to you an alternative scenario, to see if I can explain:

You’re in a labour ward. (And à la Tomlinson, the why isn’t important!) Again, the fire alarm goes off. You run for the exit. But as you run down the hallway you hear a child screaming from behind a door. You throw open the door.

Here you see that in one corner (corner A) is a five year old boy. He’s screaming ‘Mummy, Daddy!’ at the top of his lungs, and you already know that his parents are outside and you can hear their cries. They love him, they want him; they’re desperate to save him and protect him and look after him.

In the other corner (corner B) are 100 newborn babies. (Bear with me: for the purposes of this theoretical scenario we need to imagine that these 100 newborns are somehow in one massive hospital crib on wheels – or they’re all connected in one long crib-train, i.e. it’s possible that you could move them all easily…)

But, here’s the catch, none of these babies are wanted.

By that I mean that their parents don’t love them and don’t want them. They’ve left them to die. And the government of the country where this fictional hospital exists has allowed abortion up until 7 days post birth, so given their parental abandonment, the government doesn’t want them around anymore now either. They won’t provide for them in any way; in fact, they don’t recognise them to be human. Society as a whole doesn’t want them and nobody (or hardly anybody) would bat an eyelid if these babies were killed in this fire.

And not just that, but all these newborn babies have also been born with a medical condition which means that in order to live they require life-support for 9 months. If they receive this life support there is every expectation that they will live healthy lives, but they desperately need intensive, sacrificial and costly care for 9 months.

And here’s the kicker: you know that personally you cannot provide this care for 100 babies: you don’t have the money or the where-with-all to provide what they each need for the next 9 months, and you don’t know how to go about getting help either.

So, that’s the deal. Now, who do you save? A or B?

Why *this* situation matters…

Personally, I think that’s a much more realistic scenario facing those of us who are pro-life.

The second scenario makes clear the ‘package-deal’ that those embryos from the first scenario come with. Saving the lives of those 100 embryos is far more complicated than just rescuing them from the burning building. Life in the UK in 2017 is stacked against them.

So whilst many of us who are pro-life will likely hesitate after the original scenario, that’s not because we’re not absolutely convinced that embryos are humans. Its because we… I… am overwhelmed and fearful and bewildered as to how I could ever care for a thousand tiny humans.

And yet, sadly, the original scenario is not entirely fictional. In this country and around the world there exists freezers full of tiny babies. Tiny babies that will probably never be given a chance at life but will be discarded in the rubbish.

I wish that situation didn’t exist. I wish we lived in a country where you were only allowed to create an embryo if you intended to give him or her all that he or she needed for life. I wish a scenario like the original one could never even have been fathomed because why on earth would a caring society ever have 1000 embryos just lying around?! But those wishes of mine haven’t come true yet.

So what am I going to do about it?

I don’t know! I’m scared and overwhelmed by that question! In the past I’ve had the briefest of forays into researching “embryo adoption” (technically embryo donation, since because the embryos aren’t counted as humans, adopting them isn’t counted as ‘adoption’). And yet that seems such a massive thing to do, whilst being just tiny in the grand scheme of things.

So Mr Tomlinson, I choose B. I just need to work out how in reality I’m going to back that up.

Lord Jesus, come back soon.

–

This was a Guest Post by Zoe Ham. 

Too Many Me Toos

This week two words have dominated my newsfeed, every occurrence a shaft of light exposing the reality of what life in this world is like for so many:

Me Too

Social media is often lambasted for all sorts of reasons: narcissistically filtered photos, self-selected profiles, seemingly endless banality.

But not this week.

This week I’ve been strangely thankful for the way in which Facebook, Twitter, et al, has allowed me to see clearly.

It should go without saying that I’d rather it was the case that there was nothing to see. That’s why I say I’m ‘strangely’ thankful.

But maybe too often it also ‘goes without saying’ that what we’re seeing is normal or, even, acceptable.

And so I’m thankful for the way that every “Me Too” has helped to open my eyes – yes, my unavoidably male eyes – to a reality that so many women have experienced – and indeed go on experiencing.

Bringing Me Too Home

As horrific as the nature of the Harvey Weinstein allegations are, I can’t deny that there was a sense in which, when the claims were breaking at the end of last week, they still seemed somewhat distant and removed.

But when actress Alyssa Milano then tweeted, below, inviting people to add ‘Me Too’, it felt like any misjudged sense of this being something disconnected from ‘real life’ was quickly put straight.

If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet. pic.twitter.com/k2oeCiUf9n

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) October 15, 2017

Milano said she wanted to “give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem”.

Well, she’s certainly done that.

As has everyone who’s echoed her ‘Me Too’.

But sadly, it’s not just the magnitude of the problem that’s become plain, but the extensive, seemingly all-embracing nature of it too.

Sometimes there’s been the snippet of a story, an incident: enough to make the head shake and the heart ache. Often it’s just been the two words.

But when it’s your own friends posting ‘Me Too’, then it inevitably feels different to when it’s just ‘out there in Hollywood’. And whilst brave friends have shared stories of abuse or harassment before, there’s been something about the avalanche that’s been (sadly) necessary to display the sweeping nature of the reality.

It brings home the ugly reality of this ‘problem’. It’s a wake-up call.

The Church and Me Too

Tragically, and as has been bravely exposed by courageous testimonies this week, the Church is not immune to sexual abuse or harassment either. But – again – it is all too easily to become blind to it.

As a church minister, it is desperately saddening to read of examples where such horrors have occurred in the context of a relationship with someone entrusted with Christian pastoral responsibility.

It’s always grotesque, but there’s something incensing about it happening under the guise of supposed Christian ministry or Christian behaviour.

Anyone who seeks to minister in the name of the God of the Christian Scriptures can hardly get round the fact that we don’t have to turn over a single page of the Bible before we’re confronted with the God-given value and equality of all humanity, underlined by stating both male and female. In Genesis 1 we’re told – and in stark contrast with many of the cultures of the time:

So God created humankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

And though the Bible doesn’t hold back in showing us the hideous horror of how humanity – and in particular, men – have corrupted that image in the way they have treated women, neither does it permit us to become apathetic to that distortion either. This isn’t the way the world was meant to be.

Don’t Speak?

Of course, some people might question why I, as a man, think it’s appropriate to even be writing about this reality. Surely, better a case of ‘don’t speak, just listen’.

But it’s precisely because I’m a guy that I want to write. I don’t want to let this pass me by. What kind of a person would I be if I didn’t respond to this in some way?

Author Heather Jo Flores has suggested that ‘Me Too’ wrongly places the burden of change upon women having to speak out. “How about men post ‘I ignored it and I won’t anymore‘ instead?” she said.

The point’s also been made by Kate Hardie that we need to make the link between abuse and the content of the media we consume.

Because sadly, as Megan Nolan painfully observed, sometimes speaking out about one’s own experience of abuse seems to work against having an impersonal conversation that actually critiques our culture. People understandably respond to the personal situation, yet perhaps can fail to diagnose the wider problem.

Response & Resolve

I think I can understand those concerns. They’re partly why I feel compelled to write something. I don’t want to ignore the situation. I don’t want to be part of the wider problem.

Even if it’s ‘just’ in a personal resolve to not be blinded to the realities of abuse and harassment.

Even if it’s ‘just’ in a decision to speak out and condemn those patterns of behaviour or degradation that all too easily never get mentioned – whether in personal conversation or from a pulpit.

Even if it’s ‘just’ to repent of all the ways in which I’ve been complicit in a culture that normalises the sexual objectification of women.

Even if it’s ‘just’ in a commitment to raise my boys to be men who treat women with the God-given dignity that they deserve.

Even if it’s ‘just’ to determine to understand better what life is so often like for women in this broken, often ugly, often male-sculpted, world.

Me Too

Certainly, I can’t imagine what it’s like to type those two words. I don’t for one minute think it’s an easy or straight-forward thing to do. I imagine for many they’ve been some of the hardest online statuses to write.

And I’m sure that for all the #MeToo posts that have flooded our online world, there’s many more women for whom posting online has been something that they just can’t do.

I wouldn’t have said I was naive or ignorant about sexual harassment or abuse, but this week has made me realise that I need to be more aware. I am conscious that as a man I can bear an intrinsic blindness on this issue.

And so with every Me Too, I am thankful for the chance for me to see.

This week I had the opportunity to write for a weekly ‘Christian Comment’ section of a local paper. After last weekend’s horrific events in Paris, there’s a sense in which it would have been odd to write about anything else. And yet, as I say in the piece (below), there’s a sense in which words shouldn’t be our first response at a time like this. Indeed, a few hours after I submitted the piece I saw this challenging post by a pastor, reflecting on the same events and pointedly entitled, ‘Please Stop Talking’.

Of course, the reality is that suffering is rarely an academic question. It’s not abstract or detached. It’s real, as is the ache we feel.

And yet suffering’s also always there, somewhere. Be it personal, national, or global; be it physical, mental, or even spiritual.

So, do we have anything to say? What does it look like to even begin to ‘give a reason for the hope we have’, at times such as these? Can we navigate through the darkness?

One of my friends likes to say the Bible doesn’t give us clear-cut answers to the question of suffering, but it does mark out solid steps forward in the fog. So I suppose what follows is an attempt to put forward (within the confines of 450 words, for a local newspaper) what those steps might include…
—

This time last week we were beginning to come to terms with the horrific news from Paris, of the brutal attacks in which 129 individuals lost their lives.

Of course, after events like these there’s a sense in which words fail. We instinctively ‘weep with those who weep’, showing our solidarity. We turned our Facebook profiles red, white and blue. We joined the spine-tingling singing of the French anthem at Wembley on Wednesday.

But one of the questions that’s already being put to those professing a faith is, “Did God go AWOL in Paris?” Certainly some people’s first reaction is to look heavenwards. After all, it didn’t take long for #PrayforParis to begin trending on Twitter.
And yet, although the French atheist and Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Joann Sfar thanked people for their prayers, he was also adamant his country didn’t need more religion.

But does removing God from the equation make things any more comfortable? Guillaume Bignon, a Frenchman and former-atheist, pointed out that without God, evil just becomes a human construct. If we’re only bones and blood, then why does it all even matter? As such, to be a consistent atheist you’ve got to affirm that the terrorists didn’t do anything objectively ‘wrong’.

Unsurprisingly this just doesn’t sit right. We all inherently recognise this isn’t the way the world’s supposed to be. But the very fact we feel outrage at last weekend’s horrors (not to mention what’s going on worldwide) suggests we’re more than just atoms. Christianity’s explanation for this is we’re made in the image of a God who is perfect love and justice.

And though it doesn’t answer all our questions, as we open the Bible we find this God is even more appalled at evil than we are. As I write, security forces were still hunting for some of the Paris attackers. Yet what if they’re never brought to justice?

With God there’s no letting evil slip through the net. He has promised to judge with true justice, bringing about a world without evil. After the horrors of Paris we see why that’s a precious truth.

But can we be sure? Christianity all hangs on the person of Jesus Christ. God did more than turn his profile pic to the Tricolour. He stepped into history and entered our world as a human, willingly suffering on the cross for us, all so that our suffering could one day cease. And like those flowers bursting from bullet-ridden restaurant windows, Jesus’ resurrection calls us to turn to him as God renews this broken world.

Far from being absent without leave, God has entered the trenches for us. Evil has been defeated, it’s just having a hard time accepting the fact.

—

First published in the North-West Evening Mail, Saturday 21st November 2015.

You may remember Stephen Fry earlier this year ridiculing that a belief in a good God could be held alongside the reality of suffering. I tried to collate some of the best responses to Fry, but for a personal, moving, yet fullsome account from a Christian perspective, try this: “An Alternative Fry-Up”.