Thomas Sutcliffe: No science of abortion without the ethics

"We have confined ourselves to scientific developments", concludes the Christian Medical Fellowship in its formal submission to the select committee considering Britain's abortion laws, "but cannot end without a reminder that abortion is always a procedure with a 50 per cent mortality".

It's an interesting "but", that. In colloquial terms it would appear to concede that what follows isn't strictly speaking "scientific" – though it's hard to see why not, even if you wanted to repudiate the polemical top-swing it gives to an abortion's intended outcome. But what it also does is to imply that, in the preceding 34 paragraphs, the CMF has – despite its disappointment and misgivings about the committee's terms of reference – taken into account its declaration that it would not be "looking at the ethical or moral issues with abortion time limits".

It isn't true, of course. The whole of the CMF's submission is inextricably bound up with a particular ethical approach to abortion. That's why certain scientific findings – about the mental health problems associated with abortion and an as yet unproven link between abortion and breast cancer risks – are included, while others – mortality rates and psychological problems for women denied abortions – are left out. And there isn't anything particularly pernicious about this, simply something unavoidable. Because, if the Committee on Science and Technology really believe that they can filter the moral and emotional dimension out of the abortion debate, they are kidding themselves. What's more, it isn't just fanciful – it's wrong.

Of course one understands why they would wish to limit their post-bag, given the fierce energies of those on both sides of the debate. But the idea that there might emerge a set of scientific facts, broadly agreed upon by both sides, is a wishful fantasy and rests on an assumption that any scientifically minded proponent of legal abortion would want to repudiate anyway. That is that the scientific approach to such a matter can somehow be separated off from a moral approach when, in fact, a particular ethical philosophy is embedded in it. For someone who takes a religious view, that abortion is forbidden, the scientific findings will be neither here nor there (unless they're helpful). You can't prove God wrong, however good your double-blind study is. On the other hand, anyone who accepts that scientific findings have a part to play in the decision has signed up to the notion that this issue requires us to weigh up the lesser of two evils and that we had better get our scales exactly calibrated and take the measurements honestly. That isn't immoral – or morally neutral – it is a morality in itself.

In any case, it's often difficult to say where a scientific finding begins and an emotional or ethical response stops. Take the ultrasound portraits of early-gestation babies which, in part at least, helped to prompt this reconsideration of the law: unquestionably a scientific advance but one that bears disproportionately on our instinctive feelings about babies.

Are those images inadmissible, because they privilege a provisional life over the existing one of the mother – or are they essential because they are scientific evidence of something which we didn't previously know? The truth is that there isn't a scalpel fine enough to cleanly cut away the emotion and the ethics from the hard facts in this case – and the debate that's about to take place would be much more useful if everyone acknowledged as much.

Harry the royal billboard

The photograph of Prince Harry celebrating at the World Cup semi-final on Saturday, seems to have been adopted by most papers as a perfect emblem of patriotic jubilation. But all I could think of was the state of utter bliss it must have induced in O2's head of marketing. I take it Harry intended no endorsement of the company's calling plans or network coverage – he was simply going a bit rugger-bugger in the heat of the moment – but the insinuation of corporate sponsorship into virtually every facet of sporting life ensured that he ended up serving as a royal billboard. It'll be interesting to see whether he does it again next Saturday: "Cry God for Harry, England and 200 minutes talktime and unlimited texts!".

* Apparently, yesterday was National Boss Day in the United States, a holiday officially registered with the US Chamber of Commerce in 1958 by Patricia Bays Haroski, an unsung heroine to brown-nosers everywhere. Hallmark Cards now produce no less than 89 different cards to mark the occasion, including some minor masterpieces of corporate ego-smoothing. "Happy Boss's Day to the Big Cheese!", reads the legend in one, " You're a GOUDA boss. In fact, there's no one GRATER". Another hymns the virtues of Boss's Brand coffee – "A smooth combination of talent and drive infused with the purest premium qualities of vision and leadership". Inexplicably, this modest gesture of recognition for the sacrifices of senior managers – so self-denying on salaries – doesn't seem to have caught on here. Can I suggest that office brown-nosers might be entitled to a red-letter day too? I'm sure Hallmark could come up with something suitable for Suck-Ups' Tuesday

t.sutcliffe@independent.co.uk

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