As an international Catholic non governmental professional body of Obstetricians and Gynaecology, MaterCare International shares the anxiety of many colleagues in Great Britain over the freedom to practice medicine according to personal conscientious judgment, and also the freedom of elected officials to act on their political mandates according to ethical conviction. We have recently seen both these important freedoms directly curtailed.

       We have followed closely both the recent General Medical Council decisions to reign in the freedom of conscience of doctors and also the government policy to impose a whip on voting in the new Human Fertilization and Embryology Act. The GMC have acted as if the interest of patients could be antagonized by having doctors act as more than cogs in the health system, holding them personally accountable for ethical practice, and the government has acted as if its very survival could be jeopardized by open debate and a failure to enact the HFEA proposals into law. We concede that party discipline may be legitimate in cases where, if absent, the government could fall over the detail of governance as in budgetary debates - but this certainly does not apply to laws such as the proposed HFEA Act on the status of the human embryo and human life. The imposition of such means as the three-line whip in this matter begs the question whether the government really ties the 'to be or not to be' of Great Britain with the world of human - animal hybrids, human cloning, producing human beings to order on laboratory glass, disposing of human fertility as of a commodity, experimentation on human life going further than anywhere else in the world. Is Britain to move from being a leader in so many other areas of economic and cultural life to defining itself by this? Why is it prepared to sacrifice the freedoms of both doctors and elected officials for this?

       As a medical organization with an international and multidisciplinary perspective, not unlike the British government and the GMC, we are deeply unsettled by the situation which has given rise to these cornerstone freedoms being limited. We feel strongly for all involved. It is only understandable that there be a lot of anxiety arising from the fact that legislative and medical practice is diverging, or has diverged, from ethical norms not only on the 'fringes' - which every legislature may have difficulty eliminating altogether - but within the established mainstream. We are not surprised that the government and the GMC felt forced to act on this anxiety. And it is clear that the resolution of its root cause could only go in two directions. In these situations either the status quo of practice changes or ethical norms will be broken, shifted or bent.

       The first solution is a challenge to leave the comfort zone and revise practices which have already crossed ethical boundaries, call things by their name, acknowledge how far human dignity has been compromised time and time again and acknowledge ethical mistakes made by 'doctors who know best' or 'allknowing- legislators'. That may be hard - but is the resolution which MaterCare International would call for.

       The latter solution, however, can be relatively easy to achieve as regards the majority, but the problem is that it needs to be achieved across the board, in a total manner, to settle the anxiety which has moved the British institutions to act once and for all. Either all consciences bend, or ethics continues to challenge the status quo. In other words. the latter solution is all or nothing. It inevitably tends towards a totalitarian bending of consciences. It is the resolution we are observing.

       Catholic teaching, in its core, insists on the importance of aligning the treatment of the human body, and the generation of human life, with human dignity. We are glad that it is widely known to strongly defend the universality of human dignity and ethical norms arising from it and so challenges unethical practices even when others have all bent to their suppression. Therefore even the lone witness of a single truly Catholic physician or statesman - like that of St Thomas More in Henry VIII's England - threatens any unethical status quo at its core and it is not surprising that extraordinary means may be used to quieting it. Just as Henry VIII could not settle with majority acceptance, but had to rid himself of Sir Thomas More, what we observe is an ethical - medical totalitarianism which can not stand up to any challenge.

       As doctors, we would like to show solidarity with the legislators who are being pressured to sign their name to unjust laws, but also speak from a position of strength, not weakness.

       The honest, conscience - driven physicians who are targeted should not really see themselves as victims, so long as they harness their integrity, since the actual victims are the patients subjected to degradation by a mechanistic medicine which leaves no room for personal responsibility and thought by the doctor - a mechanistic medicine culminating in human degradation by unethical practices. The real victims are the married couples mismanaged in their fertility problems, unborn children, children in their first days of life, the terminally ill at risk of euthanasia etc. The doctors targeted are more the privileged front line men and women who are out there to defend those at immediate risk. They may eventually suffer for their solidarity with these victims - notwithstanding their carefulness to avoid whatever risks they can legitimately avoid and to maintain professional excellence so as not to jeopardize their careers - but if that happens it will only strengthen their witness. As did St Thomas' More's unjust death sentence which paved his way to finally speak openly of his opposition to the king's remarriage and so give a witness which has resounded down the centuries. We can stay assured that whatever happens to these conscience-driven physicians who refuse to bend, the win is theirs.

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signed on behalf of MaterCare International : Maria Środoń MA (Cantab)
executive coordinator for Central Europe - MaterCare International

Contacts

              Maria Srodon
              tel. +48 693 876 067, 22 758 3772,
              info@matercare.pl, maria@matercare.pl

or
              Professor R. L. Walley
              Obstetrician and Gynaecologist
              Executive Director
              MaterCare International
              Cell phone; + 44 750-912-1900
              info@matercare.org