Anna Krohn: Lazy progressive rhetoric not so enlightened

What does progress really mean?

 News reports and media commentators too often uncritically use the word “progressive” and “enlightened” to dub any movement towards the acceptance or legalisation of such procedures as euthanasia, reproductive technology or abortion. 
The widespread and frankly rather lazy use of such rhetoric has both a divisive and demoralising effect on the many socially concerned and engaged people who oppose such practices. 
Firstly, such language implies that those opposing the “reform” agenda have moral and philosophical concerns based on inactivity, mindless reaction, bigotry and fear of change.  Secondly, such terminology carries with it an unspoken and unproven assumption: that the erosion of the “intrinsic” and “transcendent” value of human life by the “sweet reason” of secularist arguments is all part of the inevitable and unstoppable process of advancing society and the march of history.
As the insightful English Catholic historian Christopher Dawson wrote as far back as 1961: ‘It is part of the liberal ideology which presupposed the inevitable movement of progress which science (or secularism) continually advances and religion (and all transcendent belief) retreats . . .
We can all feel the hope and courage drain out of us when the secularist agenda dominates the media airplay, the votes in parliament or even the voices around the school reunion lunch table.  
But as Dawson also comments, it is exactly the secularistic mythology of “progress” that is contradictory and illogical – it is bound to destroy both the soul of society and the dignity of the person ‘this one-sided development of culture has become a threat to the survival and is contrary to the real interests of humanity and society …’
However, perhaps this one-sided account of progress is wearing thin?
– In the South Australian Parliament, just before this newsletter was finalised, a Bill regulating the permitting of euthanasia in South Australia was defeated on “voices” (that is, it was considered that if put to the vote it would have been defeated 12-9).
Until the night of the vote, the Parnell Bill was expected to win by all sides in the debate. 
There was a strong contingent of pro-euthanasia lobbyists, including the notorious Phillip Nitschke, crowded into the public gallery expectant of an influential victory which would snowball reform throughout Australia.
The Bill appeared to be riding on the years of systematic campaign by the South Australian Voluntary Euthanasia Campaign, the sponsorship of the Greens and the widespread media polling data.
The Catholic Women’s League of South Australia and many other community organisations submitted strong opposition to the Parnell Bill.  The CWL (SA) urged the Senators to promote “dignity in dying” not with “the full stop of euthanasia” but with the “active” and dynamic relationships of the suffering and terminally ill with family members and an active health and wider community. 
In an unprecedented step,  the leading bioethicist, Associate Professor Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, spoke of his own experiences of chronic and declining health and palliative care in an intensely moving and intimate letter which was cited by several members of the house:  ‘Each year I was reminded (by his health insurance company) how much of a burden I am to my community.  The fear of being a burden is a major risk to the survival of those chronically ill.  If euthanasia were lawful, that sense of burden would be greatly increased for there would be even greater moral pressure to relinquish one’s hold on a burdensome life.  Seriously ill people do not need euthanasia … Rather than help to die, the cause of dignity would be more greatly helped if more was done to help people live more fully with the dying process.’
Dr Tonti-Filippini also added that there were many other aspects of the Bill which were problematic and illiberal: that it was not “broad-based enquiry” by the community, it was not supported by aged-care organisations throughout the state or by the AMA and it did nothing to support the existential “pain” and loneliness of those who suffer.
One female member of the House voted against the Bill even though she declared herself, in principle, “pro-choice”. Ann Bressington MLC recorded her conviction of the danger to those whose health status was most precarious, notably the Indigenous population: ‘I don’t care if it is not hip to be pro-life’, she said, ‘There are slippery slopes, they do exist.’
Other members spoke not of the progress of such legislation, but of their concern that such procedures would spiral downwards – that “voluntary euthanasia would inevitably become involuntary euthanasia.”
– On 8 October in Strasbourg, another so-called “progressive” resolution was moved by Britain’s Christine McCafferty. 
It aimed to remove what she called the reactionary, and in her mind “repressive”, “problem of unregulated use of conscientious objection” by medical staff and hospital administrations in the matter of abortion. 
Once again, it was expected that the “culture of reform” was dominant in the Council and would most likely vote in favour of voting to “coerce” the referral and cooperation in abortion in all countries throughout Europe.
However, two relatively young members of the Council, one from Ireland, Senator Ronan Mullen, and the other from Italy, Senator Luca Volonté, successfully moved amendments which reversed the entire direction of the resolution, effectively moving to safeguard the right of medical practitioners to stand by their consciences.
These amendments were strongly supported by a number of health-law groups, the work of WUCWO and the petitions of the French pro-life network. 
Far from rejecting the value of liberty, the radically drafted legislation restored the moral freedom of medicine.  The Director of the European Centre for Law and Justice, Gregor Puppinck, implied that such “reversal” demonstrated not that the Council was retrograde but that history was not a one-way street.  Progress can rightly be aligned with the preservation of ‘right to medical conscience. Freedom is a condition of the exercise of medicine and of conscience … it is important to remember this and defend this fundamental liberty.’
Perhaps there are signs that a rediscovery of values and a re-awakening by people to the truly advanced principles upon which both the defence of life (BOTH its value and its quality) are built.  Is it possible that these two recent and unexpected legislative defeats, one in Australia and one in Europe, are in fact signs of a different kind of “progress”,  ones (of what Dawson calls ‘the higher order of transcendent truths and values and ends …’) upon which all caring, sound and just societies are built.
This was first published in the newsletter of Catholic Women’s League. Reprinted with permission. Anna Krohn is convenor of Anima Women’s Network.