APART from the troubles and chaos in the North, the most exciting and riveting news item of the week has been the clear evidence that primitive forms of life have existed elsewhere in the universe.
We in Ireland perhaps didn't take it as seriously as we ought to have done because we were so preoccupied with the North. Briefly, as you may well have read, Dr Leonid Welichew, of the California Institute of Technology, has discovered that traces of a chemical vital for life, hydroxyl radical, exists outside the Earth.
No. This is not the news: about tiny Mars bars being found in a lump of a meteorite. This story appeared in this newspaper 25 years ago this week. No doubt the latest story about Mars has a bit more substance to it than the discoveries of a quarter of a century ago today. But then advances in science have been considerable since then. Many things have improved - we can, for example, nowadays excise one foetus from a mother's womb, and leave its twin intact.
Life and death
This is a society showing itself at its most sophisticated - we can find life on a planet millions of miles away at the same time we can end it with unerring accuracy down here on dear old Earth.
The signs of life on Mars admittedly appear to be of the dead variety, pretty much like the foetus scooped out of the womb of a mother who could bear the prospect of one child about the place, but not two.
But they have got the world pretty excited to the point where President Clinton, the fine fellow who vetoed the Congressional bill to end live birth abortions (which involves the foetus head being presented out of the womb and the doctor then inserting a catheter to suck the brains out), announcing that the US would do all in its power in the search for life on Mars.
These are happy days we have one industry dedicated to ending life on Earth, and another one to finding it on Mars (named, if you recall, after the god of war). And just in case we are uncertain about the ethical thinking of the doctor who terminated the life of one twin in London while leaving the other intact, we have his very words to mull over.
Prof Phillip Bennett, of Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London, said: "I am not a murderer in the legal sense. But in a moral and emotional sense, I am terminating life. It's an interesting concept that once a baby is born we cannot kill it. But I'm not sure that there is any difference with infanticide, other than the law is different ... Broadly speaking, it is better not to interfere with life. I don't draw distinctions between embryos, foetuses and newborn babies in terms of existence.
High moral ground
My colleague Padraig O Morain wrote recently that before taking the high moral ground on this matter, it is worth bearing in mind that for every 10 births in Ireland, an 11th is aborted, and that it was safe to assume that many Irish women had abortions for reasons no more noble than the one which moved the woman in England to have half her twins terminated.
Merely because many of the people who do something which causes me intense distress are Irish does not invalidate Irish arguments against abortion. I am not answerable to the women who have their wombs cleansed of lifeforms; their behaviour does not vitiate any arguments I might offer about abortion. Their Irishness is irrelevant. I will not have the right to discuss this annulled simply because Irish women might have had operations similar to the one on the dead twin.
It is easy for me to speak, being a man. I will never have an unwanted baby. True, I will never have a wanted one either.
Much of the intellectual justification for abortion comes from the fact that men cannot become pregnant therefore why should women not enjoy equal rights? Because there is no such thing as equality. This is the heresy of our age. It is a meaningless and misery making aspiration.
I offer no legal panaceas for dealing with this enormously complicated issue of unwanted pregnancy. But when I read that the aborting doctor thinks that in a moral and emotional sense he has ended life, and that he is not sure there is any difference between what he has done and infanticide, I lose interest in worm fossils on Mars.
For now we are able to engage in selective uterine culling and, no doubt since we will soon be able to predict the sexuality sex, intelligence hair type, etc of a foetus, might it not be reasonable for a woman to have an a la carte approach to what her womb produces? Do those who support a woman's right to choose agree that she must therefore be allowed to choose whether or not the foetus in her womb is the right kind? That is, if doctors can determine the baby will be homosexual in adulthood, then it can be aborted?
A Chinese mother might hear that she is going to give birth to a girl, and have that unhappy accident aborted forthwith, so she can start on a boy child forthwith. Maybe mothers of mixed race will pluck out black babies, and keep culling until a white baby - male, heterosexual right-handed, intelligent - finally make its uterine debut.
Women's right
That, after all, is the woman's right to choose taken to a logical conclusion not very far removed from the uterine antics of Prof Phillip Bennett. Why should women not reject inappropriate inhabitants of her womb until she finally gets one to her liking?
Maybe, if the baby is quite advanced, it will be terminated by having its head drawn out of the womb and having its little black lesbian brains sucked out, while its heterosexual white twin can stretch its limbs in a great big womb all to himself.
We in Ireland have been hypocritical about abortion. This is to our credit. It confirms the deep anguish we feel about a problem we cannot cope with. I cannot cope with it - the X case say, or the mother with cancer needing chemotherapy. Sometimes not dealing with a problem honestly is a sign of humanity; we lack the moral certainty to take life. Such uncertainty should be seen for what it is - a virtue.