The fur has really been flying recently, with Cardinal Winning accusing the Labour Party of being pro-abortion and Mr. Blair replying that abortion is a matter of personal conscience and not a party issue.

Keeping party rivalries out of the question, and, for the sake of argument, suspending judgement on whether abortion is right or wrong, it is still difficult to see how 'conscience' and 'party' can be totally separated. A political party is not an abstract; it is a union of human beings, each of whom has a conscience, who are driven (by and large) by the same ideals. Bills for Parliamentary legislation do not just drop from the sky; they come from human brains (and consciences), shaped within a particular context. Even in free votes (i.e. without the pressure of Whips to sit on deviant consciences), it is surely impossible to disentangle 'party' and 'conscience'. Otherwise one could say that an MP has a conscience as an individual, but does not as a member of a party, which is absurd.

And herein lies the whole problem. For if abortion is a 'conscience' issue (which I take to mean too hot an issue for a party to handle), then what about Europe, immigration, the 48-hour week, pollution or anything else you care to mention? Are these not 'conscience' issues? To put it baldly, does one only have a conscience when it comes to sex? That is what we Catholics are always accused of doing!

We are going to be in deep water if abortion becomes the only election issue whether it is pro-life trades unionists badgering Labour MPs, or pro-choice constituency managers subscribing to the so-called 'Emily's List' which denies support to pro-life candidates. Indeed the very labels 'pro-life', 'pro-choice' are limiting and damaging.

Abortion is a grave matter, but seen globally it cannot be isolated from other grave matters: taxation, world economics, patriarchy, health issues. All these are 'conscience' areas too. The late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago warned us of the need to preserve the "seamless garment" of a whole morality. We all have much to learn from that, be we parliamentarians or Catholics - or both. DS