Did Secularism Win Out

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Did Secularism Win Out?The Debate over the Human Fertilisation

and Embryology BillSTEVEN KETTELL

Introduction

The divide between secularism and faithis no more evident than in matters of

science and religion. In the latest clash between the two, the debate over thecontroversial Human Fertilisation andEmbryology Bill has again raised ques-tions about the extent to which religious

belief should inform and shape publicpolicy in Britain. In this instance, a briefreview of the legislative outcome wouldseem to indicate a victory for secularism,as religiously motivated attempts toamend the Bill's key provisions weresoundly defeated during the course ofits passage through Parliament. Yet thereare good reasons to believe that drawingsuch a conclusion would be too hasty. Forone, although the composition of thedebate over the Bill was for the mostpart polarised between secular and reli-gious opinion, not all of those whoopposed its more contentious aspectsdid so for religious reasons. Moreover, a

second, and less obvious point concernsthe way in which the religious lobbysought to shape the terms of the debateitself. Despite losing the Parliamentaryvotes by a large margin, the manner inwhich religiously motivated groups andindividuals engaged in the broader pub-lic debate suggests a level of organisationand mobilisation that is unlikely to sim-ply fade away. Indeed, what the debate

over the Human Fertilisation and Embry-ology Bill reveals most is not so much thedominance of a homogeneous secular-

ism, as a growing willingness on thepart of those driven by religious beliefto seek a greater role for their faith in thepublic sphere.

An act of science

While the process of secularisation inBritain continues its seemingly unrelent-ing progress,1 questions about the role ofreligion in the public sphere remain mat-ters of intense contention. A series ofhigh-prole disputes over issues includ-ing free speech, the establishment of faithschools, the terms of sexual equality leg-islation and issues of identity and com-munity cohesion, have all, in variousways, served to emphasise the point.With questions about the social and polit-ical role of faith appearing ever moreoften on the contemporary public agenda,so pressures for religion to be granted agreater inuence in public aairs havealso gained momentum. Often, this has

been couched by its adherents as a rear-guard action in the face of a vigorouslyassertive secularist lobby. The head of theCatholic Church in England and Wales,Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, forexample, has recently implored againstallowing the rising tide of secularism toturn Britain into a `God free zone'senti-ments that have been echoed by the Arch-

bishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams,

who has persistently warned that thestate will become `sterile and oppressive. . . unless it is continually engaged in

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conversation with those who speak forthe gospel'. The case has also been put bya variety of multidenominational faithgroups and organisations. Among them,Theos, a self-declared `public theologythink-tank' makes the point with particu-

lar clarity; promoting an `overall aim ofputting God ``back'' into the publicdomain'.2

The recent Human Fertilisation andEmbryology Bill provided fertile groundfor the latest public confrontation

between the secular and the religious.The Bill, which cleared Parliament inOctober 2008, is the latest in a series oflegislative measures designed to main-

tain a regulatory and statutory frame-work for the conduct of research intohuman embryos. The debate over the rstof these measuresthe 1990 Human Fer-tilisation and Embryology Actwasmarked by two competing forms of dis-course, described by Mulkay as a dichot-omy between a rhetoric of `hope',deployed by its supporters who soughtto emphasise the potential medical andreproductive benets of embryo research,versus a rhetoric of `fear', through whichits opponents emphasised the adversemoral and social implications of unrest-rained scientic advances. Primarilymobilised by religiously motivated indi-viduals and organisations, this latter dis-course centred on the `special status' of ahuman embryo as an actual or potentiallife, and on the ethical transgression in-volved in any research that led to its

destruction. During the course of events,however, the former discourse proved to

be the more inuential. Supporters of theBill successfully managed to shape thedebate in their favour through a cam-paign of practically demonstrating thescience of IVF treatment to MPs, and byutilising the concept of a `pre-embryo',dened as the rst 14 days from fertilisa-tion prior to the emergence of the `primit-

ive streak' (the point at which the cellsthat make up the unique characteristics ofthe embryo become dierentiated),

which could legitimately be denied per-sonhood status and thereby made it pos-sible for MPs to reconcile embryologicalresearch with convictions relating to themoral status of the unborn. The Bill waseventually passed on a free vote in the

House of Commons (by 362 to 189), giv-ing Britain one of the most liberalisedhuman embryo research regimes in theworld.3

By the turn of the century, a series ofscientic breakthroughs in cloning andstem cell technologies had created pres-sures for the 1990 Act to be updated so asto permit research in these areas, espe-cially into potential treatments for degen-

erative diseases such as Alzheimer's andParkinson's. In December 2000 the Actwas subsequently amended on anotherfree vote, with the debate once morehinging on the moral claims of humanembryos versus the medical benets ofembryonic research.4 By 2004, however,with a growing sense of unease about thecapacity of the regulatory framework tokeep abreast of scientic developments,the government announced its intentionto review the 1990 Act. This was followed

by a public consultation in 2005, a WhitePaper in December 2006 and subse-quently by a draft Bill, which was scruti-nised by a Joint Committee drawn from

both the House of Lords and the Com-mons. The Bill was introduced in theformer in November 2007, replete withwhipped voting as the governmentsought to ensure that any attempts to

amend its contents met with failure.Having cleared the initial stage in the

Lords, the Bill's passage through theCommons was a source of no little con-troversy. This was due as much to thegovernment's handling of the Bill as to itsactual contents. In particular, the inten-tion to subject the Bill to a further roundof whipped voting jarred with manyLabour MPs, who regarded certain

aspects of it as matters of conscienceagrievance heightened by the free votesthat were allowed by the Conservatives

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and the Liberal Democrats. The threemost notable of these were measures forthe creation of human-animal hybridembryos for research purposes (designedto circumvent a shortage of human eggs

by inserting a human nucleus into an

animal casing); for permitting the selec-tion of embryos for the purposes of creat-ing a `saviour sibling' (screening embryosfor a tissue match for an existing illsibling who might benet from a dona-tion of stem cells); and for the removal ofa clause stipulating the `need for a father'for the provision of IVF treatment. Add-ing further to the pressure for a free vote,opponents of the Bill also declared their

intention to table an amendment on low-ering the time limit for abortion from itscurrent level of 24 weeksthe rst timethat any change in the 1967 Act wouldhave been considered in 18 years.

Amidst concerns about a Cabinet rift,with Catholic ministers Paul Murphy,Ruth Kelly and Des Browne (along withseveral whips and junior ministers)

believed to be willing to defy the govern-ment line in order to vote according totheir consciences, by the end of March,Prime Minister Gordon Brown had beenforced to relent. Under the terms of acompromise agreement, Labour MPswere to be permitted to vote accordingto their consciences on these particularprovisions on condition that they sup-ported (or at least did not vote against)the government when it came to the nalvote in the House of Commons.

Taking sides

For many commentators, the Human Fer-tilisation and Embryology Bill invoked aclearly demarcated battleground, rangingthose in favour of science and rationalityagainst the reactionary forces of faith. Inthe view of the former, the story of thepublic debate was one of `godly interven-

tionists' seeking to block the eorts ofprogress; of, as Richard Dawkins put it,`restless busybodies' who `can't resist

inicting their ignorant opinions onothers'. In the view of the latter, on theother hand, science had now become, inthe words of Comment on ReproductiveEthics (CORE), `the new fundamentalism. . . particularly in the eld of embryonic

stem cells'. Or, as Tom Wright, the Angli-can Bishop of Durham, put it, the Bill wasmerely the latest thrust from a `militantlyatheist and secularist lobby', the expres-sion of its `tyrannical' belief in the right to`kill unborn children and surplus oldpeople'.5 Given such a clear and appar-ently irreconcilable divide, the Bill's pas-sage through Parliament, in which allattempts to modify or remove its most

contentious points failed, would thusseem to indicate a victory for secularismover religion. To what extent, then, is thisactually the case?

The degree to which any reasonableinferences can be drawn on this matterdepends on the composition of the debate.Simply put, if the vast majority of thoseopposed to the measures contained in theBill were religiously driven, and if the vastmajority of those in favour were overtlysecular, then this will provide reasonablegrounds for claiming that the passing ofthe measures indeed signied a secularistvictory. The real picture, however, wasnot quite so clear cut. This is evidenced,rstly, by an analysis of the replies givento the 2005 public consultation exercise.These are categorised here as `secular'(being from organisations with no overtlyreligious orientation), `religious' (from

organisations explicitly identifying them-selves as religious, and individuals repre-senting religious organisations, such aschurch leaders) and `other' (from thosewhose religious or secular position waseither unstated or unclear). Three of theeventual four `issues of conscience' onwhich MPs were permitted a free votewere addressed in the consultation ques-tionnaire (the use of hybrid embryos,

tissue typing for the creation of `savioursiblings' and the `need for a father'clause), and while the relatively small

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sample sizes involved (69 and 24 for theavailable `secular' and `religious' replies,respectively) caution against drawing anyrm conclusions, the results are instruc-tive nonetheless.

The rst observation to be made is that

the responses from the `religious' cat-egory, including many organisations atthe forefront of the campaign against theBill such as Anity (formerly the BritishEvangelical Council), CORE, the Chris-tian Medical Fellowship and the Law-yers' Christian Fellowship, displayed aextremely high degree of uniformity.Here, all respondents were in favour ofmaintaining the `need for a father' clause

in some form, all were in favour of ban-ning the use of hybrid embryos and 70per cent were in favour of prohibiting theuse of tissue typing for the creation ofsaviour siblings (the remaining 30 percent being in favour only if such tech-niques were used as a last resort, on acase-by-case basis and under the strictestof conditions).

A second point of note is that opposi-tion to the Bill's contentious measureswas not limited to religious organ-isations. Many secular bodies, such asLIFE, the Royal College of Physiciansand the Centre for Bioethics and PublicPolicy, expressed their own concernsover the proposals on ethical grounds.That said, of the available secularresponses, the tendency was nonethelesssupportive of the proposals. Of thoseexpressing a view on these issues, almost

four-fths (78 per cent) supported the useof tissue typing, almost three-quarters (74per cent) favoured scrapping the need fora father clause and almost three-fths (56per cent) supported the use of hybrids.These ndings were also repeated in theevidence given by religious and secularorganisations to the Joint Committee onthe Human Tissue and Embryos (Draft)Bill (as it was originally named) during

the summer of 2007.6Somewhat contrary to the generic

impression of the debate as being con-

ducted between clearly demarcated secu-lar supporters and religious opponents,the reality, then, is not one of rigidly andmutually exclusive positions, thoughneither is it an eclectic melting-pot inwhich both secular and religious cam-

paigners share a mixture of views. Impor-tantly, in terms of the inferences that cansubsequently be drawn from this analy-sis, it cannot reasonably be said that therejection of the `conscience issues' signif-ied a victory for a homogeneous secularcamp (since no such camp existed), but,nonetheless, that it did mark a defeat for amore or less homogeneous religiouslobby. Although not all opponents of the

Bill were religiously motivated, the largemajority of those campaigners motivatedby faith were opponents of the Bill.

Land of hope and fear

These points are underscored by thedebate that accompanied the Bill's pas-sage through Parliament. In terms of thefour `conscience issues' involving hybridembryos, saviour siblings, the `need for afather' clause and abortion, the discursivepattern earlier identied by Mulkay wasonce again evident as supporters andopponents utilised their respective em-phases on `hope' and `fear'.

Supporters of the Bill (which includedsecular organisations such as the Well-come Trust, the Bioindustry Association,the Royal College of Obstetricians andGynaecologists, and the Medical

Research Council, along with medicalcharities such as Cancer Research andthe Motor Neurone Disease Association)adopted a discourse emphasising the

benets of potential medical treatmentsas well as equal citizenship rights. The`need for a father' clause, for example,was presented as being discriminatoryand unfair to single mothers and lesbians,as being incompatible with legislation on

civil partnerships and human rights, andas being a wholly benign move, there

being no evidence of any negative emo-




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tional or psychological consequences forchildren of same-sex couples. Similar evi-dential claims underpinned the argu-ments both in favour of savioursiblingsnamely that there was no evi-dence of any psychological burden on the

`saviour', and for retaining the currentabortion limit, with its supporters citingevidence from recent studies (EPICure2and Trent) that show there to have beenno statistically signicant improvementin survival rates for babies born before24 weeks during the past 18 years.Aligned to this were the ethical advan-tages of such measures, ranging from themoral issue of women's choice, to the

potential medical benets to be derivedfrom the Bill's provisions, with sup-porters responding to criticism aboutthe limits of embryonic (as opposed toadult stem cell) research by pointing outthat it was not surprising that its benetshad yet to be realised given the relativelyrecent nature of the technology. Takingissue with the ethical claims marshalled

by opponents of the Bill, the Labour MPGeorge Howarth oered a typical rebu,insisting that `no one side has a monopolyon moral argument'.7

The oppositional discourse of fear wasbased on two core components: the rsthighlighting the moral rights of humanembryos both to life and a conventionalupbringing by a mother and a father, andthe second utilising the `slippery slope'hypothesisnamely that the measurescontained in the Bill represented the worst

of an unchecked science and would leadto progressive moral and social degenera-tion. The issue of saviour siblings, forexample, was attacked in the Commonsfor the absence of consent on the part ofthe saviour, for the potential psycholo-gical damage that the saviour may endurein later life, as well as for the socialconsequences involved in the creation ofdesigner children. Similar themes

emerged on the proposal to remove the`need for a father' clausenamely thatthis would erode a child's right to a father

(described by the Conservative MPAndrew Selous as `the most fundamentalhuman right that any child in the worldcould ask for'), that it would underminethe role of fathers (with Iain DuncanSmith telling the House that it would

`send a powerful signal to everyone in-volved that fathers no longer matter') andthat such a move would be detrimental tochild welfare. Critics maintained thatthere was àbundant evidence' to showthat children raised by a mother and afather enjoyed better social, emotionaland educational development than theircounterparts in non-conventional familyunits, and that children with absent

fathers were more likely to fail at school,fall into drug and alcohol addiction, andendure unemployment or welfare de-pendency. On the case for reducing thelimit for abortions, too, ethical principleswere paramount to the case, with oppo-nents of the current limit basing theirargument heavily on the notion of embryoand foetal rights, claiming that medicaladvances had made it possible for babiesto survive at below 24 weeks.

These arguments were played moststrongly, however, in the case of hybridembryos. The creation of human-animalhybrids was variously denounced byopponents as `revolting', `monstrous', àradical violation of human dignity' andas `plain wrong, and a slippery slope towho knows where'. As Bill Cash com-plained: Ìn many ways, our age is one oftechnology giants and ethical infants

we are like children playing with landmines, because we have no idea of thedangers posed by the technology that weare handling.' A further ethical dicultyin all of this concerned the medical valueof embryonic stem cell research itself,with those opposed maintaining thatadult stem cells oered better prospectsand should thereby receive more re-sources. As Edward Leigh put it, embryo-

nic stem cell research was both èthicallywrong and almost certainly medicallyuseless'.




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While not all proponents of this dis-course of fear were motivated by reli-gious belief, the vast majority ofreligiously motivated campaigners werenonetheless adherents to this discourse.Moreover, the ethical stance of the oppo-

sitional arguments presented in theHouse was identical to those deployedby religious organisations in the broaderpublic debate. In an Easter attack againstthe Bill, the head of the Catholic Churchin Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, forexample, colourfully denounced the pro-visions for hybrid embryos as a `Govern-ment endorsement of experiments ofFrankenstein proportion', and slammed

the Bill as a whole for its comprehensiveattack on `the sanctity and dignity ofhuman life'. Similarly, if less controver-sially, the Church of England stated itsopposition to hybrids on the basis of `thescriptural distinction of ``kinds'' of crea-tures, taken together with the uniquenessof humans as those made in God'simage'. Concerns about the progressivelydegenerative impact of unrestrainedscience were also evident. For ProLife,the fear was that once measures such asthe creation of hybrids were accepted,then British society would `continuedown an irresistible slide towards evenmore abhorrent experiments'; Anitycautioned that `without adequate ethicalcontrol' the social consequences of theBill would be `disastrous'; while CardinalMurphy-O'Connor maintained that unre-gulated scientic progress `could lead us

to a kind of utilitarianism regardinghuman life which does no justice to thesanctity of life'. As R. David Muir, thePublic Policy Executive Director of theEvangelical Alliance, put it: `Just becausescience can do something doesn't meanthat it should.'8

Similar arguments were also apparentin opposition to the removal of the `needfor a father' clause. The Evangelical Alli-

ance warned that the welfare conse-quences for children were such that thestep risked `storing up unimagined con-

sequences for society in the future'aview backed by the Lawyers' ChristianFellowship, which claimed that same-sexparenting had been shown `to be a nega-tive impact on the child' and that remov-ing the clause `would ultimately be to the

detriment of society as a whole'. A con-cern for child welfare also provided thefoundation for opposition from theChurch of England, which maintainedthat a child's right `not to be deliberatelydeprived of having a father' was `greaterthan any right of a gay couple to commis-sion a child by IVF'. From its Catholiccounterpart, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connorwarned that in removing the clause the

government were taking away `not justthe need for a father but the right for afather' itself.9

Final hurdles

Opponents of the Bill reacted to its pas-sage through Parliament with equal mea-sures of anger and resolve. Following theCommons vote on the Bill's second read-ing in May (during which oppositionalattempts to amend it were comprehen-sively defeated) the General Secretary ofthe Christian Medical Fellowship, PeterSaunders, declared that Parliament hadshown itself to be `seriously out of touchwith the opinion of the British people';Dan Boucher, the Director of Parliamen-tary Aairs for Christian Action Researchand Education, called for the vote `toprovoke Christians to engage in the pub-

lic square with greater energy and wis-dom'; and Cardinal Murphy-O'Connorasserted that many people had been left`deeply uneasy and perplexed' by thevote, and professed to be `quite sure'that the issue of abortion would soon`come up again'. On the same theme,Andrea Williams, Public Policy Directorof Christian Concern for Our Nation andone of the more vocal critics of the Bill,

called for the Parliamentary vote `to be awake-up call for the Church'a view thatwas echoed by Cardinal Keith O'Brien,




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who held that the public debate hadmade a vital contribution to the church'sattempt to `begin the much needed task ofawakening consciences in our society'. Acall to arms from the Church of Englandwas a further illustration of the hardening

mood; a Church-commissioned report bythe Von Hugel Institue criticising thegovernment for being `religiously illiter-ate' and for its `lack of understanding of,or interest in, the Church of England'scurrent or potential contribution in thepublic sphere'.10

Religiously motivated antipathy to theBill proved to be instrumental in shapingthe last phase of its legislative timetable.

In mid-July, with the nal reading of theBill literally hours away, the Leader of theCommons and the Deputy Labour Lea-der, Harriet Harman, announced that thenal Commons vote would now be put

back until after the summer recess, osten-sibly in order to allow more time for theissues to be debated. For many commen-tators, though, the more likely reason forthe surprise delay was to be found in theimpending and increasingly tight-fought

by-election in Glasgow East, scheduled totake place just days after the Commonsvote; defeat in which, it was widelythought, could sound the death-knell forGordon Brown's increasingly unpopularand crisis-ridden premiership. Heigh-tened concerns, then, fell on the one-thirdof the Glasgow East electorate who wereknown to be Catholic, at least nominally,and on avoiding any unnecessary action

that might jeopardise what would, inmost circumstances, be a safe haul ofLabour votes. In this context, remarksfrom the Bishop of Motherwell, JimDevine, the second most senior Catholicgure in Scotland, whose diocese coveredthe constituency, would seem to have

been inuential. Criticising the govern-ment for pressing ahead with the Bill, justdays before its postponement, the Bishop

declared that Labour had `broken its pactwith Christian voters', that they wereseeking `to expel any notion of God

from public debate and legislation', andthat the party had `lost its ethical cred-ibility in the nation at large' and could nolonger take Catholic support forgranted.11 That Labour subsequently lostthe election by just 365 votes to the SNP,

which overturned a Labour majority ofmore than 13,500, indicated just howprecious every vote had now become.

The Bill's re-emergence after the recesswas also marked by controversy. Por-tending this was the resignation of RuthKelly at the end of September, the pub-licly stated reason for whichto spendmore time with her familybeing widelythought to be supplemented by her ill-

concealed opposition both to the contentsand management of the Bill. Having beenthe only minister to be granted an exemp-tion from voting at the second reading(being allowed to be in Brussels on gov-ernment business), Kelly's comments in apost-resignation interview with the Eve-ning Standard, during which she com-plained that it was `dicult to be aChristian in politics these days' and thatthe government should have allowedMPs a free vote on what was a matter ofconscience, did little to alleviate suspi-cions that this was a signicant factor inher decision.12

The following month the Bill faced itsnal Commons vote. The main focus inthis, with most of the key provisionshaving been settled at the second reading,now fell on the issue of abortion as bothpro-life and pro-choice campaigners (the

former being strongly supported by theCatholic Church, particularly in their re-sistance to the legalisation of abortion inNorthern Ireland) presented amend-ments that would either restrict or liberal-ise existing legislation. In the event,however, the prospect of any suchchanges making it onto the statute bookwas stied by the timetabling of the vote.Keen to avoid any further controversy,

and with abortion forming no part of theBill's principal remit, the governmentimposed a programme motion allowing




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for just three-and-a-half hours of debate,and placed clauses relating to abortion atthe end of the list of proposed amend-ments, eectively ensuring that parlia-mentary time would expire before theycould be discussed by MPs. Not surpris-

ingly, such tactics drew fervent protesta-tions from both sides of the divide: DianeAbbott, a leading advocate of liberalisa-tion, condemning it as à shabby man-oeuvre'; Bill Cash, from the oppositecamp, calling it àn unbelievable disgraceto Parliament'. Unsurprising, too, was theexpress displeasure of the religiously dri-ven to the Bill's nal passage. Comparingit to the practices of the Nazis, Cardinal

O'Brien declared that Britain had nowcome to embrace a `culture of death',and announced that: Òur ght, our battle. . . should not therefore be solely with theelected but with the electorate!'13

Conclusion: a secular victory?

Of the arguments deployed during thedebate over the Human Fertilisation andEmbryology Bill, those associated with adiscourse of fear proved insucientlypersuasive to surmount those deployed

by proponents of a discourse of hope. Thelatter's emphasis on civil rights andmedical and scientic progress resonatedfar more with the values of modern Brit-ain than scripturally derived ethicalclaims and warnings of social decay.Indeed, a notable feature of the casemade by critics of the Bill was that the

overt religiosity of many prominentoppositional MPs was not reected, forthe most part, in the use of any explicitlyreligious arguments in the Commonsastrategic concession, perhaps, to a beliefthat the votes of most MPs are notswayed in such a fashion. By most mea-sures the general public, too, were uncon-vinced by the case against the Bill,although exact sentiments are dicult to

assess, and although opinions variedaccording to the issue to hand and tothe framing of the questions put.

Yet while opposition from those actingfrom religious motives proved insu-cient to derail the Bill, they neverthelessprovide clear evidence of what is now agrowing desire on the part of faith-basedorganisations to secure a more prominent

role for religion in the public life of thenation. Indeed, the successful passage ofthe Bill was not a victory for a homoge-neously constituted secularism (even ifthe failed attempt to amend its mostcontroversial measures did mark a defeatfor a religiously constituted opposition),and nor is it indicative of a marginalisa-tion of religion within the public sphere.The real story of the debate over the

Human Fertilisation and EmbryologyBill is not, therefore, one of a vanquishingof the faithful. On the contrary, what isdemonstrated by these events is both theincreasing organisation of faith groupsand individuals, and their willingness tomobilise in order to press their case.While their battle on this occasion mayhave been lost, pressures for a greater rolefor religion in the public sphere are likelyto remain a key feature of the Britishpolitical landscape for some time to come.

Notes

1 See J. Morris, `'The strange death of Chris-tian Britain: another look at the secularisa-tion debate', The Historic Journal, vol. 46,no. 4, 2003, pp. 96376; A. Crockett andD. Voas, `Generations of decline: religiouschange in 20th-century Britain', Journal for

the Scientic Study of Religion, vol. 45, no. 4,2006, pp. 56784.

2 Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, lecture atWestminster Cathedral, 8 May 2008;Rowan Williams, Lecture at St Andrew'sCathedral, Singapore, 12 May 2007;N. Spencer, ``Doing God'': A Future for Faithin the Public Square, Theos Think Tank,2006. http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/Files/MediaFiles/TheosBookletnal.pdf

3 See M. Mulkay, `Rhetorics of hope and fearin the great embryo debate', Social Studiesof Science, vol. 23, no. 4, 1993, pp. 72142;M. Mulkay, `Frankenstein and the debate




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over embryo research', Science Technologyand Human Values, vol. 21, no. 2, 1996,p. 157; also see M. Kirejczyk, `Parliamen-tary cultures and human embryos: theDutch and British debates compared', So-cial Studies of Science, vol. 29, no. 6, 1999,pp. 889912; N. Richardt, `A comparative

analysis of the embryological researchdebate in Great Britain and Germany',Social Politics, Spring 2003; S. Fink, Politicsas usual or bringing religion back in? Theinuence of parties, institutions, economicinterests and religion on embryo researchlaws, Comparative Political Studies, Novem-

ber 2007.4 A. Plomer, `Beyond the HFE Act 1990: the

regulation of stem cell research in the UK',Medical Law Review, vol. 10, 2002, pp. 132

64; T. Bancho, `Path dependence andvalue-driven systems: the comparativepolitics of stem cell research', World Poli-tics, vol. 57, no. 4, 2005, pp. 20030.

5 New Statesman, 15 May 2008; Independenton Sunday, 30 March 2008; Memorandum

by Comment on Reproductive Ethics tothe Joint Committee on the Human Tissueand Embryos (Draft) Bill. Volume II: Evi-dence. August 2007. HL Paper 169-II. HCPaper 630-II. London, The Stationery

Oce; BBC News, 23 March 2008.6 The category of `other' was excluded from

the analysis, along with replies from indi-viduals with no broader representativecapacity (which comprised the largemajority of the responses). The replies tothe exercise can be found online at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Consultations/Responsestoconsultations/DH_4132358/.

Evidence to the Joint Committee can befound in Joint Committee on the HumanTissue and Embryos (Draft) Bill. VolumeII: Evidence. London, The StationeryOce.

7 The comments in this and the followingsections are from the debates that took

place in the House of Commons on 12,18, 19 and 20 May 2008.

8 BBC News, 21 March 2008; The Times, 21May 2008; Memoranda to the Joint Com-mittee on the Human Tissue and Embryos(Draft) Bill (Volume II: Evidence), by theChurch of England's Mission and PublicAairs Council, and by Anity; ProLife,`The animal-human hybrid battle so far',10 September 2007. http://www.prolife.org.uk/show?item=276

9 Memoranda to the Joint Committee on theHuman Tissue and Embryos (Draft) Bill(Volume II: Evidence), by the EvangelicalAlliance, by the Lawyers' Christian Fel-lowship and by the Church of England'sMission and Public Aairs Council; TheTimes, 21 May 2008.

10 The Times, 21 May 2008; Christian Today, 21May 2008; Church Times, 22 May 2008;Scottish Christian News Monitor, 6 June2008; Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2008; BBC

News, 8 June 2008.11 The Scotsman, 11 July 2008; Sunday Times,

13 July 2008.12 The Evening Standard, 26 September 2008.13 House of Commons debates, 22 October

2008; Catholic News Agency, 24 October2008; Independent Catholic News, 27 October2008; BBC News, 29 October 2008.



Did Secularism Win Out

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