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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall be as brief as was the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I believe quite simply that it is right and proper that the same laws should apply to people who are disabled as to those who are not. Therefore, if a foetus is viable, which it will be after the age of 25 or 26 weeks, it should be permitted to live. It will be a matter of nature whether or not it lives. We have heard about a great many grim cases. I can equally come up with a case of a very close friend of mine who had a baby with very serious Down’s syndrome, but who has given her more pleasure than anything else in her life. The child has been an immense treasure, and she has no other children. We can all argue these cases for good or for evil. My point is a very simple one. We have a society where once people are born we increasingly go to extraordinary lengths to look after them if they are disabled. All around our country, and quite rightly so, we have ramps and lifts and all kinds of additional things that make it possible for a heavily disabled young person or child to live and enjoy a decent quality of life. Many of us will be disabled, not because we were born with a genetic disability but because we have suffered an accident that has heavily disabled us. We have to be accepted in society. Society has to make changes to ensure our lives are worth living. One of the things that really frightens me is that, if we pick out the potentially disabled at the age of 25 or 26 weeks, we will sooner or later develop an attitude towards the severely disabled who have been disabled since birth. We ought to be clear on the logic of this. If we are to treat disabled people in all possible ways as potentially having exactly the same quality of life as we do and doing everything we can to make that conceivable, then we have to carry that through always, from when one becomes viable to when one reaches the natural end of one’s life.