A couple of years ago, I did something that is near the top of my list of 'things I ought to have done already', but for some reason, it seems largely to have slipped my mind. I wrote a book.

Well, I more or less wrote a book. I kind of compiled most of it from other sources.

The Early Life Issues, a Briefing Book, was kind of my magnum opus as a pro-life researcher and digger-up-of-information. But the ethics section, apart from quotes from my favouritest book in the whole world, was me and me alone.

I was just re-reading it, having used it for reference for something I did on Friday, and I'm kind of surprised. It's pretty good.

I think I can't produce anything like this any more. I feel a bit like the post-relapse Charley in Flowers for Algernon, looking back on my smart period, and being amazed that I could do such a thing.

In the new philosophical view that supports both abortion and the new reproductive technologies, the body and the mind or soul are essentially separate[4], the body, the physical realities, are disparaged as being of secondary importance and the existence of a set and universal human nature denied. Man has no destiny other than what he creates for himself, and his nature is malleable according to private preference. Marriage, therefore, also has no transcendental nature but exists for whatever purpose decided upon by the individuals involved.

The difference between the pro-life perspective and the prevailing view of the world of medicine and law on new reproductive technologies is not only dependent upon the problem that artificial interventions in procreation invariably result in the death of persons at the embryonic, and therefore most vulnerable, stage. It is in fact a fundamental difference in anthropology, in understanding of the nature of man.

The chasm that exists between the pro-life and the prevailing philosophies regarding assisted reproduction, is created by the loss of the meaning of marriage and its relationship with the totality of the human person. In the new philosophies, marriage is merely a social contract created by the barest physiological and economic necessities and the held-over customs of past human societies. In this view, one held by almost the entirety of the contemporary medical, legal and scientific community, marriage has no transcendental[5] reality whatever and no intrinsic connection to the nature of persons. It can be entered into and left in the same way as a business contract. As we have seen with the advent of so-called “homosexual marriage” it has no bearing on the physical realities of human biology or procreation, which are considered to be “merely” physical functions distinct from the marriage “contract.”

Do you ever feel like Paul McCartney? Kind of like by this age, you've already done all the most important things you're ever going to do and the rest of it is just going to be a kind of sorry afterthought?

No?