Wednesday 3 December 2008

Illegitimate Conjoined Birth

Today conjoined Anglican babies are born, somewhere over in Illinois, nursed into existence by the Southern Cone travelling surgery and a host of African bishop doctors. The parents are said to be illegitimate.

It's an odd collection of medical handbooks being used for the public event of the birth: biblical selective literalist and high Anglo-Catholic publications, both of which stress the claim to be anti-homosexual and orthodox. Something like that, but then they diverge rather much in their actual techniques. Usually in these conjoined cases some of the organs are rather weak, and separation leads to the death of at least one of the twins. Sometimes one of the babies can be said to be 'greedy', although morality doesn't come into it of course. Sometimes it depends on the treatment. Much depends on the conception.

No one can be sure about the Global Anglican Future of this tragic birth, as recognition is likely to be patchy and inadequate. Indeed the partial recognition and medical input from parts of the south of the globe may favour the selective literalist baby over the Anglo-Catholic baby. The Anglo-Catholic baby is usually the one to receive less treatment and to be marginalised, and a number are being left to die in places like England.

In the past, when people were ignorant, cruel words like "hideous" used to be used; today, sadness is the dominant sentiment. The parents of course hope that the babies are stronger than they really are, and of course such parents often try to have a number of babies by various natural and artificial means in various hospitals so at least there is a chance that they might have offspring. Apparently, a selective literalist baby was stillborn in the NEAC 5 Hospital in London, recently, conceived a short while back by the Jerusalem Declaration of one such unsuitable couple.

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