Notebook
Norwegian Schizophrenia
This year Norway has celebrated its millennium of Christian legislation, apparently with unanimous enthusiasm. We have celebrated the fact that Norway in 1024 went from being a society ruled by might to becoming one founded on right; the recognition of women, children, and thralls as legal subjects; the establishment of ‘values’ making up what our Constitution calls our Christian inheritance. What are we to say when the government, this same year, pushes through a new abortion law that consistently avoids the reference to the unborn as ‘children’, forfeits the hitherto decisive category of ‘capacity for life’ in discernment, thereby affirming that it is legal now, on the the state’s own terms, for one human being autonomously to take another human being’s life? This coincidence indicates a kind of schizophrenia it is considered bad form to name; but it must be done. During a hearing this spring, Norway’s Council of Catholic Bishops asked for the proposed law to be rejected. We put the question: ‘Is it to Norway’s benefit to develop legislation sentimentalising the very notion of personhood, ascribing personhood to a wanted individual but withholding recognition of personhood from one that is unwanted, and on this basis expediting that individual either towards survival or to death?’ We answered: ‘We hold that it is not to Norway’s benefit to develop such legislation.’ This we still hold. We regret the implementation of this development, and the silence surrounding it.