I have been writing about bioethical issues for the last 45 years.  My first piece was back in 1980, a review of the hugely influential pro-life book and film series by Francis Schaeffer and C Everett Koop entitled, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?  My first so-called Update on Life Issues was written for the FIEC’s Christian Citizenship Bulletin No.29 in the autumn of 1991 and these Updates have continued, at the rate of three each year, until now.  In addition, I have written extensively on other bioethical topics, including, for example, from October 2020, a 20-part monthly series on the Covid-19 pandemic.  Back in May 2003, I started uploading these Updates onto my newly-acquired website, http://www.johnling.co.uk/ and later I expanded the email address list of recipients – presumably including yours.  A conservative estimate would suggest that the whole corpus now amounts to some two million words. 

Truly, ‘there is a time for everything’ and this, my ‘season for … activity’, specifically my four decades of triannual Updates on Life Issues, is now ending.  In other words, you are reading my swansong.

Why am I stopping?  Four reasons.  First, obviously, there must come a terminus sometime, someday, one day.  Ageing typically brings with it some cognitive and bodily impairments.  And I am undoubtedly getting somewhat slower, both physically and mentally.  I reckon each edition of an Update demands the equivalent of about two weeks of preparation, mostly studying the recent and relevant scientific, medical and general literature.  Then the writing and proofreading of a typical 10,000-word Update requires another two weeks of steadfast slog.  That amounts to about three months every year.  All in all, this has become a hefty claim on my time and brain, and, though I have no diagnosed medical condition, the task is getting harder.  While I have always enjoyed this labour, and the end-product has been rewarding, I am no longer a youthful 45 and because there is ‘a season for every activity’, something rightly needs to give and so my season of Updates has been completed.

Second, I am no longer so lonesome.  From the early 1980s, I was among that little band of evangelical Christians who came to understand and uphold the biblical, pro-life line.  On many weekends I would be travelling across the UK speaking at meetings, mainly in churches, and often driving home in the early hours of a Sunday while holding down a full-time university lectureship.  I was pro-life busy.  In addition to the Updates, I continued to write, notably the more substantial Responding to the Culture of Death (2001), later revised and updated as Bioethical Issues (2014), plus The Edge of Life (2002) and the popular booklet, When Does Human Life Begin? (2011).  My salad days were turning into my purple patch.  Nowadays, thankfully, every respectable evangelical writer, publisher and organisation affirms that robust, pro-life agenda.  Understanding and responding to the culture of death have long been my priorities and now they are professed by innumerable others.  Even so, the task is far from complete, but it is substantially better than it was 40 years ago.  Thank you, people!

Third, these Updates were initially written by me, for me.  They compelled me to keep up to date with developments in that fast-changing field of bioethical issues.  Although primarily for my benefit, I had hopes that they might also help ‘the men and women in the pew’ grasp and respond to these key and often complex topics.  Therefore, I am indebted to the many, including my encouragers, but also my critics, and even my confronters.  Yet, nothing has ever caused me to doubt the wonders that human life begins at fertilisation, that it has a God-given dignity and that it therefore demands to be cherished and protected.

Fourth and last, I am only too aware that I am signing off slap bang in the middle of that current and most horrendous juncture of life issues, namely, Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill 2024-25.  Several jurisdictions, but particularly England and Wales, are pressing to legalise assisted suicide.  As I have written elsewhere, if legalised this would complete the full circle of the culture of death – from destructive embryo research (in vitro), to widespread abortion (in utero), to limited infanticide (ex utero), to unknown euthanasia (in senio).  Understanding and responding to this culture of death is a big and high calling for us all.  So, despite the demise of these Updates, I shall continue to write and speak, even shout, from the pro-life sidelines.  Over to you, next generations.

And so farewell, dear Update readers.  I hope something that I have written has been of benefit to you and of praise to God.  I wish you well.  Greetings!