Practical campaigner for the disabled

Peter Stanford spoke to Baroness Masham, head of the Spinal Injuries Association, about the conflict between medical advancement and the protection of human embryos.
FOR many Catholics who suffer incurable illnesses and disabilities, the recent Warnock Report on human fertilisation and embryology poses special problems.
Advances in medical science, which have made impossible dreams into the reality of hope, have opened the way to the possibility of progress in finding a cure for multiple sclerosis or a way to reconnect severed spinal cords, to take just two examples.
Yet further research into these areas might involve experimentation on live embryos. How is it possible to reconcile the chance. however distant, of being able to walk again with church teaching that any such experimentation is wrong?
The Warnock Report, published in September with Its recommendation of experimentation on embryos up to 14 days old, has brought many of these hopes and questions to the forefront of public debate. One of those to speak in the recent Lords debate on the subject was Lady Masham of Ilton, head of the Spinal Injuries Association and a Catholic.
Confined to a wheelchair with a broken spine since a riding accident while still a schoolgirl. she has been an outstanding campaigner for greater facilities and understanding for the mentally and physically handicapped both before and after her receipt of a life peerage in 1970.
Spending half her time at their Yorkshire home, and the other halls in London when the House is in session, Lady Masham and her husband, the Earl of Swinton, deputy Chief Conservative Whip in the Lords, share an interest in politics.
Finding a minute between dealing with correspondence asking her advice on lightweight wheelchairs and a meeting in the Lords on seat-belt legislation and the problems it creates for the disabled, Susan Masham spoke to me in her Westminster flat — conveniently situated between the House and the Cathedral — about her faith, and the part it plays in her life.
During the Warnock debate in the Lords, she suggested that there might "in very special cases" be justification for surrogate motherhood.
Elaborating on this point, Lady Masham felt that as a mother — she has an adopted son and daughter — it was impossible to underestimate the complexity of the problems surrounding surrogate motherhood.
She referred to the recent case in Australia of a fertilised embryo whose parents had been killed in a road accident. The embryo was now "sitting in a deep freeze somewhere". Was there not a case here for surrogate mothers, Lady Masham asked, characteristically both posing the question and at the same time answering it with a winning twinkle in her eye.
Was it not just "an extension of having a nanny" in such cases? There was no question in her mind though that any money transactions should be involved Turning to the more general proposals of the Warnock Report, Susan Masham is quite categorical in her opposition to any experimentation on embryos. The possibility that experimentation on embryos could lead to a cure for her disability left her with "conflicting interests", Lady Masham admitted. Yet she sided against research. "My inner feeling is against it because I think it is dangerous, even though it is very useful". When questioned as to whether she felt that by disallowing experimentation, she was denying other disabled people the chance of a cure, she replied that she obviously wanted a cure "desperately" but that experimentation on embryos was not an acceptable means to an end. "One hopes that they can find other ways — such as tissue matching".
In Lady Masham's mind the question of embryology is closely linked with the current abortion legislation. "I'm sure this has all come about because there is a lack of babies for adoption". She is totally opposed to abortion — "some people are using it as a form of contraception".
Within the Catholic Church, Susan Masham has found a mixed reception to the needs of the disabled. In 1981, International Year of the Disabled, she finally persuaded the relevant authorities to provide a ramp at Westminster Cathedral.
In less practical matters too, she has encountered a noticeable tendency to "sweep things under the carpet".
Lady Masham took a special interest in the case of a couple in Nottingham who were earlier this year refused permission to marry in Church because of the man's inability to consummate the marriage because of his handicap (a decision later reversed by the local bishop).
Such cases were "extremely damaging" for recently disabled patients undergoing rehabilitation courses, Lady Masham said. The Church was guilty of a lack of care — "the soul is surely the important factor in the body", she said, and even if the physical had to prevail then what of the chance of a cure next year she asked?
Susan Masham was born an Anglican and a "fairly religious" one at that. However, she admits with a girlish laugh, it was only in 1964 that she was finally received into the Catholic Church after allowing the seed of faith within her to mature. Conversion had been a "growing decision". With the help of many remarkable people — most notably a Holy Rosary Sister who had nursed her after her accident — and CTS booklets obtained from the back of London churches, Lady Masham grew towards her decision.
Her accident had happened before her conversion, but after her first thoughts of taking such a course. In a way it strengthened her resolve, although she now recognised that it might have weakened it.
"Faith is a middle thing, it can take you either way" she said. Because the seed of faith had been with her before her accident, it had grown and matured in the suffering after it.
Susan Masham describes herself as "really very oldfashioned" in her view of the role of the church. Yet running alongside this traditionalism in matters theological is a positive and forward-looking attitude to society — making the best of the present and improving things for the future.
Lady Masham is pointing the way to a future more caring and understanding society.