An important European institution will vote on Friday 27 June on the subject of child abandonment. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will debate a draft resolution entitled "Preventing the first form of violence against children: abandonment at birth" http://tinyurl.com/5k7dvw The Council of Europe (which is distinct from the European Union) has a Parliamentary Assembly consisting of representatives who already sit in the legislatures of the Council's 47 member-states. Although the Parliamentary Assembly cannot pass laws, it does pass resolutions which may have significant influence on law, in particular human rights law.Although it contains some good aspects (e.g. support in crisis pregnancies), the draft resolution and its accompanying report also promotes "legal and easier access to sexual rights and reproductive health services" (article 9.4.) such as "contraception and abortion" (article 33.6). It is clear that the resolution's message is that it is better for women to kill their babies by abortion than to abandon them, even than abandoning them to institutions that will care for them and place them for adoption. Even the resolution's title ("Preventing the first form of violence against children: abandonment at birth") implies support for abortion - an earlier form of violence against children is in fact killing them before birth. This fact is the reason why the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child says, "The child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth."
The hijacking of the issue of child abandonment by pro-abortion extremism is shocking, but unsurprising considering that the resolution has been drafted by the strongly pro-abortion British MP Mike Hancock, under the chairmanship of Christine McCafferty, a leader of the abortion lobby in the British parliament.
Please contact the representatives of your country in the Assembly immediately, urging them to vote to remove all anti-life language from the draft resolution, and to vote against the draft resolution if the anti-life langauge is not removed. Assembly members should be asked to oppose articles 7, 9.4, 10.3, 17, 18, 19, 33.6, 33.7 and any other articles which could be interpreted as support for abortion or other anti-life/anti-family practices (e.g. mass provision of contraception; value-free sex education; attacks upon the work of faith communities to save children; etc).
You may also wish to remind Assembly members of the words of the late Nobel Prize-winner, Mother Teresa:
"These concerns (for orphan children in India and elsewhere in the world) are very good, but often these same people are not concerned with the millions that are killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today, Abortion...For the pregnant women who don't want their children, give them to me."
Contact details for Assembly members can be found at http://tinyurl.com/65tqqg Please remember to email any replies you receive to political@spuc.org.uk
