Ian Walker is a fellow parishioner of mine. We belong to the Catholic parish of St. Joseph's, Wealdstone, in north London.Ian is a devout man and, in his prayers, he felt called to organize a world day of fasting for the unborn on Thursday, 14th August.
With the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill
making progress through parliament, with all its terrible provisions including the creation of human-animal hybrids for destructive research, I readily gave him my support. There's also the real danger of pro-abortion MPs using the report stage of the bill to widen, in a major way, the Abortion Act, virtually stripping the unborn child of any vestige of protection.
The postponed report stage and third reading of the bill in the autumn will arrive before we know it. I believe that activities to defeat this bill and to stop parliament from agreeing to further liberalisation of the abortion law must intensify and grow in number as never before over the summer. We must work on this as though everything depended on us.
However, I believe in God and I believe in prayer and I think those who believe in prayer should pray as though everything depends on God.
It's a world fast day of prayer because the goverment of virtually every nation under the sun promotes abortion - by funding the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN body which supports and participates in the management of China's population control programme, the one-child policy implemented by forced abortion. 180 countries make financial contributions to UNFPA. (President Bush's administration does not do so, on account of UNFPA's activities in China.)
I therefore invite believers to join Ian Walker in a world fast day of prayer for the unborn. In our parish, Fr Michael Doherty (pictured above) is organizing the world fast day of prayer in accordance with Catholic traditions. On 14th August, evening Mass will be preceded by recitation of the Rosary and followed by Eucharistic adoration until 10 p.m.. Others may choose other ways of celebrating the day - either privately or in accordance with other Christian traditions.
