I hope and pray that Jim Dobbin MP can be swiftly persuaded to back off from comments he's reported to have made yesterday that he is seeking an MP to table a private member's Bill to push for another vote in Parliament on the abortion time limit.
Jim Dobbin should be reminded that it's less than two years since the last push for an upper limit bill was stopped at the last ditch, after a united pro-life campaign, from resulting in a massive expansion of the abortion law. At that time a number of pro-life groups joined SPUC's campaign against proposed extreme pro-abortion amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill.
We must remind Members of Parliament that the main threat of creating in Britain a legal "right" to an abortion comes, perversely, from abortion time limit bills, often misguidedly promoted by sincere pro-life individuals and groups. The threat consists in that such proposals give the pro-abortion lobby the chance to argue that “early abortions are better than late abortions.” They argue that in order to ensure that women can get early “safe” abortions the obstacles must be removed, i.e. the medical grounds required for a legal abortion must be abolished. This would achieve a major objective of the pro-abortion lobby, arguably creating a right to abortion not currently in English (or Scottish) abortion law.
SPUC has written to MPs urging them not to support upper limit legislation. Here's why:
It was pro-lifers who pressed for the 1990 Act to contain provisions relating to abortion, in the hope of being able to insert some restrictions, particularly early time limits. Sadly this tactic backfired, resulting in a less, not more, restrictive abortion law.
SPUC said at the time: “… Kenneth Clarke [the secretary of state for health] was … responsible for giving MPs a misleading concept of the clause allowing abortion up to birth when it was debated at the Report Stage of the Bill on 21st June [1990] … He informed the House ‘the doctor will terminate a pregnancy while attempting to save the life of the baby if he can’. However, termination in such circumstances has always been allowed but previously it has been described as ‘induced birth’. For the first time it can be legally categorised as abortion, and, whatever the claims of Mr Clarke, there is now no law compelling a doctor to save the life of the child.” (Human Concern, summer 1990)
Both David Cameron, the prime minister, and Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health, have made clear that they support wider access to abortion in various ways. If there is a free vote by MPs, as was promised by Mr Cameron, it will provide the pro-abortion lobby with an opportunity to increase the numbers of abortions, as happened under the Conservative administration under Margaret Thatcher.
It's therefore all the more perplexing that Jim Dobbin should be reported to be saying: “David Cameron's leadership on this issue is important and could help to sway opinion.”
Finally, David Cameron supports the genocidal treatment of disabled children in the womb. He confirmed during a "Cameron-Direct" session in Barrow-in-Furness that he would not vote to reverse the current discrimination against unborn disabled babies who can be aborted right up to birth since the law was changed by Parliament in 1990. He made a similar comment in a Daily Mail interview on which I blogged at the time. Tragically, at this point in history, there is every sign that Parliament would confirm this genocidal treatment of the disabled before birth in any vote on the upper limit to abortion - which serves to underline this gravely ethically flawed and totally discredited approach to reform of the British abortion law.
For a fuller history of this whole issue, read my previous posts.
Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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