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Major London Abortion Conference to Promote Even More Abortion Internationally

One speaker will be Reproductive Rights Coordinator for Amnesty International

by Hilary White

LONDON, September 4, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Marie Stopes International is hosting a conference in London in October to promote abortion internationally. One of the aims of the Global Conference on Safe Abortion is to teach abortion advocates how to remove the last legal barriers to unrestricted abortion on demand in Britain.

The website of Marie Stopes International says the conference's aim is to "build consensus and momentum around international efforts to reduce the unacceptable toll on women's health and lives caused by unsafe abortion." It is being timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the United Kingdom's 1967 Abortion Act.

The conference, to be held October 23 and 24 at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, offers a line-up of speakers from many of the world's prominent abortion and population control organisations including Catholics for a Free Choice, Amnesty International, International Planned Parenthood and the Guttmacher Institute. Parliamentarians scheduled to speak include Gareth R. Thomas, MP for Harrow West and Christine McCafferty, MP for Calder Valley.

One speaker is Stephanie Schlitt, the Reproductive Rights Coordinator for the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, who oversaw the world-wide orchestration of Amnesty's adoption of abortion as a "human right". Schlitt will provide advice on policy and methodology for abortion campaigners on transforming large organisations like Amnesty into abortion advocacy groups.

Marie Stopes International is part of a group of 13 abortion promoting organisations that will use the conference and the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Abortion Act to pressure the British government to abolish the requirement of two doctors for abortion.

The group, Voice for Choice, is a coalition of organisations working with the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Choice and Sexual Health Group to pressure the Labour government to increase abortion availability in Britain. Observers on both sides of the debate agree that the majority Labour government is likely to pass such amendments to the Act.

The group is lobbying the British government to have abortion be available on demand with no reason or justification necessary and to allow abortions to be committed by nurse practitioners.

Marie Stopes is an international abortion organisation that grew directly out of the early 20th century eugenics movement. It works in 40 countries and in the UK is the largest provider of abortion and contraception apart from the National Health Service.

Marie Stopes, (1880-1958) a paleobotanist, was, like Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a prominent campaigner for eugenics policies that found their full expression in the Nazi mass murder programmes before and during World War II.

In "Radiant Motherhood", Stopes called for the "sterilization of those totally unfit for parenthood to be made…compulsory." In "The Control of Parenthood" she said that "utopia could be reached in my life time" if she had power to "legislate compulsory sterilization" of the insane, "feebleminded", "revolutionaries" and "half-castes."  Following her death in 1958, a large part of Stopes' personal fortune went to the Eugenics Society.

To contact Gareth R. Thomas, MP Harrow West:
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Email:
Fax: 020 7219 1154
Phone: 020 7219 4243

To contact Christine McCafferty, MP for Calder Valley
Constituency office:
15 Heptonstall Road
Hebden Bridge
HX7 6AZ
Tel: 01422 843713
Fax: 01422 846713

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