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Wednesday June 11, 2008
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Only in Britain: "Pro-Life" Means Pro-Abortion with Exceptions
By Hilary White
LONDON, June 11, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - During the debates on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, pro-life people in Britain were shocked when prominent members of the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group (APPPLG) made statements in support of legalized abortion.
Dr. John Pugh, a Vice-Chairman of the APPPLG and a Catholic made the astonishing claim, in the debate on May 20, that "even the Catholic Church sanctions therapeutic abortion." Pugh maintains that it is only what he called "consciousness" that confers the right of a person not to be killed.
Pugh went on to say that "irrespective of any religious view...justification for abortion becomes enormously harder from the moment when the foetus becomes conscious or responsive to pain." He said, "Frankly, there is no basis for giving anything a right other than that it is conscious, and there is no more significant event in the life of any being than becoming conscious".
The pro-life position, properly understood however, is that a human being, with all the moral rights of every other human being, comes into existence at the moment of the fusion of the gametes. Once the human being exists, even at the single-cell stage, he must be afforded all the legal protections of every other member of the human family, regardless of his size, location or medical condition.
Not so in British Parliamentary pro-life circles, where to be pro-life and pro-abortion at the same time is not regarded as contradictory. At the time of the debates in the House of Commons, while MPs considered proposals to lower the gestational time limit for legal abortion from its current 24 weeks, many were shocked by the pro-abortion statements coming from the "pro-life" Parliamentarians.
LifeSiteNews.com reported on May 21, that SPUC is calling for the immediate resignation of Mrs. Claire Curtis-Thomas, the vice-chairman of the APPPLG, who told the House, "For the record...I am not opposed to abortion. I believe that women should have the right to choose; I just hope that they do not choose to have an abortion."
Curtis-Thomas was put in charge of the APPPLG strategy on abortion despite the fact that she has a long record of abortion support, as is evidenced by her 1997 election to Parliament as an Emily's List candidate. Emily's List is a US-based organisation that funds the campaigns of pro-abortion women political candidates.
Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said he was "particularly pleased as the award is given in recognition of your service to the Catholic Church in the public witness of faith as a parliamentarian and as such a staunch advocate of the dignity of all human life".
Other MPs touted in the press as "pro-life" who are not associated with the APPPLG are also in favour of keeping abortion legal. Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP widely called pro-life by the press and who led the charge to have the age limit for abortion lowered, told the House of Commons on 20th May, "I should like to make my personal position clear, because it has been misrepresented in the past few days. I am pro-choice. I support a woman's right to abortion - to faster, safer and quicker abortion than is available at the moment, particularly in the first trimester. That is my position."
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
"Women Should Have the Right to Choose" says Head of UK Parliamentary Pro-Life Group
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08052105.html
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