By Hilary White
LONDON, May 20, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – MPs voted yesterday to keep provisions in the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill to allow the creation of human/animal hybrid cloned embryos, a move defended in the House of Commons by the constantly repeated refrain that such embryos would be “99.9%” human. Yesterday’s vote also allowed for the creation of embryos to select “saviour siblings”, genetically matched to be gestated for the purpose of providing tissue for existing siblings suffering serious illnesses.
Tonight, for the first time in decades, MPs are voting on the abortion law, under which nearly 200,000 British children are killed every year by abortion. A second evening of votes scheduled for later tonight, will decide if the legal age limit for abortion in Britain will be lowered from its current 24 weeks to 20 or lower. MPs will also vote on whether to keep the previous law’s requirement that IVF facilities consider the “need for a father” for children created by artificial fertility treatments.
Votes are expected on proposals to change the limit to 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 and 22 weeks. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and most of the Labour caucus support keeping the time limit at 24 weeks, the highest of any country of the European Union.
Anthony Ozimic, the political secretary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children told LifeSiteNews.com that the previous votes, even before MPs decided on amendments to lower the age limit for abortion, meant the bill is now unsupportable.
“The bill cannot be made less unethical,” said Ozimic.
“It is clear,” he said, “that all attempts to place any restraints on the government on hybrid embryos and saviour siblings has failed, and MPs who were previously uncertain about the value of the legislation in other areas, will now vote against the bill as a whole.”
Despite the media furore over efforts by some MPs to lower the age limit, SPUC has repeatedly warned that should they succeed, the overall situation with abortion in Britain will be made much worse.
The age limit amendments, the Tory shadow health spokesman Andrew Lansley confirmed last week, will only pass when all other restrictions on legal abortion under the limit are removed. Only about 3000 abortions out of Britain’s annual 200,000 are committed later than 20 weeks gestation. The changes would abolish the existing restrictions on the vast majority of abortions, such as the requirement for two doctors to sign for abortion, and would allow nurses to commit abortions.
While the MPs vote tonight, it was revealed today that Britain’s abortion culture is out of control with thousands of women in the UK having four or more abortions. The Telegraph revealed today that of the more than 60,000 British women who underwent a “repeat” abortion, almost 15,000 were on their third. During 2006 more than 3,800 women had undergone at least four abortions, including more than 1,300 who were on their fifth or more.
65 women had six abortions by age 30; 82 girls under 18 had had three; more than 50 women had had eight abortions or more. The numbers showed that the vast majority of Britain’s abortions are committed for “social reasons” with 2,000 committed on the grounds that the child would be born handicapped. In 1968, the first year they were legal, there were 22,000 abortions in England and Wales. In 2006, the number had risen to 193,700.
The Telegraph quoted Dr. Peter Saunders, general secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship, who said, “This is just so grotesquely bleak.” He said the situation was “approaching the sorts of things we used to hear about Soviet Russia.”
Dawn Primarolo, the Labour government’s Public Health Minister, has accused Dorries and Tory backbenchers supporting her, of “high jacking” the bill and using “extreme and untrue arguments” to introduce limits on abortion and embryo research.
Nadine Dorries, the pro-abortion MP leading the campaign to reduce the abortion time limit from 24 to 20 weeks, responded saying that it was sour grapes. She told the Telegraph that the bill had been drafted to allow pro-abortion MPs to use it to loosen the current abortion restrictions, but that the plan had backfired with the introduction of pro-life amendments.
“They don’t like it because it has not gone their way,” she said. “I’m an advocate of fast, safe, free access to abortion, especially in the first trimester. My only problem is with late abortion.” Dorries, despite not being pro-life, has received hate mail and even threats for her efforts to reduce the time limit.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Embryo Bill in Northern Ireland Could Bring Legal Abortion in by “Back Door”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08032708.html
Pro-life Efforts in Britain Undermined by Pro-Life Efforts
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08052006.html