BELFAST, October 18, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The BBC and other secular media outlets and pro-abortion politicians in Northern Ireland and the House of Lords are cooperating in a campaign to loosen the law against abortion in the region.
The BBC and the Belfast Telegraph reported October 9 on a meeting between two pregnant women and NI Health Minister Edwin Poots in which the women complained that they could not abort their children who had been diagnosed with “severe abnormalities.”
The Belfast Telegraph quoted a source from the Department of Health saying, “Consultation on draft guidelines published earlier this year has closed. A number of submissions to the consultation have highlighted the issue of lethal fetal abnormality and incompatibility with life.”
“Full consideration is currently been given to the all consultation submissions and the minister intends to bring a final version to the Executive for its consideration at an early stage, ideally within a number of weeks,” the source said.
One of the women, Sarah Ewart, approached the BBC with the story.
“My only choice basically was to carry the baby either until it passed away inside me or I could deliver and it would pass away,” she said. “The law won't let you have an abortion unless the baby is going to harm you.”
The BBC reports that Poots had asked his officials to consider the case to ensure “everything has been done that we would expect to be done, within the confines of the legal position that exists in Northern Ireland.”
The BBC quoted Justice Minister David Ford saying, “I’m on record in the past as having said that there may be a small number of cases, perhaps a very small number of cases such as fetal abnormality, which need to be considered as to whether Northern Ireland law is currently adequate.”
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On Wednesday the BBC also reported that new draft medical practice guidelines for abortion are being considered by Stormont, quoting one retired obstetrician who complained of a “mood of fear” among medical professionals over the document issued in March. Prof Jim Dornan complained that medical staff “could face 10 years in jail if they failed to report their suspicions of unlawful terminations to police.”
Liam Gibson, Northern Ireland’s representative for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said the BBC and other media outlets “are conducting a campaign” against the region’s pro-life laws, using the “hard cases” of unborn children diagnosed with serious abnormalities to generate confusion over the law and public sympathy for legalization.
Gibson told LifeSiteNews.com this evening that the campaign has clearly been coordinated between the media and pro-abortion elements in the health profession, Northern Ireland’s National Assembly, Stormont, and Westminster. He also pointed out that several, thus far unsuccessful attempts have been made to bring abortion into Northern Ireland through the “back door” of medical practice guidelines.
He confirmed that the new guidelines have created fears among some health professionals who have “for years were allowed to flout the law by discreetly performing eugenic abortions.”
“This is why the tragedy of women expecting babies with a fatal disability was the starting point for the BBC attacks,” Gibson said.
“The battle over official guidance has been fought out in the court and in the Stormont Assembly for more than 10 years,” he added.
Twice the Society for Protection of Unborn Children has undertaken legal action that forced the withdrawal of misleading guidance which, they said, “failed to reflect the law accurately.”
Gibson said that this latest push is clearly a coordinated attack on the province’s law, and that the only difference this time is that it appears to be led by the BBC, who have produced at least six stories in fewer than 10 days.
“Daily attacks,” he said, “are coming against the country’s legal protection for unborn children by a public service broadcaster that has abandoned all pretense of impartiality on the abortion issue.”
Gibson added that according to his sources at Stormont, “people close to the health minister,” there is “no truth in the claim that Edwin Poots supports a change in the law to allow for abortion in cases of fetal abnormalities.”
“The abortion lobby,” he said, “are not interested in the one in one hundred thousand cases of serious foetal abnormalities” but are using the hard cases to “act as a wedge in the door” to abolish all restrictions on abortion in Northern Ireland.
The issue is in the forefront of public attention now in England with a recent decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions having announced recently that there is nothing in the law that would prohibit sex-selective abortion.
At the moment, abortion remains a criminal offense in Northern Ireland, as it is technically in the rest of the UK. The people of Northern Ireland remain opposed to efforts to extend the legal exceptions to the law listed in the Abortion Act 1967.
However, the recent legalization of abortion for women who threaten suicide in the Republic of Ireland has added immense political pressure to drop Northern Ireland’s restrictions.
Gibson told LifeSiteNews that a “major factor in the developing crisis in Northern Ireland is the almost unmitigated triumph of the abortion lobby in the Irish Republic.”
“What we are witnessing in Northern Ireland can be seen as the second stage in introducing abortion on demand to the island of Ireland,” he said.
Meanwhile, Glenys Thornton, a member of the House of Lords for the Labor Party, raised the question in the Upper Chamber yesterday, demanding to know “what action” the government intends to take “in the wake of reports last week on BBC Northern Ireland concerning access to terminations for women in Northern Ireland who are carrying fetuses with severe abnormalities and wish to end their pregnancy”.
Elizabeth Randerson, a Welsh Liberal Democrat life peer, responded that the Abortion Act 1967 “does not extend to Northern Ireland, where abortion law is governed by the Offenses Against the Person Act 1861,” and abortion remains a crime.
“Constitutionally,” she added, “abortion law in Northern Ireland is a transferred matter. It is therefore the responsibility of Northern Ireland Executive Ministers and so not a matter where Her Majesty’s Government have any powers to intervene.”
Baroness Thornton replied, “I was hoping to have a slightly more hopeful Answer from the noble Baroness, but I thank her for what she said. I hope that she will join me in congratulating the Marie Stopes clinic, which, tomorrow, is marking the first anniversary of its operation in Belfast.”
Thornton added that it is not “fair for Northern Ireland women who need and want terminations under these very unhappy circumstances to have them provided free under the NHS elsewhere in the UK, where that provision is not illegal.”
She complained that “women in one part of the UK are denied rights and access to terminations that are available to all other women in the UK.”
Joyce Brenda Gould, a Lords member for the Labor Party and president of the abortionist organization the Family Planning Association, also intervened, saying that the Irish FPA had submitted a report to the United Nations CEDAW (the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) demanding a “revision of the abortion law in Northern Ireland in 2011.
“I add that this year, again, CEDAW has told the British Government that they need to expedite an amendment to the anti-abortion law in Northern Ireland and create a law to ensure that legal abortion covers circumstances such as threats to a woman’s health and cases of serious malformation of the fetus,” Gould said. “As a signatory to CEDAW, when are the Government going to honor their commitments?”
Nuala Patricia O'Loan, Baroness O'Loan said that “abortions do occur in Northern Ireland” and asked if the Upper House were aware that “there is an ongoing legal duty to recognize that the unborn child, whatever its state of health, is deserving of protection.”
She asked, “Is it not the case that England and Wales now needs to reconsider the law on abortion, given that we have a situation in which it is lawful to terminate the life of a baby simply because that baby is a little girl?”