By Peter J. Smith
LONDON, November 24, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A British Member of Parliament needed to call upon security after abortion activists sent her death threats for proposing to reduce the legal age for abortion from 24 to 21 weeks according to the Bedford News.
“My staff have been told they will burn in hell, my home has been besieged by anonymous telephone calls, extremist groups have sent out inflammatory messages to their members,” said Conservative MP Nadine Dorries of Mid Bedfordshire. “It got so bad that we had to alert House of Commons security and my constituency police.”
However, the threats have only served to harden Nadine Dorries’ conviction to push for changes in the United Kingdom’s abortion law.
“Why such extremists think this kind of behaviour will deter me I have no idea. If anything it reinforces my conviction to carry on,” said Mrs. Dorries. “We were not intimidated by the extremists and continue to move forward with the campaign which I have called ‘Abortion Rights and Wrongs – the case for reform of abortion law’.”
Nadine Dorries’s Bill – entitled ‘Termination of Abortion’– would have reduced the legal limit of abortion from 24 weeks to 21, and would have required a 10 day “cooling off” period for a woman to know what her risks concerning both abortion and carrying her pregnancy to term “as a condition of informed consent”. Mrs. Dorries argued for the bill on the basis that the latest scientific research had placed fetal sentience at approximately 21 weeks; however the measure lost with 108 votes for the Bill and 187 votes against.
While Ten Minute Rule Bills rarely become law anyway, the vociferous protest from the abortion lobby directed toward MPs has Mrs. Dorries concerned that there is an “attempt to suppress democracy” by preventing Private Member’s Bills over abortion, which she says is “the only way the abortion law can be reformed.”