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WESTMINSTER, London, England, June 24, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) ― The English judge who ruled that doctors should be allowed to perform an abortion on a disabled woman against her will was a pro-abortion activist lawyer. 

In a searing editorial for First Things entitled “Murder Disguised as Care,” Nigerian pro-life advocate Obianuju “Uju” Ekeocha revealed that Madame Justice Nathalie Lieven, 55, has a long history of supporting Britain’s abortion industry. 

“Nathalie Lieven was appointed a High Court judge in December 2018, and her appointment took effect on January 11, 2019,” Ekeocha wrote. 

“Most reports have failed to highlight that in the last fifteen years Lieven has had a prominent place in the British pro-abortion movement. She has been in the forefront of some of the landmark abortion-related cases in the country.”

In 2005, Lieven argued in court for an International Planned Parenthood affilitate, the Family Planning Association, that parents, in the words of a Guardian report, “are no longer necessarily the best people to advise a child on contraception, sexually transmitted infections and abortions –  and they have no right to know if their children under 16 are seeking treatment.”

Then in 2011, Lieven represented Britain’s largest abortion business, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), to argue that pregnant women should be allowed to take the second dose of the two-step chemical abortion at home without medical supervision.

Lieven also fought to have Northern Ireland’s stricter abortion law overturned. Ekeocha reported that from 2015 to 2018 Lieven represented the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission from 2015 to 2018 when it took the country’s government to court, arguing that their pro-life law violated the human rights of women and girls. Alone of all the countries in the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland forbids abortion unless the mother’s life is endangered. As lead counsel, Lieven said, “The impact of the criminal law in Northern Ireland does amount to inhuman and degrading treatment by the state.” 

“These important abortion-related cases have laid the foundations for the expansion of legal abortion in the U.K., and Lieven has been deeply involved in the construction of these foundations,” Ekeocha argued. 

“As a lawyer, she has been the voice of abortion organizations, she has argued to increase abortion access in the U.K., she has fought against the rights of parents with regards to their children, she has claimed that the fetus does not have an autonomous right to life under U.K. law, and she has spoken on panels dedicated to abortion rights-related litigations,” the pro-life leader continued.

“In short, throughout her career she has championed the cause of abortion in the U.K. Now, barely six months after being elevated to the [High Court] judge’s bench, she has handed down an outrageous ruling that will lead to terminating a fully formed unborn baby—against the wishes of the mother and grandmother.”

A Nigerian Catholic woman living in England, Ekeocha says that her heart is broken for her fellow Nigerians, of whom at least the baby’s grandmother is a Catholic. She said that Catholic Nigerians are pro-life through both faith and culture, so she understands why the grandmother does not want the child killed.

The circumstances under which the disabled woman in the case, whose name has not been released to the press, became pregnant are unclear, and no story about the case has mentioned the child’s paternity. The woman is in her twenties and is apparently in the care of England’s National Health Service (NHS). The NHS applied to the Court of Protection, which is supposed to rule on matters regarding the personal lives of people deemed incapable of deciding for themselves, for permission to perform the abortion on the pregnant woman.

The disabled woman’s lack of privilege, extending even to the right to give birth to her own, living child, is a marked contrast to the comfortable background of Nathalie Lieven. 

Lieven, who is descended from Baltic German nobility, comes from a well-established German-British family of scholars and journalists. She was raised in West London and schooled at Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith. A prestigious private school for girls, Godolphin and Latymer’s tuition is currently set at £21,615 ($27,513 US) per year. Extra-curricular activities include extensive foreign travel. Lieven also studied history at Cambridge University before taking up legal training at the Polytechnic of Central London.  

According to the Judicial Appointments website, Leiven was “called to the Bar in 1989 and was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 2006. She was appointed a Deputy High Court Judge in 2016 sitting in both the Administrative Court and the Family Division.”