Scottish Catholic Observer

“24 June: BMA [British Medical Association] votes to back abortions up to birth in the UK,” Bishop Keenan said.

“27 June: Amnesty calls for the decriminalisation of abortion in the UK. 28 June: BSAS [British Social Attitdues Survey] releases survey suggesting record levels of support for abortion. 30 June: Labour MP Stella Creasy forces the abortion issue at the Queen’s Speech and the Conservatives concede to funding for abortions for Irish women travelling to England.

“Is it just me or does this look like a wholesale attack on the right to life of the unborn?’

Bishop Keenan, pictured, said ‘all these abortions involve our country in the killing of human beings, and surely killing fellow human beings is more a harbinger of the impending collapse of a culture than any marker of a progressive society?’

The UK Government has been strongly criticised after caving in to demands to give women from Northern Ireland free abortions on the NHS.

Chancellor Philip Hammond announced in the House of Commons that the government will provide free abortions for Northern Irish women. Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has been considering a similar move. The decision comes on the same day Northern Ireland’s Appeal Court said abortion law should be left to the province’s Assembly.

Three judges overturned a ruling by a lower court that Northern Ireland’s abortion law was incompatible with the UK’s Human Rights Act.

Peter D Williams, executive officer at Right to Life, said: “This decision is an illiberal, anti-democratic, anti-constitutional disgrace. It will lead to the deaths of many more unborn children, despite the deliberate wish of the Northern Irish people to maintain protections for unborn children from their province, a ‘choice’ that has meant that 100,000 Northern Irish are alive today because the Abortion Act 1967 was never extended there.

“Earlier today, we saw a victory for democracy and human rights, most particularly the right to life of unborn children, as the Courts wisely refused to recognise any non-existent right to abortion, and referred the matter to the representatives of the people in the Stormont Assembly.”

The BMA is also being criticised after warnings that its backing of decriminalisation of abortion could usher in ‘abortion up to birth’.

A number of doctors expressed their shock at a new policy in favour of stripping criminal sanctions from British abortion law—and saying they will leave the BMA over it.

Motion 50 was adopted at a meeting in Bournemouth last week by a two-thirds majority despite more than 1,500 doctors writing to the BMA to warn executives that it would damage the reputation of their union.

They told their trade union that ‘if these measures were to be implemented, it would mean the introduction of abortion for any reason, to at least 28 weeks and possibly up to birth’.