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--- PRESS RELEASE ---

8th May 2020

Precious Life Welcome Government's Withdrawal of Extreme NI Abortion Regulations

Precious Life have today welcomed the Government’s withdrawal of extreme Abortion Regulations for Northern Ireland. The British Government last night (Thursday 7th May) withdrew the hugely controversial regulations for Northern Ireland before they could be put to the vote in Parliament next week.

It means that the regulations put forward by the Secretary of State Brandon Lewis on 31st March will not apply.

Bernadette Smyth, Director of Precious Life, warmly welcomed the news and thanked the organisation’s supporters.

“We would like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to all of Precious Life’s incredibly committed supporters and friends, who resisted the imposition of these regulations at every stage in recent months. Just yesterday, we released an ‘Urgent Action Alert’ calling on our supporters to once again make their voices heard and contact their MP to ask him/her to vote against these regulations and speak up in favour of life in Parliament next week.”

These regulations, which will now NOT become law here, would have allowed for abortion up to 24 weeks (6 months) on request and up to birth for babies with a life-limiting disability.

Ms Smyth continued, “The UK Government’s radical abortion agenda has been met with persistent and vocal opposition from the people of Northern Ireland in recent months, with the majority of respondents to the Government’s public consultation speaking overwhelmingly in opposition to abortion. 79% of the thousands who responded to the NIO Consultation expressed that they were opposed to any change to Northern Ireland’s pro-life laws protecting both mother and baby.”

We want to assure our followers, supporters and friends that your voices are being heard. It is directly because of overwhelming and sustained public pressure from pro-life people in Northern Ireland that Parliament has withdrawn these regulations and democracy has been upheld at this time.”

Ms Smyth also said that while the news is to be welcomed, the Campaign to Repeal Section 9 must continue.

“While we welcome today’s excellent news, we want to encourage our supporters to continue to ‘Lobby for Life’ and demand the full repeal of Section 9 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Act. These specific regulations will not be introduced at this time; however, we must remain vigilant because separate abortion regulations will still be introduced at a later date. We would ask the pro-life community to continue to speak for life, and not to become complacent in spite of this very positive development.”

Precious Life’s work will not stop until every unborn baby in Northern Ireland is protected from abortion in law, policy and practice,” she concluded.

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Precious Life PO Box 425, Belfast, BT1 4YF

t: 028 9027 8484 e: [email protected]

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