Dear Pro-life Friend
When I wrote to you in April, just a few weeks after lockdown began, I had feared a serious gap would open up in SPUC’s finances.
Frankly, I wasn’t sure that we would manage to get through the year.
You will appreciate, then, how very grateful I am to everyone who stepped up and responded so generously to my call for help.
The email fundraising appeal that we ran in the spring raised over £53,000 in donations.
That money could not have arrived at a better time.
The last 4 months can be counted among some of the most dangerous and deadly for unborn children AND their mothers.
At the beginning of lockdown, our opponents took full advantage of the Covid-19 crisis by pushing for and forcing through "emergency" abortion measures.
Tragically, those measures have ensured that defenceless babies continue to die cruel and inhumane deaths in vast numbers, despite on-site abortion clinic "services" being impacted by Covid-19 restrictions.
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Abortion-by-post
The UK Government permitted DIY abortion as an “emergency measure” after coming under sustained pressure from the abortion lobby.
A DIY abortion involves taking two pills at home. The first, Mifepristone, is designed to kill the baby.
Then the second pill, Misoprostol, causes the uterus to contract thus expelling the dead baby’s bodily remains.
For the first time ever, women undergoing legal abortion in the UK are being asked to take the entire responsibility for actually killing their babies themselves.
Prior to lockdown, mifepristone was given in a clinical setting only, but now women and girls are being told to use it at home, without any medical supervision.
And our opponents want this “emergency” measure to be the “new normal” for abortions under 10-weeks once lockdown restrictions are finally lifted.
Edouard Sakiz, Chairman of Roussel-Uclaf, manufacturers of the original mifepristone abortion pill, RU-486, described it in 1990 , as “an appalling psychological ordeal" for the women taking it.
Thirty years on, and with full knowledge of the trauma involved, the abortion lobby is insisting that women undergo this ordeal.
The current policy allows abortion pills to be prescribed with the use of a “via video link, telephone conference” almost as easily as ordering a pizza from Dominos, and then delivered by post.
Don’t let a crisis go to waste
You have to wonder if the UK abortion industry had taken a leaf out of the book of pro-abortion politician, Rahm Emanuel.
The former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, and a convinced advocate of partial-birth abortion (infanticide), once famously said:
“Never allow a crisis to go to waste. Start planning for the future.”
Buoyed by the Government buckling to its demands for “emergency” home DIY abortions in the spring, the abortion lobby tabled two abortion amendments to the Domestic Abuse Bill in July.
- The first amendment would have repealed sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act (OAPA) 1861 in England and Wales.
Under the OAPA, it remains a criminal offence to kill an unborn child.
You may be surprised to learn that abortion in England, Scotland and Wales, still carries with it a 14-year custodial sentence, unless certain terms and conditions specified in the Abortion Act are met.
For instance:
- Abortion must be carried out before 24-weeks (though on grounds of disability, there is no upper limit and the baby can be legally killed up-to-birth)
- Two doctors approve the abortion.
Conditions like these, though part of an utterly unacceptable abortion regime, have nonetheless played a role in stemming abortions in Britain.
Indeed, over the years they have saved many lives, and continue to do so.
In Northern Ireland, where the Abortion Act has never applied, it is estimated that the OAPA law prevented the killing of 100,000 unborn babies.
However, in July 2019, all that changed.
A Bill ostensibly about kick-starting Northern Ireland’s stalled Stormont Assembly was hijacked by pro-abortion MPs, striking down sections 58 and 59 of the OAPA in the Province.
The abortion lobby want abortion completely decriminalised
Try as it may, the abortion lobby does not seem able to shake off the stigma which killing a defenceless unborn baby still carries with it, despite 53 years of legal abortion.
They see “decriminalisation” as a way to make abortion acceptable in the twenty-first century.
By erasing abortion as a crime from the statute books, it takes them one step further towards their ultimate goal of “abortion-on-demand” for any reason and without any time limits whatsoever.
- The second amendment aimed to extend the temporary "DIY Abortion" arrangements for domestic abuse victims beyond the Covid-19 crisis period.
This would have seen “emergency” DIY abortions using pills by post become a permanent arrangement, at least for certain categories of women.
The good news is that BOTH amendments failed.
SPUC lobbying pays off
This resounding victory has been the high point for the prolife side this summer.
Success was due in no small part to the efforts of supporters like you, and SPUC staff, who lobbied MPs relentlessly in the days leading up to last month’s debate.
But the danger is not yet over.
The UK Government has announced that it will a hold a public consultation on whether to allow women to carry on accessing home abortions, AFTER the coronavirus legislation has ceased to have effect.
It is vital that we stop this happening.
Medical home abortions of the pre-Covid type (where obtaining the pills is a more drawn out process and only the second pill is to be taken at home) were given the green light in England in late December 2018.
Figures for 2019, show that this policy resulted in the highest ever level of medical abortions in England and Wales (73% of all abortions), which tragically corresponded with the highest ever level of abortions recorded in England and Wales.
This confirms what SPUC has always maintained:
The easier it is to obtain abortion, the MORE babies will be killed.
DIY abortion of the temporary Covid-19 type (where both pills are taken at home) is making abortion easier still to access, and a further deadly spike in the figures is expected for 2020.
More women and girls will suffer as a result too
This is the other side of our country’s UGLY abortion epidemic.
In July, this came into sharp focus when reports reached us of two women who had died after medical abortions.
Although the women may have obtained the pills from a clinic, this shows how dangerous taking even the second pill at home can be.
A leaked NHS email—disclosed during a case at the Court of Appeal challenging the Government's DIY abortion—revealed that 13 tragic incidents took place between 31 March and 21 May 2020.
The cases being investigated, include :
- The possible murder of a 28-week-old unborn baby
- The deaths of two women who died after taking the abortion pills
- Pills delivered to a woman 22 weeks over the limit for home abortion.
Relaxing abortion laws always spells more death, more misery.
And that is why the liberalisation of Northern Ireland’s abortion laws present us with another major concern.
On 31 March, the regulations introducing a new legal “framework for abortion” came into force in Northern Ireland.
As a result, the number of abortions taking place in Northern Ireland are expected to jump from just 8 in 2019 – to a massive 6,000 this year.
The new abortion framework falls under Section 9 of the notorious Northern Ireland Act 2019.
This law was imposed on Northern Ireland by Westminster MPs against the express wishes of the majority of the people and politicians of the Province, who firmly oppose abortion.
Not one Northern Ireland MP voted for it.
Only BAD things will come from Section 9
The new abortion framework is a direct response to a 2018 United Nation’s Report on Northern Ireland which explicitly called on the UK government to:
“Adopt legislation to provide for expanded grounds to legalise abortion…”
Authored by the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) based in Switzerland, the report suggests in cloaked terms that women’s problems in Northern Ireland are the result of their culture being rooted in Christian values.
The report contains a terrifyingly illiberal list of “recommendations” which should serve as a stark warning of things to come, not only in Northern Ireland but – in the rest of the UK too.
The CEDAW recommendations insist that the Northern Ireland government:
- Provide abortion “information” and “counselling”
… schools, hospitals, health clinics and the doctors and nurses who work in them, will be forced to signpost children to abortion centres behind their parents’ backs.
- Ensure “affordability and accessibility” for sexual health services at hospitals, clinics and pharmacies
… medical professionals wishing to exercise the right to conscientious objection by refusing to participate in abortions, or dole out abortion-inducing pills, will face the gravest of difficulties
…abortions could be performed on pregnant girls in school clinics and abortion pills handed out to them on school premises
…it has even been suggested that “mobile” abortion clinics might be drafted in - as they are in China in order to impose its wicked two-child policy.
- Make sex education a “compulsory curriculum component” and ensure lessons are “scientifically accurate”
… irrefutable facts that show abortion kills a living, breathing human person risk being replaced by “sanitised” and politically correct “truths” which mask the scientific reality
… groups like SPUC would be refused entry into classrooms, blocking one of the only effective antidotes against the unbridled abortion brainwashing of children taking place in our schools.
- “Protect’ women from “harassment by anti-abortion protestors by investigating complaints, prosecuting and punishing perpetrators”
… this is the clearest signal yet that our opponents want peaceful pro-life prayer vigils and demonstrations outlawed and the participants criminalised, even imprisoned.
In a further assault on our babies, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission - which previously went to court to overturn the Province’s pro-life laws - has been put in charge of “policing” the speech of the pro-life movement.
And I must be frank with you and say that these nightmare scenarios will NOT be restricted to Northern Ireland for long.
If we cannot block abortion expansion in Northern Ireland, the CEDAW recommendations will almost certainly play out very soon in England, Scotland and Wales too.
That is why we are re-doubling our efforts to repeal Section 9 of the Northern Ireland Act.
Our aim is to build a solid pro-life majority in the Assembly and make abortion repeal the number one issue at the Stormont elections in May 2022.
Beginning in March, SPUC billboards appeared across the Province to protest against the change in the law and have proved to be a winning tactic.
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