ProLife Alliance seeking truth and transparency about abortion
Babies are aborted post 24-weeks in the United Kingdom and not even worthy of an openly recorded number on a sheet of statistics.
Friday 29 May 2009
In a week with the public braying for full transparency in relationship to every dot and comma involving MPs expenses, it was extraordinary to sit in the Tribunal Court in London hearing arguments from the Department of Health as they defended the withholding of full disclosure of abortions statistics. Babies are aborted post 24-weeks in the United Kingdom and not considered worthy of even an openly recorded number on a sheet of statistics. Money is clearly a greater value in our society than vulnerable human life.
The ProLife Alliance is asking that information about abortions justified under Ground (e) of the Abortion Act be published openly, rather than in the current mode where any numbers under 10 for a specific medical condition related to the health of the baby are now suppressed. Many tables are amalgamated simply under totals and given a generic ‘other’ as the only specific description.
We are Additional Party to this case, which entitles us to be present and question witnesses. Civil liberties barrister, Mr Paul Diamond, is representing the ProLife Alliance and made a strong mark on the first day of this 4-day hearing.
The respondent to the DH is the Information Commissioner, ably represented by Mr Timothy Pitt-Payne, who is defending the ruling made last July in favour of the ProLife
Alliance when we requested the suppressed information under the Freedom of Information Act.
This determination to suppress information is primarily the result of the cleft palate case initiated by the Rev Joanna Jepson in 2002, when an attempt was made to get a police investigation into one post-24 week abortion for this condition.
Mr Geoff Dessent from the Department of Health had no hesitation in admitting that this was the reason why abortion statistics are now less explicit than they were in 2001. Another less significant case involving a mistaken case of an under-age abortion was also mentioned but in essence the decision not to let the public know in full the reasons why specific abortions are being performed (some 7 million to date remember) is essentially because of the cleft palate case and the media interest it elicited.
The Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe wrote a witness statement for the ProLife Alliance defending our good name as well as recording the debates in Parliament in 1990 when the unfortunate provision allowing abortion up to birth for disability became part of our Abortion laws. We were obviously keen to have Miss Widdecombe present in person during the hearing, but there was great resistance on the part of the DH to allow this. Her evidence stands on record, however, and we are most grateful to her for her tireless defence of human life.
Please contact the ProLife Alliance if you would like more details about the legal arguments, and do come to the hearing if you want to follow the issues more closely.
Forthcoming:
On Monday the director of Antenatal Research & Choices (ARC), Ms Jane Fisher, will be giving evidence, with focus on the tragedy for women when they receive diagnoses of abnormality, her worries about doctors being identified, and criticism of the ‘anti-abortion lobby and certain disability rights campaigners’. She notes that following the Jepson Case there is greater professional caution around the offer of post 24 week terminations. How extraordinary that caution in these circumstances could be interpreted as a negative!
The affiliation of ARC with ‘Voice for Choice’, who campaign so vociferously to liberalise the Abortion Act, does not appear in her witness statement.
Prof Stuart Campbell, famous for his extraordinary ultrasound pictures of the baby developing in the womb, will be called on Monday as witness for the ProLife Alliance. He will argue the medical and scientific necessity of accurate statistical information for general healthcare policy.
Reflection:
During this first day’s hearing one reflection keeps coming to mind; how often the DH team use the term ‘abnormal fetus’ when they are defending abortion for disability, but how the term changes to ‘normal baby’ when they were discussing pregnancies that would continue. Not one word of hesitation or regret was expressed by the DH team for the babies who would be aborted. Compassion in plenty for the doctors, however.
We must remind everybody that abortion statistics are not about the doctors who perform them or the women who undergo them; they are a tragic record of the babies who have been killed. At the very least we deserve the whole truth as to why these tiny victims lost their right to life.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
The hearing continues for a further 3 days.
9.45 am Monday June 1 at Procession House, 110 New Bridge Street, EC4 6JL (near Ludgate Circus)
