This reaffirmed that euthanasia and assisted suicide are not permissible under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) or any previous decision.

The document states that:

"There is a general consensus, based on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ETS No. 5) on the right to privacy, that there can be no intervention affecting a person without his or her consent. From this human right flow the principles of personal autonomy and the principle of consent. These principles hold that a capable adult patient must not be manipulated, and that his or her will, when clearly expressed, must prevail even if it signifies refusal of treatment: no-one can be compelled to undergo a medical treatment against his or her will."

The Oviedo Convention (ETS No. 164), on human rights and biomedicine legally binds the majority of member states to uphold this, and also states that  patients now incapable must have their previously expressed wishes "taken into account".

The PACE statement robustly continues:

"5. This resolution is not intended to deal with the issues of euthanasia or assisted suicide. Euthanasia, in the sense of the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit, must always be prohibited. This resolution thus limits itself to the question of advance directives, living wills and continuing powers of attorney."

PACE however recommends to national parliaments that  "advance directives, living wills and/or continuing powers of attorney"  in writing, and with supervision to prevent abuses, should be promoted  and "fully taken into account". This is not without dangers, although 7.4. usefully states that  "prior instructions contained in advance directives and/or living wills which are against the law, or good practice, or those which do not correspond to the actual situation that the interested party anticipated at the time of signing the document, should not be applied".

7.8. states that:

"surrogate decisions that rely on general value judgements present in society should not be admissible and, in case of doubt, the decision must always be pro-life and the prolongation of life."

Healthy people often think they would wish to be allowed to die if incapacitated, but experience shows that when this happens the overwhelming majority feel otherwise. Sections 7.4 and 7.8 should be a good defence for a doctor who knows it would be bad practice both professionally and ethically not to give life-saving treatment to such a patient.

The statement was hailed by European pro-life activists as a win against "a real ideological tyranny of culture of death".

Research published this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal suggests that Canadians from Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino and Korean backgrounds are deliberately aborting their daughters due to a preference for male children. 

Skewed sex ratios have also been found amongst Indian communities in the UK, as highlighted in a 2007 study by  S Dubuc and D Coleman.

The ProLife Alliance is shocked that women living in Canada and the UK, and no doubt other countries are still at the mercy of ancient customs which run completely counter to equality of opportunity, to the point where they are even expected to kill their own children. 

The Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have published a study in the Lancet linking increasing global numbers of unsafe abortions to countries where abortion is illegal. As the Guttmacher Institute states that one of its five aims is to allow people to “exercise the right to choose safe, legal abortion”, these conclusions come as no surprise.
 
It should be observed that legalising abortion does not lead to safe outcomes for women.  There is no shortage of documented evidence to this effect.  In fact the opposite is true.  Countries such as Chile, Poland and Ireland have extremely low maternal mortality rates.  In Poland most abortions were banned in 1993.  Subsequently, both Poland’s abortion rate and the maternal mortality rate declined, and declined rapidly.  Ireland, according to the World Health Organisation 2005 maternal mortality report, has the lowest maternal mortality rate in the world.

In fact the Lancet report notes that India, where an estimated 6.5 million or 15% of global abortions occur, has liberal abortion laws, and yet an estimated two thirds of abortions there are deemed unsafe by WHO.  In Cambodia abortion is legal upon request in the first trimester, and yet over 50% of abortions are believed to be ‘unsafe’.

According to the report, the regions with the highest rate of abortion are Eastern Europe and Russia, where Communist regimes introduced liberal abortion laws decades ago.  South East Asia is the region with the second highest rate of abortion, and most of this is accounted for by Vietnam, which has very liberal abortion laws, and where there are financial penalties for parents having more than two children.  It should be noted that Marie Stopes International, a UK based organisation, is involved in abortions in Vietnam, Cambodia and India. 

Acknowledging the incidence of unsafe abortions in countries with legal abortion, the report states:
“A liberal abortion law alone does not ensure the safety of abortions”, and claims that other “necessary” steps include the dissemination of knowledge about the law to women and those who might abort them, the willingness of health professionals to carry out abortions, and other factors, including “government commitment to provide the resources needed to ensure access to abortion services, including in remote areas.”
 
The Guttmacher report correctly links poor maternal outcomes with poverty.  We would suggest that the money that they request for abortions would be better spent on initiatives which help women and their families out of poverty, and on providing better maternity care for women, of a kind known to make childbirth safer.
 
It should be added that many of the statistics that the report uses are estimates, as countries where abortion is illegal do not keep records unless complications cause admission to hospital.  Additionally, only 57 of the 84 countries which they deem to have “liberal abortion laws” collect statistics about the procedures done.  Consequently, the statistics given are affected by the assumptions of the researchers about how many women have abortions.  The reasons for having unintended pregnancies are therefore also likely to be guesswork.

Whatever the true number, the ProLife Alliance believes that every one of the abortions mentioned in this report is a tragedy. Women need real, effective aid which respects both their own lives and the lives of their babies. 

The ProLife Alliance is very concerned that easier, safer screening tests will make it all the more socially acceptable to abort disabled babies. It is also likely that healthy babies will be aborted, purely because of a perceived risk that they are affected by, or carriers of,  some sex-linked condition.  The ProLife Alliance believes that all people have a right to live, whether male or female, disabled or otherwise. 

It is also likely that unscrupulous doctors will use this test for social reasons, particularly in countries such as Korea where boys are the preferred sex.

We call for a more positive attitude towards people with disabilities, rather than the usual unrelenting ‘search and destroy’ approach to those still in the womb.

Women are not informed of the risks to their mental and physical health except in the blandest terms.  They are not made aware of the considerable body of research which demonstrates these risks.  They are not made aware of the development of their own baby.  They are not given details of support available to them should they choose to have their baby.

As the ProLife Alliance has repeatedly said, women need to know the reality of abortion BEFORE the event, rather than discovering to their horror what really happened afterwards when there is no chance of turning back the clock. 

In Texas pro-lifers have carried out a successful campaign to ensure that women have the right to know.  One aspect of their campaign is a demand that women should be given the chance to see what their baby looks like – which may include an ultrasound scan prior to the abortion.  A scan provides real, live and incontrovertible evidence and gives the ‘products of conception’ a chance to be seen for what it really is, a small and very vulnerable child.  Surely women have a right to this knowledge rather than making a decision blindly?  This particular ‘woman’s right’ has met with extreme resistance from the pro-choice lobby who have appealed repeatedly against it.  For details see link. 

In their decision the appeals court observed that it is ‘obvious’ that the ‘disclosures of a sonogram, the fetal heartbeat, and their medical descriptions are the epitome of truthful, non-misleading information.’ They added that denying the woman up-to-date information ‘is more of an abuse to her ability to decide than providing the information.’

The ProLife Alliance would strongly urge that women wanting abortions should not be deprived of information on risks, on their baby’s development and on help available to have the child.  This should not be made in any way a ‘box to tick’ – just another part of the abortion paperwork.  Instead, the ProLife Alliance wants to see this information given to any woman wanting an abortion by any doctor she consults, pro-life or otherwise, as a matter of good medical practice and basic humanity.  Women need at least a chance to change their minds before going through with a ‘procedure’ which ends a human life, and which many women bitterly regret. 

For this reason the Falconer commission was boycotted by many of the organisations who want to protect the vulnerable, disabled and elderly from feeling that they are a burden on society and that their lives are less worthwhile than other people’s. Notably these include the BMA, and the major disability rights organisations RADAR, UKDPC, NCIL, SCOPE and Not Dead Yet. Consequently, it is no surprise that the commission has found an overwhelmingly positive response to its questions. The verdict was entirely predictable because the jury was fixed.

The reality is that the disabled are overwhelmingly against any change in the laws which at present protect them. Many legislatures have rejected such propositions, because the more closely people study the subject, the more they see the dangers. In his submission to the commission, Peter Bailey, disabled for 35 years following an accident and a trustee of Leonard Cheshire Disability, expressed this clearly:

“Why is it that suicidal tendencies in non-disabled people trigger the possibility of being sectioned for your own good, but when we look at disabled people it’s somehow expected and understood that you might want to kill yourself?”

In every country where assisted suicide is legal there have been abuses, and its legalisation would put all vulnerable people in the UK at risk. The moment we start judging the value of other people’s lives,  we stop making their protection and quality of life our priority.

For media enquiries, please contact Dominica Roberts on 01344 422902 or 079 037 69314. 

For a more detailed discussion of the Falconer Commission click here.

Rebecca Gomperts, founder of rogue abortion provider Women on Waves, is once again in the news for an initiative that puts women’s lives at risk. Her organisation is most notorious for providing abortions to women from countries where abortion is illegal in international waters, providing no aftercare. Following a court case in her native Netherlands, Women on Waves were legally obliged to cease this work in 2009. Ms Gomperts continues to provide abortions without follow-up care. She offers a web-based service for women from countries where abortion is not permitted, posting abortifacient drugs to them in blank envelopes.  

The latest incident saw her posting information on Facebook on how women can induce self-abortions at up to 9 weeks pregnancy using a pill, Cytotec, designed to treat stomach ulcers. Initially Facebook removed this information for being in violation of the site’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, however, following protests from pro-choice activists the information has been re-posted.

Gomperts’ recommendation puts women at grave risk. The active chemical in Cytotec is misoprostol, which is also administered by clinics to induce abortions. No large studies have established a protocol for the use of misoprostol alone for inducing abortions. Side effects can include profound diarrhoea leading to severe dehydration, sedation and tremors. Further, the efficacy when used for abortions can be as low as only working two thirds of the time, meaning that any surviving unborn children could face disability. Several reports in the literature associate the use of misoprostol during the first trimester of pregnancy with skull defects, cranial nerve palsies, facial malformations, and limb defects.

Facebook were right to initially remove this information. It is a great shame that Facebook has backtracked under pressure from pro-choice activists and is now sharing information that endangers women and makes Facebook complicit in the death and disabling of unborn children. 

A recent article in the Sunday Times has used information from a ProLife Alliance freedom of information request made to the Department of Health. The request revealed that between 2007 and 2010 fourteen Italian women had foeticides (where the unborn child is killed by lethal injection) in the UK but returned home to be delivered in Italy.  The information showed that during that 4 year period, 97 out of 593 Italian women who travelled to the UK had abortions after 22 weeks' gestation. This would have been illegal in Italy, where abortion is not permitted after 12 weeks’ pregnancy, except when the mother’s life is in danger.

In one two-country abortion, a woman returned to Rimini from the UK after having a foeticide abortion whilst 28 weeks’ pregnant, and the body of her baby was only removed three days later.  It is appalling to think of the woman, still carrying her dead child, making such a long journey.  Yet, according the Department of Health, this happens regularly.

Leading obstetrician Professor Stuart Campbell, who first showed the world pictures of babies “walking in the womb” commented to the Times that, “The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists needs to speak up on this issue. If we don’t look at it, are we condoning this practice of injecting a foetus, killing it and allowing the mother to fly off to wherever, without any kind of care?”

A spokesperson from the ProLife Alliance commented that “it is impossible to believe that these horrifying Italian late abortion cases have taken place without complicity from medical staff in Italy, making it highly likely that they are breaking their own law. How could specialists in our own country buy into such callous trade?”

We are forced to question whether the abortion industry really cares if abortion is ‘legal’ and ‘safe’.  The evidence points otherwise.

Originally founded as a political party in December 1996, we fielded election candidates in the General Elections in 1997 & 2001, Welsh and Scottish Assembly elections in 2003, and European Elections in 2004, before deregistering as a political party in 2004. We continue to be at the forefront of major initiatives to end abortion, including several landmark legal cases.

We sought to end the silence surrounding abortion practice which is conducted with little public scrutiny, despite being carried out with taxpayers’ money. We also brought into focus the pro-abortion voting records of MPs including Tony Blair who had voted four times for abortion up to and including birth.

Our 1997 election broadcast aimed to wake up the nation to the horrifying reality of abortion and to challenge the abortion policies of the major political parties. 

The Independent Television Commission, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, however, in a staggering act of censorship at election time – a time when free speech should be sacred – censored our party election broadcast on the grounds that it breached guidelines on "taste and decency". 

Instead, we were reduced to showing a heavily censored version of the original, which asked:

 “If something is so terrifying that we cannot see it, why are we tolerating it?"

In 1997, we launched a landmark legal battle asking the High Court to overrule the censorship. The High Court upheld the censorship, so we subsequently appealed to the Court of Appeal, who ruled in our favour in 2002, stating:

"The pictures are real footage of real cases. They are not a reconstruction, nor in any way fictitious. Nor are they in any way sensationalised. They are, I think, certainly disturbing to any person of ordinary sensibilities… 

To campaign for the prohibition of abortion is a legitimate political programme. The pictures are in a real sense the message. Words alone cannot convey (particularly to the less verbally adept) the essentially human character of the foetus and the nature of its destruction by abortion. This video provides a truthful, factual and, it is right to say, unsensational account of the process."

In 2003, the House of Lords overturned the Court of Appeal judgement, but one at least of the five law lords agreeing with the Court of Appeal ruling. 

As a result the true reality of abortion continues to be withheld from the viewing public to this day.

In the 2003 Welsh Assembly elections, two of our Welsh election candidates were arrested by police for peacefully showing an image of a 21 week old aborted baby, as part of their election campaign. Both the election candidates were subsequently acquitted in court. 

One of the arresting officers stated in a witness statement that he had never seen a more disturbing image in his life. Our response was as before:

“If something is so terrifying that we cannot see it, why are we tolerating it?“

We continue to believe that it is imperative that the public see the truth about abortion, and that once the truth is known, the practice will be seen to be barbaric and therefore outlawed. 

We have also consistently opposed the destruction of life at all stages, including the destruction of embryos and the use of tissue from aborted babies for research. 

From 2001, we successfully opposed the cloning of human embryos in a landmark legal challenge against the Government’s attempts to push through cloning legislation as secondary legislation (with only a brief debate), which led to all cloning research being halted. 

In 2001, the High Court ruled that it was unlawful to legalise cloning under the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) Act. The High Court’s decision was sadly overruled by the House of Lords.   If the High Court’s judgement had been upheld, this would have led to a full scale overhaul of the HFE Act in Parliament, and the first opportunity for primary legislation on abortion in 30 years. 

In 2004, we deregistered as a political party, having fielded election candidates in the General Elections in 1997 & 2001, Welsh and Scottish Assembly elections in 2003, and European Elections in 2004. 

We continue to be at the forefront of many high profile campaigns to challenge abortion.

In 2004, the ProLife Alliance identified a case of a baby being aborted at 28 weeks, on grounds of having a cleft palate. Joanna Jepson, who suffered from a cleft palate herself, called for a judicial review of the police's decision not to prosecute the doctor who carried out the abortion. 

This case shocked the nation, with the Cleft Palate Association noting that cleft palates are not a justifiable reason for an abortion, although the Crown Prosecution Service subsequently decided not to prosecute the doctor involved. 

There have been numerous reported cases of babies being aborted for minor disabilities including club foot, which demonstrate the failure of abortion practice to comply with the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act. 

In 2004, there were many calls for abortion to be restricted in response to new ultrasound images of unborn babies at 12, 14 and 16 weeks, and news reports that babies had been born alive after abortions but left to die.

In 2005, we invited Gianna Jessen, a 28 year old American woman who survived an abortion at seven and a half months, to address MPs in Parliament.

In a case which began in 2005, we campaigned against the failure of the Department of Health (DH) to disclose certain details of abortion statistics. Our position was upheld by the Information Commissioner who ruled that the information we requested should be revealed.

In 2009, this case was heard before the Information Tribunal, and witnesses for the ProLife Alliance included the Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe, the ultrasound specialist Professor Campbell, and Dr Vincent Argent, previously a medical director for BPAS, who all supported full disclosure of abortion statistics.

In 2011, six years after our first Freedom of Information request, the DH finally published further details of abortions carried out after 24 weeks.   Since this victory for freedom of information the Abortion Statistics are published in greater detail than before and requests for clarification are dealt with speedily.

The ProLife Alliance was born as a political party to put the defence of human life at the heart of the election process, with particular focus on beginning of life, including not just abortion but also attacks on the human embryo in the developing science of assisted reproduction. We have also been involved in combating end-of-life issues such as euthanasia and assisted suicide, and are members of CNK, the Care Not Killing coalition. 

The ProLife Alliance would like to say a general thank you to all those who expressed interest in our Childlike film competition.  Unfortunately on this occasion the entries were too few and the judges were not convinced that any entries fulfilled our expectations.  Perhaps Christmas was not the right time to hold the competition.

The ProLife Alliance intends to hold another competition in the near future – watch this space!