Christians call Parliamentary pro-abortion report 'biased'

A biased committee report calling for the liberalisation of abortion laws has sacrificed the rights of the unborn child to further a pro-abortion agenda, the Evangelical Alliance has said.

|PIC1|The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, chaired by Liberal Democrat MP Phil Willis, has been carrying out an investigation into scientific developments relating to the Abortion Act.

Its report, published Wednesday, has recommended no lowering of the 24 week upper limit for most abortions, scrapping the need for two doctors' signatures, nurses doing abortions and medical abortions at home.

The committee report is important because it will be used to inform MPs debating amendments to the 1967 Abortion Act, as part of the discussion surrounding the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, expected to be announced in the Queen's Speech on 6 November.

The Alliance has called for the report, which could influence forthcoming legislation, to be discredited due to its partisan assessment of the evidence.

The report, published Wednesday by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, recommends that abortion law should be further liberalised by giving nurses permission to perform the operation and ending the requirement for two doctors to give their consent in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

"It (the report) was produced amid huge controversy and accusations of bias in the selection of witnesses called to give evidence who were largely in favour of a pro-choice agenda, that the Committee's secret deliberations were themselves politically prejudiced, and that contrary evidence or evidence of an ethical nature was marginalised or ignored altogether," an Alliance release has stated.

The Evangelical Alliance, which represents more than a million evangelical Christians across the UK has said that even widespread public acceptance that the 24-week abortion time limit must be reduced in response to scientific evidence was rejected by the committee.

Two of the committee MPs, Nadine Dorries and Bob Spink, strongly disagreed with the report's conclusions and issued their own minority report.

Evangelical Alliance General Director Joel Edwards said: "It is a great pity that what in reality is a matter of life and death has become such a politicised issue.

"We need to recognise that we are dealing with no mere routine medical procedure. The rights of the unborn child are being deliberately sacrificed to further a particular ideology.

"With a quarter of pregnancies in the UK currently ending in abortion, it is vital that urgent action is taken to get the number of terminations down. More education is not the answer on its own. The law must send a clear signal to society about the value of the life of the unborn child."

He added: "We recognise the real distress and the pressures on women faced with an initially unwanted pregnancy, and we commend the Christian crisis pregnancy counselling groups which provide women with space to make a real choice in these circumstances."

The Christian Medical Fellowship has also dismissed the Parliamentary Select Committee Report as 'deeply flawed'.

Andrew Fergusson, Head of Communications of the Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) said: "CMF confirms that the main body of the report ignores much evidence submitted and we encourage those interested to study not just the minority report, but also the written and oral evidence put in which can still be seen on the Science and Technology Committee's website.

"Should this debate indeed come to parliament, then that debate must include an ethical and legal analysis as well as the shaky scientific conclusions presented in the main report."

Dr Peter Saunders, CMF General Secretary, said: "It appears that this whole exercise was a stitch up from start to finish. This committee of largely pro-choice MPs began with their minds made up and then selected the evidence and 'experts' to lead them to their chosen conclusions.

"They ignored key evidence that didn't fit their agenda and one member set out to discredit in the national press witnesses whose evidence they didn't like. It is quite astounding that, with 200,000 abortions a year in the UK already, they want to liberalise the law even further.

"The prochoice bias of the committee has been very clear from the beginning. Although the written evidence received was relatively evenly balanced, 13 of the 18 witnesses chosen to give oral evidence were coming from the perspective of wanting to liberalise the existing law."

According to media reports on Wednesday the committee report was largely rewritten by Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris. Harris, who is Secretary to the All Party Prochoice and Sexual Health Group of MPs and whose girlfriend works for the BPAS, one of the country's largest abortion providers, allegedly put down 126 amendments to the Chairman's first draft.

He has campaigned vigorously for more liberal abortion laws for many years, and has also used his position on the BMA Ethics Committee to influence that organisation's policy on abortion. However he was unsuccessful in pushing for the BMA to approve nurse and home abortion at this year's annual representative meeting (ARM) in June.

Saunders continued, "A Marie Stopes survey published last week showed that 65% of GPs believe the upper limit should come down; and yet BMA policy is that it should stay at 24 weeks. CMF believes this disparity of views is due to prochoice activists, like Harris, having the running on influential BMA committees so grassroots opinion is not properly represented and delegates to the ARM are fed with briefing material from the BMA Ethics Committee that serves a liberalisation agenda."