Abortion report should be discredited, says Evangelical Alliance

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

31 October 2007

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

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 today 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 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.

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.

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.”

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.”