United Kingdom: proposal to make unrestricted abortion legal has been withdrawn. Mgr. Sherrington, “attempts at widening access” to termination

Today, Mgr. John Sherrington, the bishop in charge of prolife matters at the
Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, thanks “the thousands of people who
made pressures on the Members of Parliament to prevent dangerous amendments to
the bill of law from being passed into law”. This is written on the English
Bishops’ website the day after Parliament discussed amendments to the Nc5, the
“Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts” Bill, including the one submitted by MP
Diana Johnson which would have made the free choice of unrestricted abortion
legal. As to this specific case, the bishop said he is glad about the
“withdrawal of a proposed amendment” that, incidentally, “fell far outside the
remit of such bill” and would “have swept away the few protective measures left
for unborn babies, by making abortion on demand legal as well as repealing the
doctors’ option to claim conscientious objection”. The withdrawn amendments
included one that established a sort of “free-trade area” around abortion
clinics. “We must watch out for any attempts at widening access to abortion by
making other laws deviate”.
Valentina Bombelli