I wanted to touch base with you during this uncertain and difficult time. This is an incredibly unsettling time for everyone as the COVID-19 virus spreads around the world. I do hope you are staying safe.
I also wanted to update you on the implications of the COVID-19 crisis for life issues.
Around the world, the pro-abortion lobby are attempting to exploit the crisis to call for changes to abortion legislation.
In the UK, in Parliament this week, Diana Johnson MP was using the COVID-19 crisis to call for an extreme abortion regime to be introduced as soon as possible to Northern Ireland, suggesting abortion ‘services’ should be introduced sooner and described the past six months as a “lost opportunity”.
We expect to see much more of this over the coming weeks as the Government are likely to release their decision on whether they are going to impose an extreme abortion framework on Northern Ireland.
There is also the possibility that they will attempt to hijack the Coronavirus Bill with an amendment to change abortion legislation to reduce doctor involvement with abortions, under the cover that this will be freeing up doctors to deal with the coronavirus.
We will then be facing the progress of the Domestic Abuse Bill in the coming months, which the abortion lobby have made clear they intend to hijack to introduce an extreme abortion law to England and Wales.
This underlines that our life-saving work is needed more than ever.
This will obviously be a difficult period for our team as we adjust to the day-to-day running of a charity in this environment and we face a new and difficult set of challenges.
We want to let you know that while these changes will be difficult, we have the team set-up to deal with these challenges on life issues over this period.
I wanted to personally write to reassure you that we will all be working hard to deal with these attacks from the pro-abortion lobby – and ensure that they are met with coordinated and strong campaigning at every step of the way during this very difficult period.
This will be alongside all our core proactive work across politics, the media, grassroots and digital campaigning.
As a supporter, you can help us during this difficult time by sharing content from our website and social media channels with friends and family – and taking campaign actions as they arise.
We’ll be keeping you updated regularly via these email updates and the digital news service on our website.
A TRAGIC WEEK FOR NEW ZEALAND
I also wanted to take this opportunity to let you know about a tragic development in New Zealand.
On Wednesday an extreme abortion law, allowing for abortion for any reason up to birth, was passed into law in New Zealand.
Polling shows that the new law is strongly opposed by the public in New Zealand and in particular by women, with only 2% of women supporting abortion being available on-demand up to birth, 93% of women opposing sex-selective abortion being legal and 94% of women supporting the current legal standards for abortion providers and premises.
Given the extremely low public support for the change and that the gap between MPs opposing and supporting was quickly closing, Jacinda Ardern’s Government rushed the final stages of the Bill’s progress through Parliament while MPs, media and the country were distracted with dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. This included progressing the final sitting of the committee stage and the Bill’s third and final reading through Parliament on the same day.
We have an article on our digital news service which has a full account of what occurred this week in New Zealand, which is available here.
I wanted to share this with you to show exactly how the pro-abortion lobby are looking to use the cover of the crisis to make big changes to abortion laws that will likely result in the loss of many more lives.
I have also shared this story to show where the abortion lobby want to go with legislation in the UK and elsewhere globally – the goal is abortion, up to birth, for any reason.
It may seem like this would never pass in the UK, but you can see that there was very little public support for this in New Zealand, and despite this, the abortion lobby effectively framed the change to get it through Parliament.
This presents a real danger here in the UK, and we need supporters to be as active as possible. This will ensure that when the abortion lobby does bring forward legislation to try and achieve the same changes here, that is effectively defeated.
Many thanks for your continued support and I’ll be in contact soon as the situation develops.
Catherine Robinson