We wanted to update you on what the results of the General Election mean for the pro-life cause.
Starting with the good news, several MP candidates who signed the pro-life Both Lives and End-of-Life Protection pledges have been elected. Thank you for your incredible work in mobilising people to get hundreds of MP candidates to sign these pledges.
However, as you have probably gathered, there is also bad news.
Many MPs with a strong pro-life voting record in Parliament have lost their seats. This includes Fiona Bruce, Caroline Ansell, Miriam Cates, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Sir Liam Fox.
Alongside this loss, our Public Affairs team has conducted an analysis, based on several data sources, on the new intake of MPs. While complete data is not yet available, the initial analysis suggests that a significant number of these new MPs do not take a pro-life position on life issues such as abortion and assisted suicide.
This afternoon, extremist pro-abortion MP, Diana Johnson, who has led multiple attempts to introduce a radical abortion law that would allow abortion right up to birth, has been appointed a Home Office Minister in the new Labour Government.
THREE MAJOR THREATS
The new Parliament will meet for the first time tomorrow (9 July) and we will be facing major threats on not just one but three fronts: assisted suicide; experimentation on human embryos; and abortion up to birth.
- The first threat is from the assisted suicide lobby.
The new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has not only voted in favour of making assisted suicide legal in the past but has also publicly stated his continued support for it.
He also pledged ahead of the election that he would make time for MPs to vote on the introduction of assisted suicide.
Now that he has been elected, we will be facing a big battle to stop assisted suicide from being legalised.
To attempt to secure this law change, the assisted suicide lobby, led by the multi-million-pound outfit, Dignity in Dying, is expected to significantly ramp up their campaigning in Parliament, through the media and online to put pressure on MPs to vote in support of introducing assisted suicide. - The second threat is from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and their allies in biotech firms that undertake experimentation on the most vulnerable, precious and unique tiny babies – human embryos
These groups are seeking to make the greatest changes to the law concerning the use of human embryos since the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which allowed the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos
One of their goals is removing the 14-day limit from current legislation so that scientists will be able to experiment on human embryos / unborn babies up to when they are 28 days or four weeks gestation.
At around 22 days, the central nervous system begins to form and by 28 days, the heart has begun to beat, the brain has begun to develop and a baby’s eyes, ears and nose have started to emerge.
Our current legislation already allows inhumane experimentation on unborn babies up to 14 days post-conception. This proposed change would make the situation even worse. - The third threat is from the abortion lobby. Earlier this year the abortion lobby failed to pass two extreme abortion up to birth amendments that Labour MPs Stella Creasy and Diana Johnson tabled.
The abortion lobby, led by BPAS and MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International), has made it clear that they will be working with pro-abortion MPs to try and force through major changes to our abortion laws that would allow abortion up to birth.
We know that BPAS and MSI are spending huge amounts of money to boost their lobbying and campaigning efforts to achieve this drastic change.
BPAS have a budget of over £50 million and MSI is even bigger with a budget of over £300 million each year, spending this money on performing abortions and lobbying for more extreme abortion laws. They also have the support of 23 other organisations, who are joining them in this campaign, and who have collective funding that runs into the tens of millions of pounds.
The stakes could not be higher.
We are not exaggerating when we say this. A law change that allows abortion up to birth was passed in New Zealand in 2020 by the then Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern’s Government, and that country saw a 43% increase in late-term abortions in the same year. Elsewhere in the Commonwealth, there was an even larger increase in late-term abortions reported at one major hospital in Australia following the introduction of similar extreme legislation there, and a doctor was hauled in front of a local medical tribunal for refusing to refer a patient for a sex-selective abortion.
If these three major threats from our opposition are successful, thousands of vulnerable lives will be lost. We cannot allow this to happen on our watch here.
WE CAN ONLY DEFEAT THESE THREE MAJOR THREATS WITH YOUR HELP
As you can see, we will be facing significant battles on three fronts.
This year we successfully ran our biggest campaign in 26 years to fight the abortion lobby’s abortion up to birth amendments.
This has used a considerable amount of Right To Life UK’s limited resources since our last appeal for donations from supporters last year.
To cover this gap and ensure we effectively defeat these proposals during the coming months, we are aiming to raise at least £100,000 by midnight this Sunday (14 July 2024).
We are, therefore, appealing to you, to please give as generously as you can. Every donation, no matter how small, will make a crucial difference in saving the lives of the unborn and many others.
By stopping these threats, YOU can save lives during this new Parliament.
Will you make a donation now to help protect vulnerable lives from these threats?
Thank you for your unwavering support and for standing with us to defend thousands of precious lives during this critical time.