The Portal December 2017 | Page 7

THE P RTAL December 2017 Page 7 In 50 Years 8,894,355 babies have been killed in the womb T he P ortal is grateful to Lord David Alton of Liverpool for giving us permission to print these words of his A t 11.04am on Friday, October 27th, some of us gathered at Parliament to mark 50 years since Royal Assent was given to the 1967 Abortion Act. A law which was intended to allow abortion in certain circumstances became an elastic law, a law with catastrophic consequences. At the time, only a handful of MPs recognised it as a dangerous and slippery slope. Those 29 MPs who voted against its Second Reading did so because they contested the repeated claims that the law would be used only in extreme and tragic circumstances. They were right. In the half century that has elapsed since its passage, a staggering 8,894,355 unborn babies have lost their lives – one death every three minutes - 20 lives ended every hour. Conscience has been subverted, as evidenced by the dismissal of two Catholic midwives in Scotland who refused to become complicit in ending the lives of unborn children. Free speech has been subverted, with speakers like Tim Stanley refused a platform at Oxford University because of his pro-life views. Non-compliant With routine and repea t abortions, what was once journalists, pharmacists, environmental scientists, a crime has become a lucrative industry. The sums blue collar and social workers have been forced from are staggering. Over the past decade, an eye-watering their jobs, while Jacob Rees-Mogg was recently told he £757,832,800 of taxpayers’ money has been paid to should resign from Parliament for daring to defend the the private sector abortionists. The Times reported right to life. Political parties have made it a question of that the boss of Marie Stopes International (MSI) – to ideology. All of which smacks of a coercive liberalism which we pay millions of pounds to carry out abortions worthy of a totalitarian state. in Britain and overseas – received a phenomenal Once the sanctity of human life has been thrown £420,000 in one recent year alone (four times the Prime Minister’s salary). Twenty-two of their employees were into open trash bins it leads to one enormity after another: the creation and destruction of more than paid more than £100,000. three million human embryos, with only four per cent As these operatives oversee the tragic, industrialised seeing the light of day; the grotesque manufacture destruction of human life and fuel the conveyor belt of animal-human hybrid embryos; and attempts to that abortion has become, what are the implications legalise euthanasia. The sloganeering culture of death endlessly demands rights but ignores duties towards for the unborn child, their mothers and society? the weak and vulnerable. It elevates “choice” above all Last year the Care Quality Commission criticised other considerations, debasing language and brooking MSI after finding dead unborn babies in open bins. no opposition. Think, too, of the 32-year-old Irish mother Aisha This culture claims to be on the side of equality and Chathira, who, in 2012, died in a taxi from a heart attack caused by extensive internal blood loss after non-discrimination. Yet it takes no action when little she had an abortion in an MSI facility in London. girls are aborted merely because of their gender or But beyond the death toll, much else has flowed from when a disabled person can be aborted up to and even this law. The medical profession has been subverted, during birth (as 90 per cent of all babies with Down’s with the Hippocratic Oath quietly dropped from syndrome are). medical courses because of its explicit condemnation This culture builds on the eugenics promoted by of abortion. Preferment in gynaecology and obstetrics has become virtually impossible for those who refuse the campaigner Marie Stopes, who railed against the “diseased and feeble minded” and “the very lowest to comply.