The head of a human rights group in Northern Ireland believes it should be a woman’s “human right” to abort her unborn baby.
Les Allamby, the chief commissioner at the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, wrote a column for the Belfast Telegraph about why his group is challenging the country’s pro-life law. Allamby’s group is scheduled to argue its case this month before the United Kingdom Supreme Court in London.
The law in Northern Ireland protects unborn babies’ right to life. It allows abortions only in cases when the mother’s life is at risk. But pro-abortion groups claim the law is breaching women’s “human right” to abortion – by protecting unborn babies’ human rights, The Guardian reports.
“The commission’s view is that the failure to allow for access to terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, serious malformation of the foetus and for victims of sexual crimes such as rape and incest is contrary to the Human Rights Act,” Allamby wrote.
In the lawsuit, they claim the pro-life law is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights and should be overturned.
“The UK Government has signed up to global human rights treaties recognising the value and importance of protecting everyone’s human rights,” he wrote.
Amnesty International, which is supporting the commission in the legal battle, also claims that protecting unborn babies’ right to life is an “abuse” against women.
It’s interesting that these groups constantly emphasize “human rights” when they are working to take away rights from some of the most vulnerable human beings on the planet: babies in the womb. Biologically, from the moment of conception, unborn babies already are distinct, living human beings with their own unique DNA. And babies, whether in the womb or born, are not less deserving of human rights simply because they have a disability or were conceived in a crime.
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What’s more, the European Convention on Human Rights previously has agreed that there is no “right” to abortion.
SPUC’s Northern Ireland Development Officer Liam Gibson explained:
“In February of 2016 the Northern Ireland Assembly voted to maintain the Province’s ban on abortion. It rejected legislation to allow the abortion of seriously disabled children by 59 votes to 40. Now the Commission and the British abortion industry are trying to achieve through the courts what they failed to achieve through the democratic process…Since 2013 it has relentlessly pursued its ruthless agenda on this issue in an attempt by stealth to subvert the elected representatives. We’re now calling on Mr Brokenshire to review its workings and take the necessary steps to end its crusade against disabled babies.”
Abortion activists previously tried to overturn Northern Ireland’s pro-life laws in court. In 2015, a Belfast court ruled that the law violated women’s rights; but a higher court overturned the ruling earlier this year.
Earlier this summer, the UK Supreme Court also decided not to compel the British National Health Service to pay for abortions for women traveling from Northern Ireland to England. Unborn babies’ abortion deaths are taxpayer-funded through the NHS in most of the UK.
Pro-life advocates estimate that about 100,000 unborn babies have been saved from abortion since 1967, when Northern Ireland chose not to enact the UK Abortion Act.
