PRECIOUS LIFE CONDEMNS AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL'S DOCTORS' LETTER
As part of its latest ploy to bring in abortion-on-demand in Northern Ireland, Amnesty International has rallied healthcare professionals from forty-four countries to sign an open letter calling on governments to legalise abortion throughout the world. Precious Life, the leading pro-life group in Northern Ireland, condemns this latest move as “desperate and shameful”.
“There is absolutely no evidence that women’s lives are put at risk by the illegality of abortion in Northern Ireland. The criminal offence of directly and intentionally killing unborn children does not prevent healthcare professionals from directly treating any medical condition that may arise during pregnancy. As Edwin Poots MLA put it simply when he was the Health Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, ‘There are no cases of women dying in Northern Ireland’ because of the current abortion legislation,” argues Bernadette Smyth, the director of Precious Life.
At the International Symposium on Maternal Health held in Dublin in September 2012, medical experts from across the globe, including Professors Eamon O’Dwyer, Frederic Amant, Elard Koch and Doctors Byron Calhoun and Monique Chireau, gathered to testify that there are no medical conditions when the life of a pregnant woman can only be saved by abortion. Referring to this symposium, Smyth commented:
“This letter penned by Amnesty does not reflect the wealth of medical evidence which clearly indicates that abortion is never ‘the answer’. Breedagh Hughes of the Royal College of Midwives should be ashamed of herself for claiming that healthcare professionals ‘are not able’ to give a mother and father the care they deserve when their precious unborn child has been diagnosed with a life-limiting condition. Instead of calling for abortion, she should be calling for the wonderful care and support perinatal hospice can provide for parents and their children in these tragic cases.
Smyth debunked the argument put forth by Amnesty that pregnant women in Britain are receiving better care than pregnant women in Northern Ireland:
“To quote that ‘up to 2,000 women leave the region to access pregnancy terminations every year’ is grossly exaggerated and misleading, and the thousands of abortions carried out in England and Wales are nothing to do with saving the life of the mother. In fact, over the forty years of legalised abortion in Britain there has been a consistent pattern in which higher abortion rates have run parallel to higher incidences of stillbirths, premature births, low birth-weight neonates, cerebral palsy, and maternal deaths as direct consequences of abortion. In contrast, according to a research paper in 2012 by Byron Calhoun, John Thorp and Patrick Carroll, both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have displayed lower rates of all morbidities and mortality associated with legalised abortion.”
(http://www.jpands.org/vol18no2/calhoun.pdf)
“And finally, to correct Grainne Teggart of Amnesty International and every doctor who shamefully signed that letter, abortion is not a ‘healthcare’ issue or ‘human rights’ issue. Abortion is in fact no more than the intentional killing of the most defenceless and vulnerable human being, the unborn child. Not one international human rights body or convention recognises a right to abortion. It is time Amnesty put its power and money into saving innocent lives, not destroying them,” Smyth concluded.