The Guardian Exposure: THE LAW
Yesterday we shared with you Precious Life’s concerns about The Guardian’s onslaught of pro-abortion articles. We followed these articles closely and believed it was time that the journalists responsible were challenged.
Here is the first instalment of ‘The Guardian Exposure’ which concerns the law on abortion in Northern Ireland.
1. The Law
Journalists Lisa O’Carroll, Henry McDonald, Amelia Gentleman and Juliette Jowett made it their mission to shake themselves free from the cardinal principle of journalism: truth and accuracy. They understood that if acting on behalf of a group of people clamouring for abortion, ‘getting the facts right’ would only hold them back.
It is a disgrace that the above named journalists dared to run a series of stories, film pieces, and “an editorial calling for change” with such an outrageous misunderstanding of the matter at hand. Their presentation of the law and the recent ruling in the judicial review on the law on abortion in Northern Ireland is riddled with inaccuracies and nonsense claims.
The first journalist to be challenged is Lisa O’Carroll.
Lisa O’Carroll
Lisa O’Carroll wrongly states that “abortion has been illegal across the island of Ireland since 1861”.[1] The first statutory prohibition of abortion in England, Wales and Ireland was Lord Ellenborough’s Act 1803,[2] which was succeeded by Lord Lansdowne’s Act 1828. This latter act was succeeded by the Offences against the Person Act 1837 which abolished the death penalty for abortion but revoked the long-standing distinction between pre- and post- quickening abortion. This was then replaced by sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 which removed pregnancy as a necessary element of the offence when committed by a third party, prohibited attempted self-abortion by a pregnant woman, and created a new offence of obtaining or supplying means knowing that they are intended to be used to procure an abortion.[3]
We are calling on all people to take a stand against these atrocious articles by boycotting The Guardian. Show those journalists and the editors that their readers will not tolerate their sickening disdain for unborn children and scathing attack on the law in Northern Ireland.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the next journalist to be challenged.
[1] Lisa O’Carroll, ‘Almost 25,000 women travelled from Ireland to Britain for abortions in last five years’ <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/15/almost-25000-women-travelled-from-ireland-abortions-last-five-years> 15 December 2015
[2] “Ellenborough declared that the Bill aimed the ‘generalise the law with regard to certain penal offences, and to adapt it equally to every part of the United Kingdom.’ […] “Ellenborough commended the Bill to the House as a measure designed to render the law more consistent and to assimilate the laws of Great Britain and Ireland.” John Keown, Abortion, Doctors and the Law: Some Aspects of the Legal Regulation of Abortion in England from 1803 to 1982 (CUP 1988) 15, 17.
[3] See generally John Keown, Abortion, Doctors and the Law: Some Aspects of the Legal Regulation of Abortion in England from 1803 to 1982 (CUP 1988).