Precious Life stand up for Northern Ireland's pro-life laws at Belfast High Court
Precious Life demonstrated outside Belfast High Court yesterday (Thursday 20th June) to demand that our pro-life laws be upheld and respected.
A woman who illegally bought abortion pills for her underage 15-year-old daughter was in court yesterday to challenge the decision to prosecute her in court. The anonymous woman is facing accusations of procuring dangerous abortion drugs for her daughter, who used them to cause an abortion. The woman is facing two separate charges of unlawfully procuring and supplying the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol with the intent to procure a miscarriage.
Buying abortion pills and taking them without medical approval is illegal not only in Northern Ireland, but throughout the entire UK. Yet this woman is seeking to overturn the decision by the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland to bring her to criminal trial. Radically pro-abortion Amnesty International is an intervenor in this case.
Bernadette Smyth of Precious Life was speaking outside the Court on Thursday.
She explained, "Our life-saving laws, the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Criminal Justice Act (NI) 1945, ensure that mothers and unborn children are protected from abortion. We hope the Judges involved in this case acknowledge that abortion in Northern Ireland is a criminal offence and our laws must be respected and upheld at all times."
Inducing an abortion with illegal pills unsupervised is not only illegal but dangerous. This is widely acknowledged. Notably, Dr. Peter Boylan, an abortion campaigner in the Republic of Ireland who was vocally supportive of the removal of Ireland's pro-life eighth amendment, said: "There are serious dangers when women take them (abortion pills) without medical supervision. We have knowledge of women who have taken them in excessive dosage and that can result in catastrophe for a woman such as a rupture of the uterus with very significant haemorrhage. And if that happens in the privacy of a woman’s home or perhaps in an apartment somewhere, that can have very, very serious consequences for women."
Precious Life held signs today outside the Court stating, 'Our Laws Matter because every life matters' and 'She is a child, NOT a choice' in support of Northern Ireland's life-saving laws which have saved over 100,000 people from being killed before birth in abortions.
Bernadette Smyth concluded that, "Women in unintended pregnancies deserve better than abortion. They deserve real support and life-affirming options for themselves and their babies."