A biased committee report calling for the liberalisation of abortion laws has sacrificed the rights of the unborn child to further a pro-abortion agenda, the Evangelical Alliance has said.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, chaired by Liberal Democrat MP Phil Willis, has been carrying out an investigation into scientific developments relating to the Abortion Act.Its report, published Wednesday, has recommended no lowering of the 24 week upper limit for most abortions, scrapping the need for two doctors' signatures, nurses doing abortions and medical abortions at home.
The committee report is important because it will be used to inform MPs debating amendments to the 1967 Abortion Act, as part of the discussion surrounding the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, expected to be announced in the Queen's Speech on 6 November.
The Alliance has called for the report, which could influence forthcoming legislation, to be discredited due to its partisan assessment of the evidence.
The report, published Wednesday by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, recommends that abortion law should be further liberalised by giving nurses permission to perform the operation and ending the requirement for two doctors to give their consent in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
“It (the report) was produced amid huge controversy and accusations of bias in the selection of witnesses called to give evidence who were largely in favour of a pro-choice agenda, that the Committee’s secret deliberations were themselves politically prejudiced, and that contrary evidence or evidence of an ethical nature was marginalised or ignored altogether,” an Alliance release has stated.
The Evangelical Alliance, which represents more than a million evangelical Christians across the UK has said that even widespread public acceptance that the 24-week abortion time limit must be reduced in response to scientific evidence was rejected by the committee.
Two of the committee MPs, Nadine Dorries and Bob Spink, strongly disagreed with the report’s conclusions and issued their own minority report.
Evangelical Alliance General Director Joel Edwards said: “It is a great pity that what in reality is a matter of life and death has become such a politicised issue.
