CNA Staff, Jun 5, 2020 / 05:06 pm (CNA).- While saying that abortion regulation is a devolved issue, the British Minister of State for Northern Ireland emphasized at Westminster Thursday that any local changes to the region’s abortion law would have to comply with human rights conventions.
Earlier in the week the Northern Ireland Assembly passed a non-binding motion rejecting the imposition of abortion regulations by the Westminster parliament.
“We hope that the regulations provide a solid framework for abortion services to be provided within Northern Ireland, although I appreciate that this remains a devolved issue and the Assembly can amend the regulations in future, subject to the usual Assembly and other procedures, including compliance with the European convention on human rights,” Robin Walker, the Northern Ireland minister, said June 4 while answering questions from members of parliament.
“If the Executive and Assembly were to legislate for an alternative approach, it would still be required to be human rights and convention-compliant,” he added.
The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020, which came into force March 31, allow elective abortions up to 12 weeks of pregnancy; abortions up to 24 weeks in cases of risk to the mother’s physical or mental health; and abortion without time limit in cases of severe fetal impairment or fetal fetal abnormality.
Previously, abortion was legally permitted in the region only if the mother’s life was at risk or if there was risk of long term or permanent, serious damage to her mental or physical health.
The new framework was adopted to implement Westminster’s Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, which decriminalized abortion in Northern Ireland and placed a moratorium on abortion-related criminal prosecutions, and obliged the UK government to create legal access to abortion in the region by March 31.
The NI EF Act required that the recommendations of a UN report on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women be implemented.
Walker maintained June 4 that “The Government are … under a clear statutory duty to allow for access to abortions in cases of both severe foetal impairment and fatal foetal abnormalities, and this is what we have delivered … We consider the regulations in this regard to be compatible with the requirements under the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.”
The regulations will be debated in a House of Commons Committee June 8, and afterwards in the House of Lords.
Thursday’s questions about the regulations were opened by Jeffrey Donaldson, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Ireland’s leading pro-life party.
Donaldson urged that “the Government should withdraw the regulations, respect the fact that devolution has been restored and, rather than seek to further undermine devolution, allow the Northern Ireland Assembly its rightful place to legislate on its own abortion law.”
He noted that the regulations’ provision for abortion in cases of severe fetal impairment “was not even required by CEDAW.”
MPs who participated in the discussion were divided over the regulations. Of the nine members of the governing Conservative Party who asked questions of Walker, six expressed support for the regulations, or a more liberal provision of abortion access.
Two members of the Labour Party expressed support for the regulations, as did one Liberal Democrat from a Scottish constituency, while one Labour Party member spoke in favor of devolution and handing the matter over to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Four DUP members voiced their opposition to the regulations.
Ian Paisley Jr commented that CEDAW does not require legislation for a full-term abortions, disability abortions, or sex-selection abortions, yet “that is that what is going to happen in Northern Ireland as a result of what has occurred in this place.”
Carla Lockhart, also a member of the DUP, commented that “the Government…continue to ride roughshod over the devolved Administration in Northern Ireland. They are discriminating against people who have non-fatal disabilities and going far beyond their legal requirement.”
“Will the Minister recognise the severe offence that the regulations cause to people with disabilities and also that the clear will of the devolved institutions is that the regulations are not wanted in Northern Ireland?” she asked. “What is the Minister’s message today to Heidi Crowter, who says that she feels she should not exist in this society if the regulations go ahead? … Both lives matter. It is not just about women’s health, but about both lives. It is not the Government’s right to impose such liberal abortion laws on Northern Ireland that will see abortion up to birth for disability.”
Walker responded that “nobody in the House wants to regulate or legislate in any way to the detriment of people with disabilities. We rightly have a huge body of legislation in this country to protect the rights of people with disabilities. It is not for the Government—and it is not the approach we take in the rest of the UK—to list specific conditions that it may or not be decided constitute severe foetal impairment.”
He maintained that “Addressing [severe foetal impairment] was a specific requirement of the CEDAW report, which is why it is included in the regulations.”
The Northern Ireland minister said that “this Government believe in supporting the rights of people with disabilities and do not in any way see these regulations as impinging on those. The regulations mirror the law in the rest of the UK, where abortions are permitted in cases of severe foetal impairment and fatal foetal abnormality, with no time limit. The Abortion Act does not define what conditions fit within this meaning, but similarly, it is an individual’s decision based on proper medical assessments and advice and other relevant provision of information and support.”
Walker also noted that the government had sought to conform Northern Ireland’s regulations to those in the rest of the UK, noting that it had used “the legal basis that has been established in England, Scotland, Wales for this process and [was] ensuring that we stick to it as closely as possible, particularly on issues such as conscientious objection…However, our approach throughout the design of this framework is to ensure that the outcomes are as consistent as possible.”
He also said that “it is important that wherever possible we make sure the outcomes of the regulations in Northern Ireland are aligned with the outcomes in the rest of [Great Britain]. It is important both because it is the right thing to do fundamentally—as a Unionist I believe it is the right thing to do—and because the approach in the rest of the UK has been legally tested and found to be compliant with the relevant human rights law.”
And when questioned about devolution and the possibility of the Northern Ireland Assembly legislating on the problem, Walker responded that “it is in the hands of the Assembly to propose reforms and a way forward on the regulations, so long as it can do so in a way that is CEDAW compliant. I would be very happy for it to take that opportunity. There is nothing to prohibit it doing so, and it is a matter of regret that, having been in place for a number of months before the regulations came into force, it has not.”
“However, my firm understanding of the advice that the Government have received is that the legal obligations on us to ensure a human rights-compliant model in every part of the UK, including Northern Ireland, remain in place,” he added.
A legislation scrutiny committee of the House of Lords published in April a report which noted that the regulations are more expansive than were required by law.
Northern Ireland rejected the Abortion Act 1967, which legalized abortion in England, Wales, and Scotland; and bills to legalize abortion in cases of fatal fetal abnormality, rape, or incest failed in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2016.
Northern Irish women had been able to procure free National Health Service abortions in England, Scotland, and Wales since November 2017. They are allowed to travel to the rest of the UK to procure abortions during the coronavirus outbreak.
The amendment to the NI EF Act obliging the government to provide for legal abortion in Northern Ireland was introduced by Stella Creasy, a Labour MP who represents a London constituency.
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About the snubbing, history will record that the German ploy to maneuver the pope into either acquiescing or creating martyrs, has failed.
Instead, the ambiguous agenda to “be ‘Catholic’ in a different way”—the Bats-sing lyric—reminds us of what is found universally (!) in bat caves around the world. Mountains of guano several hundreds of feet deep, in Latin America, the Philippines, the Grand Canyon and Europe, etc.
The ad limina message is not lacking in clarity: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Time for these so called leaders to leave the Church. either of their own accord or by dismissal. Papa is weak and surrounds himself with men easily swayed by his predilections.
All men need to stand up for Jesus, especially the leadership, yet there seems to be a dearth of respect from the same! Let the faithful proclaim the name of jesus.
Acts 4:12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
1 Peter 4:12-14 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
2 Timothy 3:12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
Colossians 1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,
Colossians 1:18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
Romans 8:9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Interesting idea. To be Catholic — but in a different way.
What way?
The way in which you can now commit your entire life to your own personal orgasmic pleasure in concert with anyone or anything else you please — e.g., British royals, adolescent girls, pets, electronic apparati, balloons, footwear, circus folk, ad infinitum.
The way in which you can completely separate sex and procreation, so that your wonderful new commitment to your own personal orgasmic pleasure can be enjoyed without consequence or accountability, while assuring yourself that in reality your child is nothing more than a mass of cells and therefore doesn’t exist.
The way in which you have become your own god, doing whatever you wish to whomever you wish, without giving a thought to any morality or any law higher than your own appetites and desires.
Yep. That’s certainly what I would call “Catholic in a different way.”
A diabolical way, to be precise.
No wonder the faith is dead all throughout Europe.
“The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right.”
(Hamlet. Act 1.5)
“Document forty-one.” Archbishop Gagnon interrupted Pope John Paul 1st’s muted stillness and placed his index finger on the top of the page, “His Eminence, Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio; Document forty-two: His Excellency, Bishop Annibale Bugnini.”
(Page 123, Murder on the 33rd Degree – The Gagnon Investigation into Vatican Freemasonry by Charles Theodore Murr)
Well said, Mr. Brineyman! Well said!
Pope Francis needs to anathematize German Bishops, for the Spiritual protection, and unity, of the Body of Jesus’ Universal Catholic Church, so that Satan does not pull the whole Body of Christ’s Church into hell.
Matthew 18:9
If your eye is your downfall, gouge it out and cast it from you! Better to enter life with one eye than be thrown with both into fiery Gehenna.
Luke 11:34
The lamp of the body is your eye. When your eye is sound, then your whole body is filled with light, but when it is bad, then your body is in darkness.
The “eyes” of the “body” of Christ’s Church, are our Catholic Church Leaders. Jesus Commands His Church, that if Her eye is Her undoing, She is to gouge it out and cast it into hell. Catholic Anathema is Jesus’ lips binding sinners to their sins, which cuts evildoers off from the body of the Church and casts them into hell, for the protection of Jesus’ Church on earth.
Matthew 18:5
“Whoever welcomes one such child for my sake welcomes me. On the other hand, it would be better for anyone who leads astray one of these little ones who believes in me, to be drown by a millstone around his neck, in the depths of the sea. What terrible things will come on the world through scandal! It is inevitable that scandal should occur. Nonetheless, woe to that man through whom scandal comes! If your hand or foot is your undoing, cut it off and throw it from you! Better to enter life maimed or crippled than be thrown with two hands or feet into endless fire. If your eye is your downfall, gouge it out and cast it from you! Better to enter life with one eye than be thrown with both into fiery Gehenna.
ANATHEMA
the formula of anathema which ends with these words: Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive N– himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate….”
…He who dares to despise our decision, let him be stricken with anathema maranatha, i.e. may he be damned at the coming of the Lord, may he have his place with Judas Iscariot, he and his companions.
Quoted from: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia – Anathema
Matthew 18:17 Fraternal Correction
“If he ignores them, refer it to the church . If he ignores even the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. I assure you, whatever you declare bound on earth shall be held bound in heaven, and whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be held loosed in heaven.
Tell the schism German Bishops to take their pope voting Cardinals with them when they leave. We don’t want that refuse, who are liberals out to destroy Christ’s Church, left behind in the Vatican. We can re-evangelize the pagan nation Germany.
Can we give P. Francis a little credit to make up for the disparaging comments on this site for trying to keep the German church within the fold and not push them into another sect of heresy. We should applaud him for his ‘snub’ while still encouraging dialogue.
Catholics who are Catholic are losing patience with Catholics who are anti-Catholic bigots.
Dear Edward;
If we transgress the laws of the church and try to run wild, we are of no benefit to the eternal soul of another.
To adhere to the laws of physics has its own blessings and rewards too.
God bless you as you strive for truth and the honour of the Church.
Brian
Complexity. Nothing is simple as in the [alleged] days of the Baltimore Catechism.
Take Bishop Stefan Oster, Passau, an increasingly rare youngish German prelate more Catholic than Lutheran, unlike the Lutherisch members of the Synodaler Weg. Yet, he was the leading spokesman for the disappointed Synodalerers who were ignored by Pope Francis, scolded by Cardinals Ladaria, Ouellet. Feathers ruffled, the Synodalerers trudged back home Oster confirming neither Ladaria or Ouellet gave an inch. Was that good or bad for previously considered traditional Bishop Oster?
Is Stefan Oster really a Traditionalist mole? Oh oh! I may have blown his cover.
Or is Oster a Synodal Weg bit of showcasing? Whatever he is in this strange new paradigmatic world he made sure to announce the good news of no compromise.
Dear Fr Peter:
Your perspective would be welcome on a touchy subject to Catholics! You mention “Lutheran” which tends to elicit wails of protests from faithful Catholics. Though I know little of the man, would you touch on one point where you feel he was mistaken?
Thanking you once again for your service in the Lords name.
Brian
Well, shoot, Brian…Fr. Peter hasn’t noticed your question, so let me (plain ol’ Peter) take a fling at it…
The case is complicated and Luther probably didn’t have horns. Had cultural and political factors been less poised, the rupturing Reformation might well not have happened at all. And yet, Luther lit the match to the haystack. Points where we see (not merely “feel”) that “he was mistaken” would include: (1) denial of all of the sacraments except Eucharist and Baptism (while redefining the Eucharist); (2) Replacement of the universal Eucharistic assembly with local and multiple sola Scriptura congregations; (3) Severing of the Apostolic Succession (and valid sacraments) by replacing ornery bishops of the Church with lay political figures; (4) Approval of the bigamy of Henry VIII and the elector Philip of Hesse—a wedge in the Sacrament of matrimony which, we might propose, today has made imaginable and then statutory the redefined parody of “marriage,” (not to mention transgender alphabet soup); (5) Also, a fateful tip away from communio and into the individualism of privatized sola Scriptura, which historians often link to the counterbalancing and collectivist trajectories of Fascism, Socialism and Communism, and probably robber-baron capitalism.
And, then, (6) there’s the central thing about being saved by faith without works. Luther’s subjective experience and distorted message of being irreversibly “saved” flat-out, without cooperating with divine grace. Looking back over the centuries, that went well…at the front end and in the political realm, Luther encouraged the Peasants Revolt, but (7) then turned more toward the fledgling state and at the expense of some one hundred thousand exterminated souls.
Luther was right, of course, about the way Tetzel was marketing indulgences…A coin in the cup automatically saved grandpa as a castaway in Purgatory! But, today, look at Luther’s Germany…The original abuse now twisted and magnified:
Those who withhold the coin (viz refuse to mark the church-tax box on the federal income tax form) are automatically cast away by clericalists for “apostasy”: that is, they are denied the sacraments including Catholic burial! So much for the synodal “walking together” thingy. Instead, now in Luther’s Germany, we have a “synodal path” purporting to correct the sexual abuse crisis by mainstreaming sexual license at the expense of our baked-in natural law, sound moral theology, and the Church’s Catechism (and Veritatis Splendor) affirming moral absolutes.
This is not to say that the Church was or is ever exempt from the need for reform. Had earlier council attempts been more successful, history would be quite different.
Dear Peter:
Nice to hear from you. Thank you for a fulsome response. You must make for a lively party guest! You tend to fill the margin, leaving no stone unturned. 🙂
If he did nothing right one might wonder why Luther’s impact was so great amongst people who wanted to know what God says and how to go about pleasing Him! Holy Scripture is God speaking to His creation. Yet, someone I respect suggested that “some Catholics are allergic to Scripture”. It seems to be born out on these pages (from time to time) indeed a smattering don’t wish to think beyond Church Tradition. Is that bad? Not necessarily!
Spiritually is a difficult subject. An example might be the Gospel of John. For myself, it is taxing and my spiritual grown is not strong enough to contend with the depth and breadth, at this time. Hopefully God will imbue me with hunger to discern what he is saying, yet it is a struggle!
We strive to comprehend, yet our influences and the pride which afflicts most men, limits understanding and a closer walk with God.
Allow me to respond to two of your points, my capacity is somewhat limited. Scripture is better worded than anything I might offer.
Luther held the sentiment that Holy Scripture was the suitable guide for the Christian. Was he incorrect? Each person will make their own determination. Reading God’s word, prayerful meditation and examining well written books and commentaries aid us and what is our purpose if not to assist others? If we don’t boost our knowledge, we are nothing but blind guides.
CWR is a place to express our faith and help our fellow man find comfort. The magazines I read are current events of one declaration or another! To comment on matters of Christian faith would not be well received. We must thank God for CWR and the opportunity to share what God has given each one. Yes, we learn from each other.
Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
Isaiah 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Blessings of insight in all godly matters,
Brian