CNA Staff, Apr 29, 2020 / 01:01 pm (CNA).- A legislation scrutiny committee of the House of Lords last week published a report on the abortion regulations imposed on Northern Ireland by the British government, noting that the regulations are more expansive than were required by law.
Among the key criticisms in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s April 23 report was the six-week duration of public consultation on the proposed regulations. The committee includes members of the Conservative Party, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats, as well as crossbenchers.
“In our view this is too short for so sensitive a topic, the committee wrote. “Added to which, it took place during the General Election period and in the run up to Christmas, neither of which conforms with best practice. Of the over 21,000 responses received, 79% registered general opposition to any change to the established position in Northern Ireland.”
The committee received a number of submissions that “criticise the Government response to the consultation for failing to explain why such a strong level of objection has been overridden,” and which “assert that no attempt has been made to engage with them to address their objections or with the restored Northern Ireland Executive, and that certain provisions … were not included in the consultation document.”
In addition, the Lords’ committee said that the regulations should not have been made so soon before a parliamentary recess: “While acknowledging that due to the current coronavirus crisis, Ministers have had much to occupy them, we find it regrettable that the Government chose to lay so controversial an instrument just as a recess started and, more importantly, so close to the implementation date set out in the 2019 Act, thereby denying Parliament an opportunity for scrutiny before the instrument came into effect.”
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.
The legislative scrutiny committee said its report on the regulations sets out the key points made in submissions from members of the House of Commons, House of Lords, and the Northern Ireland Assembly, as well as churches and other organizations.
“This Report also notes several instances where the Government’s administrative process for bringing these Regulations forward appears suboptimal,” it added, before drawing the regulations to the special attention of the House.
The committee noted that nearly all the submissions it received are critical of the regulations’ provision for conscientious objection.
Conscientious objection is allowed for direct participation in abortion, but not for ancillary, administrative, or managerial tasks associated with the procedure, because, according to the regulations, that “would have consequences on a practical level and would therefore undermine the effective provision of abortion services in Northern Ireland.”
The exclusion of those carrying out ancillary, administrative, or managerial tasks from conscientious objection may be “too narrow and does not adequately protect” the rights to religious or philosophical beliefs under the European Convention on Human Rights.
According to the committee, the Attorney General for Northern Ireland submitted that ancillary staff are unlawfully discriminated against because the Northern Ireland Act 1998 prevents the Assembly and the Secretary of State “from enacting any provision which discriminates against any person or class of person on the ground of religious belief or political opinion.”
The committee wrote that “Given the sensitivity of the issues around conscientious objection, the House may wish to ask the Minister to consider further the scope of the policy and how it will be interpreted.”
The report also discussed the regulation of abortion in cases of severe fetal impairment or fetal fetal abnormality.
Several submissions said the abortion of those with severe impairment is contrary to EU law because the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities “extends to those in the womb,” but that the region’s attorney general acknowledged that the NI EF Act required the implementation of such a regulation because of CEDAW.
“There therefore appears to be a question over which UN Convention should take priority,” the committee wrote.
However, the Northern Ireland Office holds that the UNCRPD is not a binding law, and added: “we do not agree that the provision extends protection to those in the womb.”
The legislative scrutiny committee noted that the “the regime chosen largely mirrors the services available in the rest of the UK. In the light of the overwhelmingly negative response to the consultation exercise, it would have been better if the reasons for the specific policy choices made, were explained in more detail in the EM, and the House may wish to press the Minister for further explanation.”
Other submissions noted that “severe disability” could be interpreted differently and could include cleft lip or Down syndrome, and that the CEDAW recommendation requires the provision of abortion for “severe foetal impairment”, while not “perpetuating sterotypes towards persons with disabilities.”
“The House may wish to press the Minister about how these provisions will be interpreted,” the committee noted.
Some submissions also noted that because the baby’s sex can be identified at 10 weeks, and elective abortions are permitted up to 12 weeks, “there is a significant omission in the Regulations in that … they do not prevent abortion on the grounds of the foetus’s gender.”
The report concludes noting that “the NIO states that, where possible, this statutory framework mirrors the Abortion Act 1967 so that provision will be broadly consistent with the abortion services in the rest of the UK. The NIO was, however, obliged by law to implement the specific recommendations of the CEDAW Report which relate to Northern Ireland. This report has sought to expand on some of the Government’s policy choices and also to air the main issues drawn to our attention in submissions, to assist the House in the forthcoming debate.”
Right to Life UK spokesperson Catherine Robinson said April 28 that the committee “chosen to draw these regulations to the special attention of the House. The Committee has reported on a number of serious issues with the regulations.”
“MPs and Peers at Westminster must take on board these problems and vote against the regulations when they are brought before Parliament,” she added.
The regulations are due to be voted on before May 17.
David Alton, Baron Alton of Liverpool, commented April 25 that Northern Ireland’s abortion law “should have been decided in Northern Ireland not imposed by Westminster. Both Parliament and the Northern Ireland Office have shown great contempt for the people of Northern Ireland – and for normal constitutional and parliamentary good practice – in seeking to impose, by diktat, laws which in the rest of the UK have led to one child in the womb being aborted every three minutes.”
Lord Alton wrote that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report highlights “that this issue needs to be reconsidered in Northern Ireland by the Assembly which is responsible for what the law and policy on this issue. Riding roughshod over the Assembly in this way shows contempt for devolution, power sharing, proper political process, and the people of Northern Ireland.”
The bishops of Northern Ireland have encouraged members of Northern Ireland’s devolved legislature to debate the regulations, and, “insofar as they exceed the requirements of the Northern Ireland Act 2019 … to take steps to formulate new Regulations that will reflect more fully the will of a significant majority of the people in this jurisdiction to protect the lives of mothers and their unborn children.”
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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It seems to me the issue is not complicated. If the bishops and priests preach universal salvation why bother to attend mass and receive the sacraments? Jesus died to break the power of Satan in a fallen world. There is no salvation apart from union with Him in His Mystical Body. Unless we eat His Body and drink His Blood we have no life within us. Unfortunately, many in the Church have been deceived into believing that Satan does not exist, clergy and laity. We live in a sea of wickedness, were many call what is evil good, and what is good evil. There are none so blind who will not see.
We read: “…The reasons for leaving [the Church] varied, with older people citing the Church’s handling of the abuse crisis and younger people pointing to the obligation of paying church tax, according to one earlier study.”
So, the 1960s sexual revolution metastasizing into clericalist sexual abuse, plus clericalist entanglement with the state through the Church tax. Symptoms of a profoundly hollowed-out Church…
And, leading from behind, the clericalist Bishop Batzing believes (the Faith?) that the solution is more of the same; he advocates “continued ‘cultural change’ and the implementation of the German Synodal Way resolutions…” So, invalid ordinations of a female priestesshood; a permanent “synodal assembly”/local plebiscite absent the papacy; and cultural (!) redefinition of the universal Natural Law and the very meaning of “sexual acts”, etc. etc.
Life inside the bubble!
Yes. Because embracing the zeitgeist of the 1970s has worked wonders for mainline Protestant communities.
Confront these fools and call them to account.
Two things need to happen to the Catholic Church in Germany:
#1. All bishops must resign immediately.
#2. The German Church needs to stop taking any and all money from the German State. Until the German Church does this, they are in bed with Satan and doing Satan’s bidding.
#1 I believe there are 4 bishops who oppose the Synodal Way (effectively, they have blocked a number of its moves). Probably be better to keep them around. Given the shrinking Catholic population, they could probably consolidate the other dioceses into those 4.
#2 Yes. A thousand times yes.
Maybe not so fast, here…
On the FIRST point, not “all” bishops in Germany are sucking up to der Synodal Weg.
Of those not devoted to mutilating the Church and the universal natural law, one listing gives Cardinal Rainier Woelke (Cologne), Stephan Burger (Freiburg), Bertram Meier (Augsburg), Stefan Oster (Passau), Rudolf Voderholzer (Regensburg), Wolfgang Ipolt (Gorlitz), Gregor Maria Hanke (Eichstatt), plus a few auxiliary bishops and probably others.
On the SECOND point, the church tax is not confined to Germany.
It’s also collected in five other European nations (Germany, plus Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden), largely as an awkward compensation for the combined effects in the 18th and 19th-century industrial demographics (populations migrating off the farm) and then secular expropriation of land previously owned by the churches. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/04/30/in-western-european-countries-with-church-taxes-support-for-the-tradition-remains-strong/ Pope Benedict commented in one of his books that the tax could be understandable given the even longer weight of history, but that the penalty of excommunication for opting out was “indefensible.”
THIRDLY, and looking ahead, the next-generation question might be whether or when a non- or even anti-Christian religion/culture grafts itself onto any of the secularist and post-Christian state mechanisms.
My limited reading suggests that Islamic interest in the church tax (and mosque tax?) is stymied by the fact that the highly sectarian Islamic immigrant enclaves cannot agree on a needed consolidated leadership within any of the above-listed nation-states.
And we Catholics thought Protestant “sects” (including der Synodal Weg) were quite enough…
” . . . the German Synodal Way . . . has not stemmed the dramatic decline in Catholic numbers.”
Mmm. I wonder why that is.
A good bad thing is that there’s no German Church to be in schism. At least His Holiness can take credit for that. Dallying along for over a decade has left a lonely group of hierarchy, generals without an army.
They’re multiple reasons apart from indecisive Vatican intervention. Nazism and war had to have had a deleterious effect on the German psyche, the truth of the faith. I still recall as a soldier the many crucifixion shrines hidden in the forests of Bavaria. I remember my Internet friend Alexandra, who later entered a contemplative convent in Bavaria. Some of the more pleasant tourists I met in Rome were German. Because of that and other reasons I don’t believe the faith is entirely dead. Not yet.
Bishop George Bätzing, cardinal Reinhard Marx need to own their responsibility in the futile, demoralizing path they took the Church. Rabid liberal clergy and laypersons performed the finishing touch. Who needs a Church to attend and pay huge dues to when one need not do anything different from whatever one does? Except to pay dues and attend pop liturgical entertainment on Sundays. Although good leaders like Woelki, Muller, Voderholzer remain.
Wonderment remains over the effectiveness that Amazonia style ecclesiology had in the German debacle. From the rainforests of Brazil pagan, likely diabolic ritual was imported to Rome, Vatican lawn prostrate worship of pagan paraphernalia, enshrinement of pagan goddess with song and dance in the sanctuary of St Peter’s Basilica. Further bedazzlement that this ancient liturgy was reveled while the Latin Mass was disparaged. Idolatry has consequences.
While there remains the remnant of true faith in Germany there’s hope of the return of the King. Let’s hope, yes pray that occurs before the final return.
Bishops announce this sort of tragic news but never say who is responsible. Could they be more brazen? Who ever came home from work and announced “Honey, I really screwed up today. We’re broke and I lost the business!”
Their very comportment bespeaks the present tragic circumstance. Faith comes through hearing. What is the world hearing?
Ps: if the German bishops have done such a smash bang job that Deutschland is now a “mission country,” will the Kirchensteur (church tax) refunds be in the mail with apologies from Their Graces?
True indeed! In Germany today you now have many priests and missionaries from former mission countries like Nigeria, India, and the Philippines staffing parishes and other Church based institutions.
It’s worth asking:
If Germany is now a missionary country, then what is the Vatican?
Well, there’s a new one on me. German theologians and canon lawyers are debating about excommunication for those who LEAVE the church. No wonder the German church is failing. What a hot button issue: people leaving the church are apparently angry that they are excommunicated. It’s what they want, for crying out loud. But this is the convoluted, nothing-ness of an intellectual elite who cannot fathom the silliness they immerse themselves in. And the German faithful are supposed to trust that crowd? That crowd of intellectuals that seems to be counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin THAT DOESN’T EXIST. The growing list of German Catholic inanities is depressing.
Maybe if Batzing and his Buddies started teaching REAL Catholicism rather than their synodal salad, Germany might be a little more Catholic. Take Christ’s advice to Peter, Georg: be converted (back to Catholicism, not what passes for it in Limburg) then confirm your brethren.
When Faith and Money are so intertwined within the Church, alongside a national government with little semblance of having a moral compass.
Germany isn’t the only European mission country. Germany gets all the attention but Belgium is, as far as I can tell, in the same category. There are others.
What they seem to have in common is the notion that the answer is more of what isn’t working.
I am guessing that Batzing considers the current situation in Germany to be his hoped for result.
Still it would be better if your cash cow dried up and souls were saved! But that is not how Catholicism is done Deutschland? Nein?
The German church is already in de facto schism, thanks to Batzing and about 90% of the German hierarchy. Their Synodal Way is promoting heresy in order to accommodate the church to the secular world. When there is no difference between Church teaching and the secular world, why belong? Especially when a tax is involved! This insane symbiosis between the Church and State reminds one of why Luther rebelled against the Church, especially when the non-payment of the tax results in excommunication! Show me the money or you will not be saved!
The Pilgrim Church is a movement of fellow mortals forward. Prayer, fasting, penance, solidarity, and co-humanity were values practiced and preached by Jesus and his apostles. Germany is a beautiful country. Germans are hard working and wonderful people.