CNA Staff, Jun 25, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- The parliament of the Channel Island of Guernsey voted Wednesday to approve a bill expanding abortion time limits, and removing time limits altogether on the abortion of unborn children with disabilities.
Votes held June 24 on 12 propositions made by the health and social care committee of the States of Guernsey carried each of them.
Under the new law meant to ‘modernize’ the territory’s abortion law, the abortion time limit will be increased to 24 weeks, as it is in the UK. The previous law, adopted in 1997, permitted abortion up to 12 weeks. There will be no upper limit on when a child with “significant fetal abnormality” can be aborted. These propositions were approved by a 23-13 vote, with one abstention.
The new law also decriminalizes the procurement of abortion outside the legal framework; drops a requirement that the mother consult with two medical practitioners; allow nurses and midwives to preform medical abortions; and allows medical abortions at home.
It will also force conscientious objectors to make referrals without delay; “make clear that health practitioners may not refuse to participate in care required to save the life or prevent serious injury to the physical or mental health of a woman”; and “create a power in the Law for the Committee for Health & Social Care to make regulations making further provision in relation to the circumstances in which the right of health practitioners to conscientiously object to the provision of care in relation to abortions may be exercised.”
Guernsey is a self-governing Crown Dependency for which the UK is responsible, located off the coast of Normandy. The new law will extend to Guernsey and its associated islands, but not Alderney and Sark, which are also part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey.
During debate on the propositions, according to the Guernsey Press, Deputy Richard Graham commented that “I regret that Health & Social Care have identified the UK as the gold standard to be followed, instead I would urge them to look to those countries that have low abortion rates, and seek to learn lessons from them, they are no less civilised, no less compassionate than we are, and they strike me as a far better abortion role model than the UK.”
The Bailiwick Express reported that Deputy Emilie McSwiggan, a member of the health and social care committee, said: “What we are trying to do is find a way through that is as compassionate as it can be, which is as fair as it can be, which balances and reflects the choices that people have to make and allows people to make those choices safely and within the context of a legal framework that is clear and modern and fair.”
Several amendments to the new law, which sought to reduce the proposed time limit on abortions or to maintain limits on the abortion of unborn children with disabilities, had been defeated June 19. The amendments would have retained the same time limits for the abortion of children with disabilies as of all unborn children; made clear that non-fatal conditions such as Down syndrome or cleft palate are not considered fatal foetal abnormalities; and changed the time limit for abortions to 16 or 22 weeks, rather than 24.
Earlier, a sursis motivé to stay the deliberation of the draft law and allow for broader public consultation had been defeated.
According to official figures, 113 abortions were performed in Guernsey in 2018, with a further three involving Guernsey residents performed in England and Wales.
The Catholic Church on the island held an all night prayer vigil at St. Joseph’s Church in St. Peter Port ahead of debate last week.
Bishop Egan of Portsmouth, the diocese which includes Guernsey, urged Catholics earlier this month to resist the “fundamentally detestable” efforts to liberalize the island’s abortion law.
In a June 7 message he argued the changes would violate the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and the injunction “Love thy neighbor as thyself”, which formed the basis of laws in civilized societies.
“This is why abortion and the current proposal to ‘modernize’ — that is, to increase — its availability in Guernsey is fundamentally detestable,” he said. “Under the bogus word ‘modernization,’ an attempt is being made to further liberalize abortion, to make it a lot easier and a lot more common.”
Egan said: “They want to allow abortions much later in pregnancy, abortions to be carried out with less red tape, abortions to take place at home and outside hospitals, and, grimly, abortions right up to birth for a disabled child, a child unwell, or a child with Downs syndrome. How must a person with Downs syndrome feel about this?”
“They refer to abortion euphemistically as a ‘procedure,’ a ‘termination’ with help from ‘the professionals.’ But what procedure can justify any professional terminating the life of an innocent baby? The more you see what an abortion is, the more you can see it is anti-life, anti-human and anti-woman.”
In a joint letter, John P. Ogier, pastor of Spurgeon Baptist Church, and Fr. Bruce Barnes, the Catholic Dean of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, criticized the timing of the debate amid the coronavirus pandemic.
They wrote: “We believe this is an entirely inappropriate time to be considering such a sensitive and morally important issue, in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic and with such a truncated timescale for public debate and consideration.”
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What is there to celebrate about 500 years of heresy?
I’m fairly sure the Protestants involved don’t view it as heresy. Not defending it; just pointing out the obvious.
I’m fairly sure many of the Catholics involved don’t either!
Good for them – more power to them.
A Lutheran Chief of Chaplain Service once told me we Catholics are obsessed with the Law. It seems a hangover from Luther’s insistence that faith alone saves. I responded our laws focus on charity. He in his own way was a charitable person. He responded he thought of becoming Catholic. Despite the inane comment by Steven Fuit, president of the UPCB that “our unity essentially derives from respecting differences” our unity derives from faith in Christ and following His commandments, even if the latter is tacitly admitted by the practice of many Lutherans.
MORTALIUM ANIMOS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI
ON RELIGIOUS UNITY
TO OUR VENERABLE BRETHREN THE PATRIARCHS, PRIMATES,
ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS, AND OTHER LOCAL ORDINARIES
IN PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE.
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI
ON RELIGIOUS UNITY
6. We were created by God, the Creator of the universe, in order that we might know Him and serve Him; our Author therefore has a perfect right to our service. God might, indeed, have prescribed for man’s government only the natural law, which, in His creation, He imprinted on his soul, and have regulated the progress of that same law by His ordinary providence; but He preferred rather to impose precepts, which we were to obey, and in the course of time, namely from the beginnings of the human race until the coming and preaching of Jesus Christ, He Himself taught man the duties which a rational creature owes to its Creator: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days, hath spoken to us by his Son.”[3] From which it follows that there can be no true religion other than that which is founded on the revealed word of God: which revelation, begun from the beginning and continued under the Old Law, Christ Jesus Himself under the New Law perfected. Now, if God has spoken (and it is historically certain that He has truly spoken), all must see that it is man’s duty to believe absolutely God’s revelation and to obey implicitly His commands; that we might rightly do both, for the glory of God and our own salvation, the Only-begotten Son of God founded His Church on earth. Further, We believe that those who call themselves Christians can do no other than believe that a Church, and that Church one, was established by Christ; but if it is further inquired of what nature according to the will of its Author it must be, then all do not agree. A good number of them, for example, deny that the Church of Christ must be visible and apparent, at least to such a degree that it appears as one body of faithful, agreeing in one and the same doctrine under one teaching authority and government; but, on the contrary, they understand a visible Church as nothing else than a Federation, composed of various communities of Christians, even though they adhere to different doctrines, which may even be incompatible one with another. Instead, Christ our Lord instituted His Church as a perfect society, external of its nature and perceptible to the senses, which should carry on in the future the work of the salvation of the human race, under the leadership of one head,[4] with an authority teaching by word of mouth,[5] and by the ministry of the sacraments, the founts of heavenly grace;[6] for which reason He attested by comparison the similarity of the Church to a kingdom,[7] to a house,[8] to a sheepfold,[9] and to a flock.[10] This Church, after being so wonderfully instituted, could not, on the removal by death of its Founder and of the Apostles who were the pioneers in propagating it, be entirely extinguished and cease to be, for to it was given the commandment to lead all men, without distinction of time or place, to eternal salvation: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations.”[11] In the continual carrying out of this task, will any element of strength and efficiency be wanting to the Church, when Christ Himself is perpetually present to it, according to His solemn promise: “Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world?”[12] It follows then that the Church of Christ not only exists to-day and always, but is also exactly the same as it was in the time of the Apostles, unless we were to say, which God forbid, either that Christ our Lord could not effect His purpose, or that He erred when He asserted that the gates of hell should never prevail against it.[13]
As a 73-year-old Catholic, I find it disrespectful of those young Catholics to disrupt the event. Yes, I know the Protestants were in a very Catholic Cathedral, but it is a very large space, and the recitation of the rosary was done with the intent to preclude the continuation the Protestant celebration. Now one can question why Protestants were celebrating the 5000th anniversary of the Reformation in a Catholic Cathedral, but that doesn’t address the question of why these Catholic youngsters found it necessary to be disruptive to the point that police were called.