Briefing.
From CFNews: Anastasia de Waal, from the think-tank Civitas, said: 'Poverty is really concentrated in single-parent families, where there is only one income. What this Government is not doing is looking at ways of tackling the problem of single-parent families.
'This is critical if they want to address child poverty. It is very significant when there is a growing number of children growing up with one parent.'
Jane Robey, the chief executive of National Family Mediation, added: 'Children need both parents. We have seen a huge rise in the number of single-parent families since we started in 1982. Our case load has gone up from 5,000 in 1999 to 15,000 in 2006.'
The ONS report also discloses that the number of men and women aged between 25 and 44 living alone doubled between 1986 and 2006, while the proportion of men over 75 living alone rose from 24 per cent to 32 per cent.
The study shows that the gap between the rich and poor has remained unchanged since Labour came to power, despite a pledge to break down the divide. [Telegraph] 1436.7
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
One-parent families in the UK
Pro-abortion religious groups funded
Briefing.
From C-Fam: A two-year old report has come to light that encourages foundations to fund religious organizations who agree to push the abortion agenda around the world. The report which was funded by the wealthy MacArthur and Ford Foundations, catalogues hundreds of religiously affiliated non-government organizations that are likely to include “sexual and reproductive health and rights” as part of their work.
“Religion and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: An Inventory of Organization, Scholars and Foundations,” issued by the Center for Health and Social Policy, argues that the world’s religions play an undeniable role in shaping attitudes toward "reproduction and sexuality" and can “be an important ally in the effort to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights (or, conversely, a key obstacle).”
The report encourages foundations who are “striving to improve women’s
health and rights (including sexual and reproductive health and rights) to
incorporate religion in their grant-making,” as religions “have the power to
influence government policy” both through the political process and through the
religious belief of the policymakers.
The authors propose a three-pronged approach to increase interest in the
intersection of religion and abortion. First, foundations could provide
incentives to American groups already working in the field so that they could
collaborate with developing country organizations. Second, foundations could
engage both religious and secular scholars to study the topic in depth. But the
most promising tactic, according the study’s authors, is to provide incentives
to organizations working on religion and women’s rights or health to move to
address religion and sexuality and reproduction directly.
The 216-page report is mostly a listing of organizations which might be
induced through grant money to work at the intersection of religion and
abortion. Organizations from across the globe affiliated with all the major
world religions are included. Also listed is a long list of influential
pro-abortion groups including the Alan Guttmacher Institute, International
Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the International Women’s Health
Coalition, Population Action International, Catholics For a Free Choice (in
particular its Latin American affiliates), the Pro-Choice Religious Network,
the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and the Women’s Environment and
Development Organization (WEDO). Other big names include Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch and the World YWCA.
Apart from listing organizations that might qualify as grant recipients,
the report also highlights sixteen foundations which have financially supported
sexual and reproductive health and rights programs in the past. Six of the
sixteen foundations specifically mention abortion as a priority area. According
to the report, the capital assets of the foundations listed total more than $35
billion and approximately $500 million is given away in grant money each year.
Hybrid embryos: it's already happening in the UK
Briefing.
From SPUC: Scientists in England have reportedly created embryos by putting human DNA
into egg cells of a cow. The embryos survived for three days. Newcastle University researchers put human skin-cells in bovine eggs. They say spare human eggs are scarce and that the work has been licensed by the government's regulator. Hybrids will be debated by UK MPs, possibly next month, when they consider the government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill. [BBC, 1 April, and Financial Times, 2 April] Anthony Ozimic, SPUC political secretary, said: "The creation of human-animal hybrid embryos represents a disastrous setback for human dignity in Britain. It creates a category of beings regarded as sub-human who can be
used as raw material to benefit other members of the human family, effectively creating a new class of slaves. Although we cannot be certain of the nature of such embryos, those produced with a preponderance of human DNA would in all probability, according to experts, be human beings with human characteristics and capacities. By using animal eggs, such embryos could be generated in much greater numbers than if human eggs were used, leading to much greater loss of life." [SPUC, 1 April]
Monday, March 31, 2008
Condoms in Africa: a counter-attack
Human Life International creates waves in Africa with a counter-campaign on condoms: the truth! See the full story here.
Salford diocese gives platform to dissident
Local action as appropriate.
From CFNews: The Salford Diocesan website is advertising an April 5th meeting at which Julian Filowchowski will be the guest speaker at a public meeting of the Archbishop Romero Anniversary Justice and Peace Celebration organised by the Faith and Justice group.
Background alert : In Opening Up, edited by Filochowski and Peter Stanford -- published to mark the 60th birthday of Filowchowski's 'partner' Martin Pendergast -- there were a number of articles dissenting from the teaching of the magisterium, particularly on the question of homosexuality. In June 2006, at a 'liturgy' in London to celebrate the registration of their civil partnership, the following reflection was delivered by Father McDonagh. The occasion was 'a prophetic one, at least a partial realization of a dream, leading us further along the road to being honourably Catholic . . . in their being so honourably gay they have enabled us to be a little more honourably Catholic.'
Marriage being 'killed off' by Government
Briefing.
From CFNews: While the number of single, divorced or widowed people in Britain rose in 2006, the number marrying fell, producing the lowest marriage rates since records began in 1862. Part of the picture is a rise in the average age at which people marry-- up by almost five years for men since 1991, to 36.4 years, and just over 4.5 years for women, to 33.5. The average age at first marriage is now 31.8 years for men and 29.7 years for women, according to the Office for National Statistics. Marriage advocates lay much of the blame at the government's door.
The Civitas think-tank says politicians won't talk about marriage in case they offend single people. The Centre for Policy Studies' Jill Kirby says that by not supporting marriage financially and removing the terms 'marriage' and 'spouse' from many official documents, the government is 'effectively overseeing the death of marriage by killing it off'. Recent research by the Christian charity CARE found that three out of four families would be better off living apart than sharing a home under the current benefits system. For a family with one child and the wife at home, the premium would be almost £100 a week. Campaigners also point to causes such as the 'me' society, big divorce settlements in favour of women, and the fact that many young people have witnessed parental divorce. The cost of a home also makes many people put property acquisition ahead of a wedding ceremony.
Minister attacks Church over hybrids bill
Briefing. Alan Johnson is making attacking the Catholic Church a habit. Remember his attack on Church schools over 'homophobic bullying'.
From CFNews: The Health Secretary, Alan Johnson has launched an attack on leaders of the Church for their interventions in the row about embryo research. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph he said the Church had 'misrepresented' the HFE Bill and had explained the science of human-animal embryos in terms which he believed were 'profoundly wrong' and 'hperbolic'.. He said last week's decision to allow MPs a free vote against the most controversial sections of the proposed Bill was not a victory for the Church, but said that if votes were lost, it would be a defeat for scientific research.
In the same newspaper, Christopher Booker reminded readers, that was has been missing from the coverage of this story is any sense of how the Government has been hamstrung by surrendering its powers to the EU. 'Gordon Brown's Government has to risk so much political capital on the Bill . . . because it is bound by obligations under the 'Lisbon Process', which aims to make 'the European bio-technology sector's world leader, regulated by Brusssels'.
Meanwhile, its has been announced that Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the leader of Scotland's Catholic Church, who attacked the Government's controversial embryology laws has agreed to meet scientists involved in stem cell research. The Cardinal, who sparked a storm when he described plans to create human-animal embryos for research as 'monstrous', said he would be 'only too happy' to attend such a meeting. He also called for religious heads from other faiths to be involved, and urged the setting up of an body to advise the Government on complex ethical issues. Scientists and politicians welcomed the Cardinal's offer to discuss the issue, and Labour MP for Livingston Jim Devine suggested meeting on April 22. [Sunday Telegraph, Scotland on Sunday] 1435.13
Council of Europe's pro-abortion stand
Briefing.
From SPUC: SPUC has called on its supporters Europe-wide to contact the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly members to reject a report which demands the promotion of abortion everywhere in Europe, and compulsory sex educationa. The report will be considered during a plenary session next month (April). [SPUC director's blog, 18 March] The council has 47 member-states and is distinct from the EU.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
International campaign for 'Gay Pride' marches
Briefing. It is time for Catholics to take to the streets too. Why is the Rosary Crusade of Reparation in London, for example, relatively small (1,600)? In this conflict of values, we must stand up and be counted. Between them, the London and Brighton 'Pride' marches were reported to have totaled 400,000 people. There are far more Catholics than militant gays in the UK.
From CFNews: Only two cities in Europe have refused to participate in a campaign by Europe's leading homosexual lobby group to force the leaders of Europe's cities to allow the homosexual 'Gay Pride' demonstrations. But neither of the cities' leaders made any objections to the goals or activities of the homosexual activist movement. On the contrary, one said that his city wished 'every success' to the campaign.
The mayors of Riga and Tallinn, the capitals of Latvia and Estonia respectively, have politely declined to participate in a campaign launched by the International Lesbian and Gay Association-Europe (ILGA) to attempt to force the leaders of various European cities to hold 'Gay Pride' demonstrations.
The Gay Pride events have been one of the key tools around the world for normalizing homosexuality in public opinion and are widely supported by city authorities, businesses and non-governmental organisations in the countries where they are allowed.
The campaign is a response to the refusal by the former Mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczynski, to allow the demonstration that has in other countries been characterized by public nudity and lewd displays of simulated sex acts. Strongly Catholic Poland has been under heavy pressure from the European Union for its refusal to comply with the dictates of the homosexual political movement.
ILGA-Europe's letter to the mayors read, 'ILGA-Europe is seriously concerned that despite a wide international and European condemnation of bans on pride events and other public demonstrations by LGBT [lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgendered] people and their supporters, some Mayors and local authorities in Europe continue to discriminate and ban or restrict the rights of freedom of assembly and expression for LGBT people. That is why we are appealing to all Mayors of European cities. We sincerely hope that you will support our campaign and sign it.'
J?nis Birks, Mayor of Riga, wrote to the group saying that while he wished 'every success' to the campaign, the decision whether to participate in Gay Pride festivals should be left up to the competence of individual cities.
Edgar Savisaar, the Mayor of Tallinn, wrote that the issue is one of broad social interest and has forwarded the group's appeal to Tallinn City Council's education and culture commission. Tarmo Lausing, chairman of education and culture commission, said that the appeal was unnecessary. 'The commission felt that signing a petition like this would mean accepting what is not true and we would admit things which aren't true,' explained Lausing.
'This doesn't mean though that we don't consider protecting the rights of sexual minorities important. Tallinn definitely protects the rights of all minorities living here today and tomorrow.'
Mayor Birks wrote, 'The Riga City Council truly supports your initiative, greatly appreciates the actions of the campaign and all the possible positive effects generated by the project.' He added that the Riga City Council is 'very open to deepening and broadening our partnership in concrete initiatives in the years to come'.
Mayors and city councillors who have signed the agreement include those of Nicosia in Cyprus, Amsterdam, Winterthur in Switzerland, London, Stockholm, Cologne, Barcelona, Venice, Vienna, Bologna, Manchester, Copenhagen, Budapest, Ljubljana in Slovenia, Paris, Zürich, Berlin, Dublin and Luxembourg.
Muslims oppose hybrids bill
Briefing.
From CFNews:
Dr A. Majid Katme(IMA) emails : 'British Muslims fully support the Catholic Leaders, Ministers and MPs in their opposition to the (Human Fertilisation & Embryology Bill), the worst Bill in the history of Britain, they will continue with their letter campaign to the MPs in order to oppose this inhumane, destructive and immoral bill . . . Signed by:
-Islamic Medical Association(IMA)
-Muslim Doctors Association(MDA)
-Islamic Medical Ethics Forum(IMEF)
-Union of Muslim Organisations(UMO)
Hybrids bill: no free vote, but abstentions allowed
Update: Brown caves in: free vote allowed. See the BBC.
Update: Some Catholic Labour MPs who oppose the UK government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill may have rejected an offer to let them to abstain from voting and, instead, they want to vote against the measure. Mr Greg Pope, MP for Hyndburn, said "I have had hundreds of letters from constituents about human-animal hybrids. The idea that I turn round to them and say the chief whip has given me the day off from voting will cut no ice at all." [Telegraph, 8 March, and Daily Mail, 10 March] Mr Gordon Brown, prime minister, has stated that the bill is Government business, and any individual with a particular issue should discuss it with the chief whip.
Action 08/03/08: keep on lobbying your MPs. They must vote AGAINST this appalling bill.
From SPUC: MPs from the UK's Labour party will be allowed to abstain over their government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill. Mr Geoff Hoon MP, Labour chief whip, said MPs would be allowed to absent themselves rather than vote for the bill. He also argued that support for the medical research promoted by the bill was matter of conscience too. [Yorkshire Post, 7 March] More than 100 academics have called for a free vote. Signatories to a letter to the Times include Professor David Albert Jones, professor of bioethics at St Mary's University College, Middlesex, and Professor John Finnis, professor of law and legal philosophy at Oxford University. [Times, 7 March] SPUC is urging supporters and pro-life MPs to focus on opposing the unethical content of the bill. The question of allowing abstention or free votes is a fine point and should not obscure the wholly immoral nature of the bill.
CAUK in the press
Comment: the Telegraph says the Catholic Church is finding its voice in the debate about ethical issues, and cites Catholic Action UK as an example of a new breed of lobbying groups. It is interesting that they can't think of any other examples: CAUK is not exactly a major organisation. What has happened in recent years is the advent of the Catholic blogs in stimulating and coordinating protests, and the CAUK is proud to be part of that movement.
From the Telegraph: The Roman Catholic Church has led the ethical opposition to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill since its inception - and, in doing so, has rediscovered its status as one of the country's most powerful political lobbying groups.
...
In recent years, Catholic-based pressure groups have grown in stature and express increasingly strong views about issues that run counter to their doctrine.
Catholic Action UK, which was set up in the summer of 2006 to "facilitate protests by faithful Catholics against attacks on the Church and morality in the United Kingdom", has helped quash the Government's attempts to admit 25 per cent non-Catholic pupils into Catholic schools and a euthanasia Bill.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Graglia against Feminism: 6
A continuing series; see here for the introduction, and here for more on feminism in the Catholic Church in the UK.
From Domestic Tranquility pp84-85
When Charlotte Perkins Gilman derided the housewife as an economic parasite in 1898, most women probably remained blissfully unaware of her assault. Feminist derision, moreover, was refuted by President Theodore Roosevelt himself, declaring that a wife and mother "is not a parasite on society": "She is society. She is the one indispensable component part of society." Extolling the duties of a husband as the breadwinner and a wife as housewife and mother, Roosevelt observed that the man's work is not "as hard or as responsible as the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children": "This does not mean inequality of function, but it does mean that normally there must be dissimilarity of function. On the whole, I think the duty of the woman the more important, the more difficult, and the more honorable of the two; on the whole, I respect the woman who does her duty even more than I respect the man who does his." But when accusations of parasitism were resurrected in the 1960s and hurled against homemakers, there was no refuge from the salvos. Unless one altogether avoided contemporary books, magazines, newspapers, television, theater, and movies, escape from feminism's assault was impossible.
Monday, March 24, 2008
GMC: Catholic doctors must cooperate with abortion
Briefing: despite the many excellent responses to their earlier consultation, the GMC have reaffirmed in their guidlines that doctors opposed to abortion must cooperate in it: they must ensure that anyone wanting an abortion gets it, fast. Such cooperation is gravely morally wrong.
The GMC's guidlines do not have the force of law, but they will be referred to in any legal case on the matter. The key paragraphs are these (adressed to doctors):
Full document 'Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice' here.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Pope receives Muslim into the Church
Action: prayers, please, for Magdi Allam, received into the Catholic Church by the Holy Father during the Easter Vigil. This is clearly a big statement by the Pope about the Church's mission to convert all nations. The courageous Mr Allam needs our prayers.
Hat-tip to Damian Thompson, who has more commentary.
Mr Allam speaks: His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Cardinal O'Brien attacks 'monstrous' hybrids bill
Comment: H-T to Damian Thompson, who suggests that Gordon Brown is becoming the most anti-Catholic PM since Victorian times. Thompson is only interested in a narrow range of issues, which explains this odd judgment. Blair's legacy will take some beating, and Brown's worst policies are inherited from Blair: the SORs and closure of Catholic adoption agencies, euthanasia, easier abortion, sex education, the removal of religion as a charitable object, ignoring the plight of Catholics and other Christians in Iraq and China, etc. etc..
The scourge of family breakdown
Briefing.
From CFNews: The nuclear family
Hilary White writes : Britain has lost 'one of the most fundamental and universal features of human society', the idea of the nuclear family where children have a profound connection to their fathers, Melanie Philips told us this week in her column in the Daily Mail.
Philips was writing about Shannon Matthews, whose story occupied the attention of Britain's tabloid readers when she went missing after school in February. Nine year-old Shannon was found last week and police are investigating what happened. But the family's situation, in which Shannon's mother, Karen, has had seven children by five different men, has caught the attention of some who say that it is indicative of something terribly wrong... they just can't quite put their finger on exactly what.
At the same time, Britain is awash in gang violence, binge drinking, drug abuse, sex-trafficking, and nearly universal indifference to civic life. The media is full of speculation as to the cause of dozens of apparently random acts of violence, including murders, perpetrated by Britain's 'feral youth.'
But Melanie Philips has embarrassed them all by pointing out the blindingly obvious, the rampaging elephant in Britain's sitting room, when she pointed to an extraordinary statement from Karen Matthews. Several media reports on the case said that Karen Matthews believes that nine year-old Shannon and her ten year-old brother are 'twins,' because they are the children of the same father.
* * *
The author of 'Londonistan' and a columnist and blogger for the Spectator, wrote of Britain's 'underclass composed of whole communities where committed fathers are so rare that any child who actually has one risks being bullied.'
'Where sex is reduced to an animal activity devoid of love or human dignity, and boys impregnate two, three, four girls with scarcely a second thought. Where successive generations of women have never known what it is to be loved and cherished by both their parents throughout their childhood.'
Karen Matthews' description of her two children born a year apart to the same father as 'twins' is one of many small indicators, like the thin scratchings on a seismograph, that indicate a social and cultural calamity unprecedented in British history.
Half of England's marriages end in divorce, a third in Scotland and this issue is almost never addressed in Parliament. The BBC tells us that London is not only the most expensive city in the world to live in, it is the divorce capital of the world with a growing industry of 'divorce tourism'. There were more than 150,000 divorces in the UK last year.
But even more alarming is that most people who want to live together simply no longer bother with the formality of a wedding. In 1950, there were 336,000 first marriages; in 2000, there were 180,000 first marriages, a percentage change of - 46 per cent.
Melanie Philips writes that the children of the post-marriage world 'are simply abandoned in a twilight world where the words 'family' or 'relatives' lose all meaning, as the transient men passing through their mothers' lives leave them with an ever-lengthening trail of 'step-fathers' or 'uncles' who have no biological connection with them whatsoever.'
Her remarks resonated with me personally, since I remember the first rumblings of this cataclysmic cultural quake and lived through the Divorce Wave. I am not sure if the history of this cultural cataclysm, that has started to be studied and written about only recently, adequately takes into account the incredible speed with which the change came.
* * *
I have always enjoyed disaster movies about the end of the world. Remember that 1998 made-for-tv film, Deep Impact, in which an asteroid hits the earth and most of the continental land masses are engulfed with a gigantic tidal wave? When I think of the social shift from marriage and family life to...well, whatever we have now, I think of that scene in the film in which the intrepid girl-reporter stands on the beach with her father watching helplessly as a thousand foot high wall of water rushes at them at hundreds of miles an hour.
It is no wonder that nothing was done about it, or even written about it, until it was too late.
I know that a lot of Catholics say that the legalization of contraception was the start, but I really think the civilizational apocalypse started when we decided it was not necessary for married people to remain married. Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, of course, decided that things in Canada would move along more smoothly if he got all the bits and pieces of the apocalypse into one year and so we had the Divorce Act of 1968 immediately followed by the Omnibus Bill legalising abortion, in case anyone was left in any doubt as to what easy no-fault divorce was meant to lead to.
I was two and three when the Acts were passed. By the time I was in school a few years later, the wave from that quake was only beginning to build offshore, but it picked up speed and strength astonishingly quickly.
In the early part of the Divorce Wave, when I was starting school, most of the other kids lived with both married parents. When I was in early elementary school, the first generation of hippies had yet to break up with their first sets of 'partners'. Even at the experimental hippie free school I was sent to in 1974, I was pretty much the only kid in school who had weekly scheduled 'visits' with daddy.
In those days the partner turn-over rate was a lot slower. 'Relationships' lasted years, sometimes as many as four or five, and marriage was still fairly common. This lasted until we, the first generation, made it to about the fifth grade. It would be another ten years at least before these vestigial conventions were abandoned and the partner turn-over was reduced to the few months or weeks we enjoy now.
Three years later, by the time I started junior high school ('middle school'; grades 8-10) I knew almost no one whose parents were still together and the partner turn-over had increased to the point where most of the mothers and all of the fathers were on 'partner' number three or four.
I recall that we, the early generation of the children of divorce, were broadly pitied and were offered groups at the Y with titles like 'The Divorced Kids Group' where the kids could come and 'share' how they felt about their universe coming abruptly to a halt and the lights going out.
But after that early blip of attention, there was little said about the social malaise until in the 1980s articles began to appear in the women's magazines about the kids who, for some reason, just couldn't be bothered about anything. Generation X, the children of the hippies, the slacker generation who were in a state of near catatonic apathy and hopelessness, had no plans, had no hopes, no aspirations and were filled with cynicism and loathing for everything their parents cared about.
It was about this time that the suicide statistics started to be really alarming for kids born after 1965. This was the generation of Kurt Cobain, born a year before me and fifty miles away, the lead singer of the Seattle 'Grunge' band Nirvana, who personified this generation's rage and despair, and whose suicide would be his last angry gesture.
Melanie describes an entire generation, now branching into three or four, who simply made no plans for the future, who knew that everything their elders said to them was a lie, who learned from their parents' fecklessness that no other human being could be trusted, unless it was to trust them to be self-serving and callous.
I find it refreshing and surprising that the connections between the Divorce Cataclysm and the 'youth crime' problem are finally being made out loud, albeit four decades too late.
Read Melanie Philips' article, Reaping the Whirlwind, here.
Planned Parenthood racist
Briefing. PP like the whole eugenics, contraception, abortion and sex-ed movement was born in the 1920s and 1930s in order to reduce the population of the 'poor' and 'inferior races'. Many of the founders of the movement, such as Sanger, the founder of PP, are on record as racists and Nazi sympathisers. Popular disgust at the Nazi experience put the whole movement onto the back foot for 20 years, but with some changed names ('The Eugenics Society' -> 'The Galton Society" etc.) they survived and now they are back peddling the same wares.
In the context of American political correctness (PP is supposed to be a 'liberal', left-leaning organisation) and sensitivity to race this video is astonishing.
Huge numbers of repeat abortions in the UK
Briefing. The Daily Mail says it all: 1,300 women have had at least FIVE abortions. Abortion is being used as a form of contraception. The Government line is that more contraception is needed, but this is clearly absurd. Few women indeed lack either knowledge about or access to contraception. Rather, these conceptions are taking place either as a result of contraceptive failure, or an unwillingness to use contraception. Why bother with contraception if you can have an abortion? No reason: if you believe what the Government says about how safe and wonderful it is.
H-T to Fr Tim Finnigan, who has more background and commentary.
From CFNews: Thirty teenagers weekly have repeat abortion Nearly 30 teenage girls a week are visiting hospitals and clinics for a second or even third abortion, official figures disclose. Information released by the Department of Health shows that 193,737 women had abortions in 2006 and 17,173 were under 18. Of the teenagers, 1,341 were recorded as having their second termination. It was the third procedure for 82 of them. The figures led to claims that some women were using abortion as an alternative form of contraception. It will intensify the debate about terminations just as MPs prepare to vote on tightening up abortion laws. Mark Pritchard, the pro-life Conservative MP who obtained the figures in a parliamentary answer, said access to abortion must be more tightly regulated. 'These are shocking and disturbing figures and the Government must put in place a task force to investigate why multiple and repeat abortions are taking place in such large numbers,' he said. Pro-life MPs from both the Labour and Tory benches are said to be preparing amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that would lower the abortion time limit from its current level of 24 weeks.
