Every voter and politician must resist attacks on the right to life, and Catholic politicians must do so as both a human rights matter and as a “fundamental matter of our faith,” Northern Ireland’s Catholic bishops have said ahead of the Dec. 12 U.K. general election. “We have consistently said that the equal right to life, and love, of a mother and her unborn child, is so fundamental to the common good of every society that citizens deserve the fullest participation in the democratic debate about the legislation which governs it,” Northern Ireland’s bishops said Dec. 5.
Northern Ireland’s strong laws against abortion were drastically weakened Oct. 21, under an act of the U.K. Parliament that took effect due to the absence of a ruling executive in the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Catholic Parliamentary Office, an agency of the Scottish bishops’ conference, also reports on its website the votes of politicians on several bills, organized by parliamentary constituency. These votes include the decriminalization of abortion, which the official said would clear the way for “abortion on demand, for any reason, up to birth.” MPs’ votes on a bill to legalize assisted suicide are also recorded, as are how MPs voted on the parliamentary act which imposed permissive abortion laws and same-sex marriage on Northern Ireland.
Distributions of a leaflet version of this information by priests in the Angus area prompted accusations of favoritism towards the local Conservative Party candidate because the leaflets noted the Scottish National Party candidate’s pro-abortion rights stand, the newspaper The National reports. A spokesman for the Scottish Catholic Church rejected this claim.
“As you will be aware 59 different messages were sent out each one referencing the voting record of the incumbent MP. They show a range of voting behavior and do not indicate support or otherwise for any candidate, rather they offer publicly available information to parishioners on the most fundamental moral issues … addressed in the last parliament,” the spokesman said. CNA
