Abortion distortion: using the coronavirus to further the abortion agenda

The Christian Legal Centre’s Roger Kiska comments on the use of the coronavirus crisis to further the abortion agenda internationally.

On 23 March, before removing it from their Twitter feed, the Department for Health and Social Care tweeted that that they were introducing the implementation of ‘Do It Yourself’ home abortions, also known as telemedicine abortions. Before this proposal, abortions could only take place in hospitals or abortion clinics approved by the Secretary of State.

It then claimed the move was an administrative error, before doing a double U-turn and reintroducing DYI abortions on 30 March. The Department enacted the new measure under the premise that it was necessary to protect women during the coronavirus epidemic despite the fact that Parliament had explicitly chosen not to enact the measures when they passed the Coronavirus Act 2020.

The aggressive push of abortion as an essential service, or even as a human right, is not novel to the United Kingdom. Abortion lobbyists, and even intergovernmental agencies, have been hard at work capitalising on the coronavirus pandemic to further the cause of making abortion a sacrosanct right.

Outside of the UK

People who have been anxiously following the pandemic news over the last weeks and months are well aware that the World Health Organisation has been a leading voice in favour of restrictive coronavirus measures similar to those used in Wuhan, China at the outset of the crisis. The UN Agency was vocal that countries must lock down to attack the virus. The same World Health Organisation, however, has also been calling on governments around the world to declare abortion an essential health service that needs to be safeguarded. It might surprise some that in fact, the World Health Organisation has been a leading cheerleader in enshrining abortion as a human right.

It should also be noted that the second largest benefactor of WHO, after the Untied States of America, is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has not been shy about its promotion or funding of abortion. That promotion has included massive donations to abortion providers like International Planned Parenthood Federation. These providers have very deep pockets indeed. Planned Parenthood alone, a member of that federation, according to its own 2018/19 financial report, is worth more than 2.2 billion USD.

Like WHO, the United Nations Population Fund has also been very vocal about presenting abortion as an essential human right during the pandemic. The truth is, that while abortion is nowhere mentioned in any binding UN document as a right, since the 1996 “Roundtable of Human Rights Treaty Bodies on Human Rights Approaches to Women’s Health, with a Focus on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights” in Glen Cove, New York, several UN Agencies and Special Rapporteurs, meeting with abortion lobbyists, decided to create a right to abortion by stealth. The result has been UN Committees creating new obligations regarding abortion nowhere found in the treaties themselves. Complicit governments, like the United Kingdom, have then used the reports of those same committees to further liberalise abortion within their own jurisdictions. Case in point, Westminster’s implementation of UN Committee recommendations to require Northern Ireland to permit liberal abortion measures.

Strategic Litigation and Lobbying

What we have seen as a result of lockdown measures, particularly in the United States, has been this very same abortion lobby bringing lawsuit after lawsuit in an attempt to label abortion as an essential service. In Ohio, Alabama and Oklahoma, abortion activists successfully obtained temporary restraining orders (TRO) on state mandates which deem abortion to be elective, rather than essential. A TRO was also successfully obtained against Texas for doing the same, before it was overturned by the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In Canada, abortion lobbyists have been much more successful, with abortion deemed an essential procedure across all of the provinces.

Abortion over cancer care

The coronavirus pandemic has had a major impact on healthcare, and so much more. What is perhaps most disturbing is that vital cancer care for many, as well as cancer screenings, are being put on hold while abortion is not only being labelled as essential, it is being liberalised.

The abortion industry is big business. It has proven that it has enormous sway both domestically and with intergovernmental agencies within the United Nations. It is now using the current pandemic as a means to an end; that end being the liberalisation of abortion to the point of decriminalisation. Its efforts, as was the case in Glen Cove in 1996, and is still the case as evidenced by the government’s double U-turn on DYI abortions, have often been dishonest.

On Tuesday, 19 May, Christian Concern is taking a stand against these efforts. It is taking a stand for the unborn child, for transparency and the rule of law, and for the health and safety of women. Much is riding on Christian Concern’s judicial review of the government’s DIY abortion measures. We ask for your support and your prayers. The time to act is now.