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Abortion law review group is a sham says Bishop Keenan
The group set up to recommend changes to abortion laws principally consists of pro-decriminalisation campaigners
Recently, I’ve hoped that the trust Scots had in our parliament could recover from the doldrums in which it languishes. Last year’s Scottish Social Attitudes Survey found trust in the Scottish government at its lowest level since devolution, with less than half of us trusting it to act in our best interests. But discovering the identity of the members chosen by the government for its supposedly independent abortion law review expert working group, tasked with recommending possible changes to abortion laws, has dealt my hopes a blow.
Of 13 members, six are abortion providers or practitioners and 10 have already expressed a view in favour or represent organisations that support decriminalisation of abortion. None represent a pro-life constituency or organisation. In terms of membership alone, the “expert group” lacks both credibility and legitimacy.
Its terms of reference expect members to be “respectful of all views and opinions expressed within the group” and yet, before a ball is kicked, as it were, it has censored any contradictory views and opinions, of which there are many, questioning the current liberality of our abortion laws.
Right off the bat, the expert group has established a “non-regression principle”, ensuring that their discussions and advice to the government will countenance no reduction in time limits or grounds for abortion, no matter what evidence is presented. The norm in Europe is a 12-week limit and Britain’s 24 weeks is now beyond the stage of viability. Increasingly, babies born before 24 weeks will survive.
Solid medical consensus holds that a unique human life begins at conception and a decent constituency of Scottish citizens concurs with the Catholic Church that this human life merits some social respect and legal protection at some point in the womb. Many Scots raise an eyebrow at the description of abortion as healthcare, when that abortion sadly ends another human life with all its potential.
These reasonable positions merit a hearing in any expert group which the government has set up and on which it intends to depend. Yet the government has ensured that the group’s report will commend decriminalisation, effectively allowing the right to abortion for any reason up until birth. The set-up of this expert group will no doubt upset pro-lifers who already see it as a sham, but it will do more than that. It will be another nail in the coffin of the trust Scottish citizens once placed in government to treat them fairly, and of its claim to act with integrity.


Bishop John Keenan of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paisley has condemned a “supposedly independent abortion law review” into Scotland’s abortion law for excluding all pro-life representation.

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