From Catholic News Service

Cardinal asks British government to allow review of abortion law

By Simon Caldwell, Catholic News Service

LONDON (CNS) -- Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster has asked a top British government official to allow a review of the country's abortion laws.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor met privately in London with Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt June 21 to ask that the 1967 Abortion Act be scrutinized by a parliamentary committee.

Hewitt had rejected calls from politicians for a vote to decrease the time limit for legal abortions, now allowed until 24 weeks, following opinion polls that revealed the majority of women are uncomfortable with current laws.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Conner said in a statement after the meeting that "there is substantial and growing disquiet in Britain at the numbers of abortions."

"Our laws should reflect this disquiet," he said. "I welcome what appears to be a moral awakening, especially among women, to the reality that abortion is the deliberate ending of a human life.

"Millions of people, especially women, would like to see a review of the current law," he added. "I hope that members of both houses of Parliament will respond by setting up a joint committee to carry out a thorough review of the 1967 Abortion Act."

However, a spokesman for the Department of Health said June 21 that the government "has no plans to change the law on abortion."

Cardinal Murphy-O'Conner said he would welcome any move to reduce the number of abortions in Britain but insisted that the church would continue to state that all abortion was wrong.

Labor Party legislator Geraldine Smith, a Catholic, put forward a motion June 15, asking the government to set up a committee to "consider the scientific, medical and social changes in relation to abortion that have taken place since 1967, with a view to presenting options for new legislation."

The motion has been signed by more than 30 legislators from across the political spectrum and from both sides of the abortion debate.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien of St. Andrews and Edinburgh June 15 to discuss reopening the abortion debate. The cardinal's spokesman, Peter Kearney, told Catholic News Service June 19 that Blair conceded there were new grounds to reopen the 1967 Abortion Act, including "some troubling issues" surrounding the age that babies could survive independently outside the mother's womb.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor had requested a meeting with Hewitt in January after she announced that she would not buckle under pressure to change the law. They originally were scheduled to meet in March, but the cardinal was forced to cancel to attend a consistory in Rome.

Mounting public unease about abortion has been reflected repeatedly in British opinion polls. A Market and Opinion Research International poll published in January revealed that 47 percent of women wanted the number of weeks abortions can be performed cut, while 10 percent wanted an outright ban on the procedure.

Meanwhile, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor also asked Hewitt to support his proposal for a national bioethics commission, with a broad panel of experts having no executive powers, as a replacement for the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority.

The cardinal is concerned that the authority, which is not elected, has been setting policy on such controversial questions as the creation of babies to provide siblings with matching donor tissue, and he says such matters should be decided by the country's elected representatives in Parliament.

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