Written submission from Mr Stewart Cowan (ANI0345)
1) This is an issue for the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is not sitting at present, but direct rule has not been imposed and even it it had been, this contentious issue is for the people of Northern Ireland to decide, and them alone.
That not one member on the Women and Equalities Committee represents a seat in Northern Ireland is further evidence that they have no right whatsoever to impose any change in the abortion laws in the Province.
2) Abortion ends the life of a human being: fact. A new life is created at conception. Research conducted by ‘Both Lives Matter’ in 2017 found that around 100,000 people are alive today who would otherwise not be if Northern Ireland had followed the rest of the United Kingdom in adopting the 1967 Abortion Act.
I understand that nearly all abortions in England, Wales and Scotland are illegal under the 1967 Act, such is the willingness of the medical profession to agree to terminations of human lives on the flimsiest of grounds. The figure of 98% is commonly accepted for abortions for “social” reasons, i.e. not for medical reasons.
The unborn in England, Wales and Scotland are cruelly discriminated against if they are disabled. For example, 90% of unborn children diagnosed with Down’s syndrome are killed and can ‘legally’ have their lives ended right up to birth. This is so clearly barbaric, that it should be outlawed as a matter of the utmost principle, not promoted as some kind of “right”.
3) Human rights laws do not make it a “right” to have an abortion, just because one unelected body of the UN decided it should be so. Traditional human rights legislation was supposedly designed to protect individuals and their freedoms. What more urgent protection does a person need than one that saves his/her life?
It is a mistake, made by many, that not being fully developed is the same as not being fully human. When does a person become human? It is at or shortly after conception when all the instructions are there to produce the human being.
As adults, we are composed of completely different chemicals than when we were children. Personhood transcends chemistry. An abortion separates the soul from the living unborn human being.
I urge the Committee to respect the people of Northern Ireland and to trust them to decide how to handle these matters, which is their right, and not to attempt to reduce their values to those of England, Wales and Scotland, which have literally created a genocide.
Not fully developed, BUT fully human:
