{"id":9912,"date":"2025-11-09T11:14:54","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T11:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=9912"},"modified":"2025-11-09T11:14:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T11:14:54","slug":"catholic-church-deeply-distressed-by-extreme-abortion-law-proposals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=9912","title":{"rendered":"Catholic Church ‘deeply distressed’ by extreme abortion law proposals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n \u00a0(Photo: Getty\/iStock)<\/span><\/p>\n

Archbishop John Sherrington has added his voice to those concerned about a controversial amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that would effectively legalise abortion up to the point of birth.<\/p>\n

The amendment removes all criminal sanctions from abortion and was passed by the House of Commons earlier this year and is currently being debated in the House of Lords.<\/p>\n

Archbishop Sherrington, who is the Lead Bishop for Life Issues for the Catholic Church in England and Wales, said he was \u201cdeeply distressed\u201d at the proposal, adding that it threatened the safety of vulnerable women as well as unborn children.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis amendment would allow women to perform abortions at home, up to birth, regardless of the circumstances,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Such a law places the health of women at greater risk as well as placing them at risk of coercion, as more women may use abortion pills to perform late-term, \u2018DIY\u2019 abortions.<\/p>\n

“The amendment also threatens the lives of many more children, who could be aborted after the current 24-week limit.”<\/p>\n

The archbishop said he supported an amendment proposed by Baroness Monckton that would repeal the Commons amendment, and another proposal that would reinstate the requirement for in-person medical consultations before an abortion could be granted.<\/p>\n

Opposition to unlimited abortion has been strong in the Lords. Crossbench peer Lord Alton said that the Commons had voted for a \u201cgrotesque measure\u201d and denounced campaigners for turning a bill that was supposed to be about preventing crime into an abortion battleground.<\/p>\n

\u201cHijacking\u00a0an unrelated Bill to try to force through what would be the\u00a0biggest\u00a0change to abortion law in this country since the Abortion Act in 1967 is no way to make law,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At present British law permits abortion up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy, while the average in the European Union\u00a0is 12\u00a0weeks. Around a quarter of a million babies are aborted every year at present and it is estimated that almost 11 million babies have been terminated since the passage of the Abortion Act in 1967.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0(Photo: Getty\/iStock) Archbishop John Sherrington has added his voice to those concerned about a controversial amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that would effectively legalise abortion up to the point of birth. The amendment removes all criminal sanctions from abortion and was passed by the House of Commons earlier this year and is currently<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[205,1730,82,1279,1731,1732,1733,1734],"class_list":["post-9912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-christian-living","tag-abortion","tag-catholic","tag-church","tag-deeply","tag-distressed","tag-extreme","tag-law","tag-proposals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}