Abortion Bill gets Anglican support

From a Special Correspondent QUALIFIED support for Mr James White's efforts to tighten the 1%7 Abortion Act has been given by the General Synod of the Church of Fngland.
It hacked "progress towards early enactment" of his Abortion (Amendment) Bill, but it did so "without necessarily endorsing every detailed point" in it. The Bill was described as going some way towards correcting the manifest abuses of the present abortion law."
Mr Robert Edwards, vicechairman of the Streatham branch of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, gave the impression that the Bill didnot go far enough in restoring the legal position that existed just after for perhaps even before) the Bourne judgment of 193K, which was used as the guideline on abortion until the 1967 Act.
But the reservations of a significant minority were in the opposite direction. •About third of the synod's members supported an amendment moved by Sr Marion Eva, a consultant anaesthetist before she became a nun.
She accused the Bill of doing "less than necessary justice to the Complexities of the problem" and of being likely to "create serious new dilemmas for all involved."
One clause for disquiet was Clause II, which would reverse the onus of proof. Not everyone was consinced that this applied merely to charges relating to the certification and notification of abortions.
Another was the clause forbidding advice on abortion to be given to a girl under 16 unless her parent were present. This. said Sr Marion Eva, was "out of touch with the realities of the situation." Some girls just would not or could not confide in their parents.
One of those who felt the 1967 Abortion Act needed a brake, but that Mr White's Bill was the wrong brake was the new Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev David Sheppard. Not so long ago, he thought there was "an absolutely clear Christian line" on abortion. But the "shrill tone" of literature put out by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and the society's habit of questioning the honesty and motives of those who disagreed with it, had set him thinking about his stand.
"Most of us believe that abortion is always an evil," he said. "but that sometimes there are greater evils."
The chairman of the House of Laity. Professor Norman Anderson, fully backed the synod's qualified support. He was not "wholly satisfied" with it and hoped it would come out of the select committee in an improved form.
"I am not an extremist in this matter," he said. "1 cannot go along with those who would stigmatise s every abortion as murder."
But the attempt had to be made to -tighten up the 1967 Act's "hopelessly inadequate" control of abortion, and although he was not happy with all the terms of Mr White's Bill, he strongly supported the criteria of "grave risk" and "serious injury" reintroduced by its first clause.
The synod called for support for organisations providing a practical alternative to abortion and condemned victimisation of medical staff opposed to abortion.