Late abortions of "less than perfect" foetuses are the subject of a secrecy row with the Government

Late abortions of "less than perfect" foetuses are the subject of a secrecy row with the Government

A British paper, the Telegraph, has a story on a legal battle between an entity I gather is charged with implementing their "Freedom of Information Act," and a pro-abortion rights entity called, oddly "the Department of Health," which has begun withholding health statistics it used to publish, seemingly on political grounds.

I don't pretend to know, much less understand, the legal ramifications or technicalities of this, and I am disturbed by the implied claim that there are probably unborn babies privately murdered because they have webbed toes without any corroberative detail.

One of my brother has some webbed toes -- who would have thought that was even thought of a disability much less a "serious risk of physical or mental abnormality."

Although as I cut and paste that phrase I realize it does not say what I thought -- yes, I suppose if something was a dead certainty, that would be "a serious risk."

But surely the intent was to allow such private murders of the unborn when there was a "risk of SERIOUS ABNORMALITY," not a serious risk of a minor abnormality.

For the love of pete, freckles are an abnormality, aren't they? Not to mention eczema, really big feet...hell, perfect pitch is an abnormality, suppose they found a pre-natal test for that?

It was the Jepson suit mentioned in the article, appearing in the news on the day I received a gift magazine subscription and the magazine fell open to a Smile Train ad that first caught my attention of this perversion of "health care" in the UK.

Such evil.

Such evil...

Prof Stuart Campbell, the leading obstetrician whose 3D-scan images of babies "walking in the womb" at 12 weeks led to calls for a lowering of the 24-week limit for social abortion, said last night: "It is a disgraceful situation for this data to be suppressed.

"This is not about whether one agrees with abortion. These statistics used to be published, now they are being withheld.

"Transparency is the essence of medicine. If we don't have that, all sorts of wrongdoing can go on. I am not saying that using abortion is doing wrong, but we need to see the data in order to understand what is happening." Health chiefs stopped publishing full abortion data three years ago after a public outcry over the termination of a foetus with a cleft palate at 28 weeks' gestation. The legality of this late abortion, carried out in 2001, was challenged by a Church of England curate, Joanna Jepson, who was born with a congenital jaw defect.

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Update: one googled source lists the standard as " evidence of extreme foetal abnormality" another as "on account of congenital anomalies."
I am now very curious as to how the British law reads.