Cardinal: 'Forces of Darkness' Behind British Anti-Life Laws

Last Wednesday, MPs voted to pass legislation which allows the creation of cloned human beings and human/animal hybrids for experimentation.

LONDON (LifeSiteNews) - The "forces of darkness have distorted the laws and consciences" of the British and the government's anti-life Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) bill is the result, Keith Cardinal O'Brien of Edinburgh told a conference of pro-life advocates in Glasgow this weekend.

Speaking at the Annual Conference of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), the Cardinal said that although SPUC has his full support, he is "not happy in that this Society still has to exist."

"One might hope that in the not-too-distant future we would have a country where there was respect for all human life, born or unborn; where there was respect for unborn children in the womb; and consequently where there was no need for a society such as SPUC."

Last Wednesday, MPs voted by 355 to 129 to pass the government's HFE bill, that allows the creation of cloned human beings and human/animal hybrids for experimentation, as well as a host of other anti-life and anti-family provisions.

The bill now moves on to the House of Lords for debate and ratification. Anthony Ozimic, the political secretary of SPUC told LifeSiteNews.com that the chances of the bill being amended or rejected in the House of Lords are slim to nil. The Peers are restricted by Parliamentary procedure to pass the bill without changes, he said. "All that remains, is for pro-life people to register a protest."

Citing the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, Cardinal O'Brien spoke of the "hundreds of millions of lives" lost by abortion that testify "to the fact that this elaborate system of human rights law has failed most miserably in defending the most basic of all of these rights: the right to life."

"The harsh reality is that the noble words of so many high blown declarations have been matched with a barbaric indifference to the rights of the unborn...[W]e are facing a crisis in society and we must ask ourselves 'Is human life important to us or is it not?'"

But Cardinal O'Brien said that the problem facing the abortion societies of the west cannot be solved through political or legal means alone. The Culture of Death, he said, has come "as we have increasingly pushed God to the periphery of our lives." Abortion-supporting politicians, he said, are products of an abortion-supporting culture. The solution is the creation of a "good society" ... "regardless of what laws exist on the statute books."

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His point was supported in an article this week by SPUC director John Smeaton who warned pro-life Britons not to expect a turn-around on abortion should the currently ruling Labour party be replaced by the David Cameron Tories. Despite Cameron's previously reported support for an attempt to reduce the legal gestational age limit on abortion, the Independent reported last week that Tory frontbenchers are calling for a "thorough discussion of the 1967 Abortion Act, including proposals to cut the 24-week time limit as well as proposals to liberalise the law."

Smeaton warns that a parliamentary debate on the upper limit for abortion will be a political trade-off in exchange for "widening the law so that many more babies will be killed and women damaged by abortion."

Smeaton pointed to the Tories who supported the HFE bill in last week's vote, who made up about a quarter of the Tory caucus. These included party leader David Cameron who polls continue to suggest will be the next Prime Minister of Britain; George Osborne, shadow chancellor, and four shadow secretaries of state (ministers), including Andrew Lansley, shadow health secretary. Other prominent Conservatives who supported the bill included twelve frontbenchers and other senior Conservative officials.

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