SPUC supports Scallon in vote dispute

The UK Society for the Protection of Unborn Children in the United Kingdom has come out in favour of Dana Rosemary Scallon in a dispute between Ms Scallon and the the Catholic hierarchy.

Describing the Irish abortion referendum campaign as "totally misleading", the UK SPUC spokesman, Mr John Smeaton, said Ms Scallon had been unfairly criticised over her support for the vote No campaign.

"When the debate on the amendment began, Cardinal Connell said that he did not want people going at each others' throats. However the cardinal and his fellow clergy are now attacking one of Ireland's foremost champions of the pro-life cause."

Mr Smeaton also accused the Irish bishops of "overstepping their competence by making a political judgment on a moral matter and of mistakenly defining that 'incompetent' judgment as an act of their moral teaching office". UK SPUC claims it has consulted a Rome-based firm of canon lawyers which, it claims, has described the Irish bishops statement on the referendum as unfortunate and erroneous.

It said its advice was that the constitutional change envisaged by the referendum would "remove the criminal law's protection for the pre-implantation embryo, thus rendering lawful the abortion inducing morning-after pill and other abortifacient drugs and devices". Mr Smeaton believed the change would open the door to human embryo experimentation, increase the number of women having abortions and would "render unborn children even more vulnerable to future liberal interpretations of the law".