Catholic bishop enters abortion debate
Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Birmingham, called on parishioners at St Chad's Cathedral in the city to keep the issue alive in the run-up to the General Election to end the "dreadful" situation of Britain's abortion laws.
Last week, Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that religion should not play a central role in a general election campaign and said it would be "unhealthy" if religion held centre stage in British politics as it does in the USA.
But the Most Reverend Nichols echoed the leader of Scotland's Roman Catholics, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who used his Easter message yesterday to urge members of the Church to challenge would-be MPs on "pro-life" issues.
And he blamed MPs for making religion a political issue by advertising their own beliefs on issues.
He said: "This shows up the awfulness and callousness of the destruction of life, especially innocent and vulnerable life, in its first beginnings and in its last stages.
"We should be absolutely clear that it is our politicians who take decisions about how life is to be respected, or not, in our laws.
"It is politicians who have enacted the series of abortion laws leading to the dreadful situation we have today. It is politicians who are shaping the Mental Capacity Bill. It is politicians who propose how we should view these crucial issues."
Reverend Nichols said calls for gender selection and embryo experiments, in the report by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, would give prospective parents "the right to kill those that are not wanted."
He added: "These are profoundly moral issues that touch on our most fundamental religious beliefs, and our politicians must be asked to account for their actions which they claim to make on our behalf.
"The protest that religion is to be kept out of politics is already rejected by the actions of our politicians themselves."
Calling for Catholics to pursue the political debate he added: "It is our way of life that will shape our politics, not our politics that should shape our way of life.
"Let us be courageous builders of a culture of life, by the way we care lovingly for our elderly, respect and nurture our children, put the family at the heart of our efforts and speak constantly of the values of every human life."
Cardinal O'Brien, in his homily at St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, condemned a call by a group of MPs for couples undergoing fertility treatment to be allowed to choose the sex of their baby.
The Cardinal, the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, also suggested society's moral values were "called into question" by the practice of abortion.
