Disability rights activist Heidi Crowter has announced she will take her campaign against the UK’s “discriminatory” abortion laws to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Crowter, who has Down’s Syndrome, has criticised current legislation where a 24-week time limit for abortion applies unless “there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”. The disabilities in this category include Down’s Syndrome.
Crowter’s previous bid to reform UK law to apply the 24 week limit across the board was rejected in September 2021 and November of last year at the UK High Court and Court of Appeal respectively.
Judges concluded the provisions in the Abortion Act did not interfere with the rights of the “living disabled”, and so did not constitute a breach of anti-discrimination law as Crowter and her supporters had argued.
Ms Crowter, 27, from Coventry, said she was now taking her case to the ECHR “because it is downright discrimination that people with disabilities are treated differently”.
She added: “In 2023, we live in a society where disabled people are valued equally after birth but not in the womb.”
Ms Crowter said she was seeking to appeal to the ECHR after the UK Supreme Court refused to hear her case.
According to the campaign group Don’t Screen Us Out, which campaigns for a change to the law along the same lines as Crowter, a European Court ruling could “set a legal precedent for all 46 countries that are members of the Council of Europe”.
The news comes as the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales released materials for this year’s Day for Life, due to fall on 18 June, focusing on the experience of those who have undergone an abortion.
The “Day for Life message” has in previous years been composed by the bishops’ conference, but this year it was written by a woman who procured an abortion as a teenager. The woman, “Jane”, later found healing and support through the Catholic organisation Rachel’s Vineyard.
An introductory note explains that “Voices of women who have had an abortion are often silent in Church and in society.”
This year’s message “hopes to break this silence and offer opportunities for hope, healing and reconciliation”.
Other resources released by the bishops for Day for Life include a selection of testimonies on healing from abortion, a selection of resources and organisations offering help for those affected by abortion and prayers for the “intercession of St Joseph, patron of the unborn and defender of life”.
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