Displaying items by tag: Law

The Alabama senate has passed a law that says abortions should not be allowed in any circumstances apart from ‘risk to the mother's life’. A British Christian researcher, Katie Brookfield, disagreed with Alabama’s ruling. ‘The reality is that making abortion illegal does not end abortion, it drives it underground where it's extremely dangerous.’ Meanwhile, a pro-life campaigner said, ‘The Alabama ruling is a fantastic step in the right direction. But you can't celebrate it without taking a long hard look at our own situation. The UK government is pushing to decriminalise abortion totally up to 24 weeks, not recognising there are two people in the case of abortion. This is happening because the UK church, like the priest and the Levi, is choosing to look the other way, walk on the other side of the road and not see the truth. These little human beings are being disposed of and denied burial through every single abortion procedure.’

After receiving 430 letters of concern over proposed new regulations for Relationships and Sex Education, the House of Lords will now publicly debate the issue first, rather than just voting. The House of Commons voted to pass the new regulations on 27 March, but the Lords still have the power to prevent them from becoming law. The date of the debate has not yet been set. Pray that as the Lords debate the proposals, they will recognise the concerns of Christians and many other parents about the steady erosion of parents’ freedom to determine how to teach their children about morals, sexuality and gender ‘in conformity with their religious and philosophical convictions’. This freedom is guaranteed by the first protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights.

An Iranian man seeking refuge in the UK has had his claim refused by the Home Office who wrote to say that his decision to convert to what he described as ‘peaceful’ Christianity and to leave Islam because ‘there is violence, rage and revenge’ was inconsistent. The letter quotes verses from Exodus, Matthew and Revelation as examples ‘inconsistent with a peaceful religion’. Recently an Iranian woman was rejected because the assessor believed her ‘faith was half-hearted' and did not think she was a true believer. She was mocked for admitting Jesus could not protect her from the country's tyrannical regime. The Bishop of Durham asked how a government official can arbitrarily pick bits out of a holy book and use them to trash someone's heartfelt reason for coming to a personal decision to follow another faith. See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6844623/ANOTHER-Christian-asylum-claim-rejected-official-questioned-faith.html

The Indian constitution provides for ‘the right to freely profess, practise and propagate religion subject to public order, morality and health’, but the latter provisions substantially weaken religious freedom in practice. Many states enforce ‘anti-conversion’ laws, which in some areas require a person to seek permission from their local government 30 days before converting to a new faith. Religious identities are used on official records because some laws that apply differently to different religious groups (for example in tax deductions, bank loans, or marriages) can favour Hindu and Sikh families. Hindu fundamentalists are attacking all places of worship systematically, and extreme complicity is shown by police and authorities. Christians are being attacked, and police are not arresting the attackers. The law provides loopholes to discriminate against religious minorities, enabling newspaper reports to distort news in a way that makes it appear that Christians are not legally permitted to meet in homes and have fellowship. False facts are altering public sentiment.

The Government estimates that tens of thousands of people are slaves in the UK. Most are trafficked from Albania, Vietnam, Nigeria, Romania and Poland. There are also significant numbers of British national slaves. Forced labour is in agriculture, construction, hospitality, manufacturing, and car washes. Women and girls are trafficked for sexual exploitation or domestic slavery. Children are forced into cannabis production, petty theft and begging. In 2009 the Government set up a mechanism to which potential cases were referred to access relevant support. It wasn’t fit for purpose. Slavery victims were not supported, and traffickers got away with their crimes. A new Modern Slavery Act was introduced in 2015. Research has found that the number of potential victims of trafficking and modern slavery reported to the authorities has risen by over 80% in two years, and the number of modern slavery cases involving UK children is alarming. See

Macedonia has launched a renaming of the country’s institutions after a deal with Greece that changed its name to North Macedonia. The deal came into effect on 12 February, after ratification by Greece’s parliament. Following the name change of this former Yugoslav republic, voters will elect a new president. Political rancour and ethnic division among political forces remain rife, yet many hope that offers of accession talks by the EU will end political dissension and stalemate. North Macedonia’s main opposition party, VMRO-DPMNE, nominated law professor Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova as its candidate. He is a harsh opponent of the deal with Greece and of the adoption of the law that made Albanian the second official language in the country. The first round of the election will be on 21 April. The governing SDSM party still has to decide on its candidate. See

By a vote of 53-44, the Senate failed to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would have required doctors to provide medical care to infants born alive after an attempted abortion procedure. The bill needed sixty votes to overcome the legislative filibuster. Currently, medical professionals are not required to treat and save a baby that is still living after an abortion procedure. However, three days before the vote, the Trump administration issued a draft proposal to cut millions of dollars in federal funding to abortion providers, who currently receive $250m for clinics providing birth control and abortion services. The draft rule would also prevent funding being given to organisations that refer women elsewhere for abortions. See

Assisted dying is once again being discussed in the media and could be discussed again in Parliament, after terminally-ill Shropshire man Noel Conway told his local paper that the UK courts have a medieval mindset over assisted dying. Mr Conway, 68, who has motor neurone disease, lost a Court of Appeal challenge in June against an earlier High Court rejection of his case that the ban on assisted dying was an unjustified interference with his human rights. He sought to challenge that at a Supreme Court hearing, but Lady Hale, Lord Reed and Lord Kerr declined permission for an appeal. Now he wants MPs to step in to overturn that decision. He wants a legal assisted death even though he has less than six months to live.

Christians in Bulgaria are facing the prospect of a new law that will severely restrict the freedoms currently enjoyed. The Religious Denominations Act was presented to parliament on 4 October 2018 and is due to be considered again on Friday 16 November. In a show of unity, thousands of Christians across towns and cities in Bulgaria have taken to the streets in peaceful protest and public prayer. Transform Europe Network’s partners in Bulgaria are urging fellow-Christians from the UK, across Europe, and beyond to pray and make written representations to their MEPs, ambassadors, and Bulgarian government officials.

There are ten immigration removal centres in the UK, housing roughly 2-3,000 people at any one time. A survey of seven of the centres by law firms and charities showed almost 56% of the detainees were defined as ‘adults at risk’. Such individuals are only supposed to be detained in extreme cases, suggesting that Home Office guidelines on detention have been breached. The survey also found that a third had dependent children in the UK, 84% had not been told when they would be deported, and almost half the detainees had not committed a crime. The majority had lived in the UK for five years or more, and some had been in the country for over 20 years. Pray for the home secretary, Sajid Javid, to change our immigration system to something that has compassion on the vulnerable and end indefinite detention.