Church leaders, lawmakers to clash over abortion
Published:Tuesday | January 29, 2019 | 12:00 AM
When legislators meet at Gordon House tomorrow to debate Member of Parliament Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn’s motion for abortion to be decriminalised, outside, a convoy of more than 100 church leaders will assemble for a pre-emptive strike against any move to change the law.
The private member’s motion brought by the government backbencher in 2018 called on the Government to repeal legislation that makes abortion illegal. Specifically, Cuthbert-Flynn, a medal-winning Olympian, wants the House of Representatives to take steps to repeal sections 72 and 73 of the Offences Against the Person Act and substitute it with a civil law, The Termination of Pregnancy Act as was recommended by the Abortion Policy Review Group in 2007.
Cuthbert-Flynn, member of parliament for St Andrew West Rural, said she lost a constituent as a result of complications from a botched abortion and is determined to be the passionate voice of the abortion rights lobby.
The church leaders’ convoy will have among them the Reverend Eugene Rivers III, an American anti-abortion activist and Pentecostal minister based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Rivers, a well-known anti-violence preacher working in black communities in the USA, is pastor of the Azusa Christian Community Center in Dorchester of Boston, and co-founder of the Boston TenPoint Coalition and co-chair of the National TenPoint Leadership Foundation, both working on issues of urban violence that impact African Americans.
Rivers has also worked extensively on crime reduction in Boston and on HIV/AIDs in Africa.
‘It’s their right’
Contacted yesterday, Cuthbert-Flynn said she was not rattled by the planned action of the church leaders.
“It’s their right. This is a democracy, and this is why I love my country. I have a right, and they have a right, too,” said Cuthbert-Flynn. “They have a right to come out and voice how they feel, and I also have a right to come out and voice how I feel,” she told The Gleaner yesterday.
Commenting on the number of submissions, she said the committee meeting should have been held last week but was postponed for more participation.
“Quite a lot of submission requests were made. I can’t give you a number right now, but several individuals asked for time to make submissions. We are there to listen to everyone and to try to formulate a way forward,” she told The Gleaner.
The church leaders’ convoy will head to Gordon House from the Jamaica Conference Centre, where they would have concluded the Jamaica CAUSE Abortion Symposium at the Jamaica Conference Centre. Immediately following the end of the conference, three members of the group will make submissions on the abortion debate. They are Professor Brendan Bain, retired professor of community health, The University of the West Indies; Dr Charlie Royes, retired consultant surgeon; and Christina Milford, head of the Pregnancy Resource Centre of Jamaica.