latest-news

A member of the British House of Lords, who has a severe disability, has written to an Taoiseach Enda Kenny to warn against legalising abortion on disability grounds, The Times has reported.

Kevin Shinkwin wrote to Mr Kenny when Mick Wallace’s abortion bill was before the Dáil , and told an Taoiseach that he was writing to him as “a fellow parliamentarian” and that he wished to warn against a “slippery slope attempt” to undermine equality for disabled people in Ireland.

He said that he was speaking as someone with a severe disability — brittle bone disease — and family connections to Ireland, according to the report.

He pointed out that Ireland, a ‘wonderful country, from which my family comes’ was a ‘beacon of hope for those severely disabled people, including myself, who believe in disability equality’.

Earlier this year, Lord Shinkwin introduced a bill, now at its second stage in the House of Lords, to outlaw abortion on disability grounds.

Mick Wallace’s bill sought to legalise abortion where the baby had a severe disability, using the misleading term ‘fatal foetal abnormality’ despite evidence from medical and legal experts that it was not a medical term.

The Times noted that “Youth Defence had erected a billboard to coincide with the vote on the private member’s bill featuring a child with Down’s syndrome and the claim that ‘abortion discriminates’.”