Reverend Christopher Jones:

That is where we are coming from. We were very much upset and surprised by the ruling of the Supreme Court in its judgment. We feel it was unsound. We feel also that there was no psychiatrist available - an expert in that field, especially one dealing with teenagers - to give advice on the whole issue of suicide and mental health. For that reason, we feel any legislation that will be based on or introduced in light of that unsound judgment would not be sound. Therefore, our first option would be to have the medical guidelines enhanced so that doctors and nurses have no fear whatever in providing every single possible treatment that is available for the help of the mother whose life is at risk. We would welcome that.

What we regret very much, if we go down the road of legislation, is that it is inevitably the road to abortion. That will change our whole two-patient model. The life of the mother and the life of the unborn child will be no longer equal because we will be giving the right to someone in certain situations to literally take the life of the unborn. That we cannot do. We believe totally in the equal right of mother and child.

In response to one of the statements made, I might add that we do not depend on religious reasons or scripture reasons for that. We believe that the mother and the unborn child have equal rights by virtue of their common humanity, which is accessible to human reason. Of course, we believe the Gospel enhances the whole dignity of the human person and our understanding of human life, but we do not depend on that, and we would never want to impose our understanding from the Gospel on any other religious group or on any atheist.