LIFE (pro-life organization)
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LIFE is a UK-based pro-life charity founded in 1970 by Professor Jack Scarisbrick and his wife in response to the Abortion Act 1967, which introduced legal abortion to mainland Britain, i.e. England, Wales and Scotland (but not Northern Ireland).
LIFE National Headquarters is situated in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. The organisation holds a National Conference approximately every eighteen months, and publishes a quarterly magazine, Life News. LIFE has in the region of 30,000 members in the UK. Its patrons include parliamentarians Lord David Alton and Jim Dobbin MP[1].
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[edit] Ethical views
LIFE has an absolutist view on abortion: they believe that it is always wrong to intentionally take the life of an unborn child. However, following the Principle of Double Effect, LIFE does accept that in the small number of cases where the continuation of a pregnancy poses a direct medical threat to the life of the mother, it may be permissible for doctors to intervene in a way that ends the life of the unborn child, as long as the death of the child is a foreseen, rather than intended, outcome of the operation.
LIFE opposes all medical technologies that involve the destruction of human embryos. The charity is also opposed to all forms of assisted suicide and euthanasia.
In accordance with its charitable status, LIFE does not undertake political campaigning in its own right. Nevertheless, the organisation has been associated with the Alive and Kicking Campaign, an umbrella group of pro-life organisations pressing for abortion law reform, and the Care Not Killing Alliance, a coalition of anti-euthanasia campaigners.
Although it co-operates with faith groups in some areas of its work, LIFE has no religious affiliations, and its views on ethical issues are grounded in general principles of justice, anti-discrimination and human rights.
[edit] The work of LIFE
LIFE was founded to provide alternatives to abortion for those faced with a crisis pregnancy and the charity’s work is informed by the principle of respect for all human lives.
More recently, the charity has expanded its work, including its UK-wide Education programme, and the provision of fertility treatment that accords with the charity’s views on the status of the human embryo, while the 1990s saw the creation of a centralised LIFE Housing department able to co-ordinate closely with local authorities and social services.
Besides these services, LIFE’s daughter charity the Zoe’s Place Trust has opened two hospices for terminally ill children, one in Liverpool and the other in Middlesbrough.
LIFE also has links to pro-life groups in other countries, notably Malta, Sri Lanka and the Republic of Ireland. Although access to abortion is heavily restricted in Northern Ireland – much more so than in the rest of the UK – there are local LIFE groups in the region (the possibility of the extension of the 1967 Act to Northern Ireland has long been a source of controversy in Britain, although the British government has recently stated that there are no plans to amend the law in Northern Ireland[2]).
[edit] LIFE Caring
LIFE’s Pregnancy Care Centres offer free pregnancy testing and professional, confidential counselling. LIFE also offers information on pregnancy and abortion and provides practical and emotional support. For obvious reasons, the majority of those who visit Care Centres are women, but LIFE counsellors do sometimes find themselves talking to men, as they too can be adversely affected by abortion.
Apart from these face-to-face services, LIFE also runs a National Helpline. A more recent innovation is “Text-to-Talk”, allowing clients to access LIFE counselling services with more complete anonymity.
[edit] LIFE Education
LIFE employs a number of Regional Education Officers (REOs). REOs give talks, presentations and conferences in schools and universities on a range of subjects of concern and interest to the charity: not just abortion, but also euthanasia, embryo experimentation, assisted reproduction, and sex and relationships education.
The charity currently comes into contact with around 50,000 students annually.
LIFE’s interest in sex and relationships education (SRE) stems from their desire to promote stable, monogamous relationships, on the reasoning that stronger and more permanent relationships will ultimately lead to fewer abortions.
[edit] The Zoe’s Place Trust
The Zoe’s Place Trust (Registered National Charity No 1092545) is a daughter charity to LIFE, and is responsible for the running of two specialist hospices for terminally ill children aged 0-5. One of these is situated in Liverpool, close to Alder Hey Hospital, while the other is in Middlesbrough. . The Zoe’s Place baby hospices are intended to function as a highly visible and highly practical “positive alternative” to abortion for disability (there are approximately 2000 abortions of disabled unborn children in the UK each year).
[edit] LIFE Housing
LIFE houses were originally opened in the 1970s as a response to requests from women facing homelessness if they continued with their pregnancies. Nowadays, LIFE Housing provides a support service to pregnant women, mothers of small children and families who are in need of support. LIFE Housing receives a limited amount of government funding, and as such undergoes regular assessments and audits. LIFE Housing operates in 30 local authority areas.
[edit] LIFE FertilityCare
LIFE is opposed to conventional in vitro fertilisation and other assisted reproduction techniques that result in embryo loss. However, in accordance with its ethos of providing alternatives to practices that it believes to be unethical, LIFE has its own Fertility Care programme, using insights from natural family planning methods such as the Creighton Model.
[edit] References
- ^ LIFE | Loving life, offering hope
- ^ House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 16 July 2007 (pt 0017)
