Right to Life UK
OUR CORE MISSION
We protect and defend the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death.
We do this through our work across education, politics, the media and through a large network of people in constituencies across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
We are committed to an evidence-based approach to life issues, uniting people from different political ideologies and philosophical beliefs (including those who are non-religious, religious, or agnostic).
Right to Life Organisation.
Ask your MP to stop abortion up to birth.
The abortion lobby is running a campaign to fully ‘decriminalise’ abortion, which would introduce abortion up to birth!
Right To Life UK has launched an easy-to-use tool on its website which makes it simple for you to send an email to your MP asking them to oppose the introduction of abortion up to birth. Please visit www.righttolife.org.uk/noabortionuptobirth to contact your MP now. It only takes 30 seconds.
Press link above for fuller details.
Thank you to everyone who has already emailed their MP to highlight the serious problems with how Kim Leadbeater and her allies handled the Committee Stage of the assisted suicide Bill, including the rejection of more than 300 amendments. MPs have received a large number of emails and it is having an impact.
If you haven’t had a chance to email your MP about this yet, please contact them now using our new tool, which you can access by clicking here.
IMPORTANT UPDATE
I’m writing to share an important update on the campaign to defeat Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill.
This is a little longer than my usual emails, but you must read it so you are aware of exactly what the situation is now and what you need to do to ensure this dangerous Bill is defeated.
As I mentioned in my last email, the Committee Stage of the Bill ended very late on Tuesday night last week.
From here, the first day of Report Stage for the Bill will take place on 25 April, which is now only 23 days away, and will be held in the main House of Commons chamber, where all MPs can bring forward and vote on amendments.
How these votes go will likely have a significant impact on whether the Bill is defeated later on, so it’s vital that you mobilise and contact your MP before 25 April.
After Report Stage, Kim Leadbeater will either hold the final Third Reading vote on 25 April or spread the Report Stage across two days (25 April and 16 May) before a final vote on 16 May. Although we expect her to opt for two days, nothing is confirmed yet.
I will keep you updated and let you know as soon as anything is confirmed, but at this stage, the main focus is ensuring we get as many emails and in-person visits to MPs as possible before 25 April.
EXTENDED IMPLEMENTATION HAS NOT STOPPED THE BILL
The end of Committee Stage coincided with news that the Government had forced Kim Leadbeater to commit to extending the implementation period for a potential law on assisted suicide to a maximum of four years, rather than two years.
Some of you have been in contact to ask whether the extended implementation means that the Bill is not going to become law. All of you must know that this is not the case.
We still face a battle, but a very winnable battle (as I cover further below), to defeat this Bill.
While this may mean that the implementation period will likely be longer, Kim Leadbeater is still pressing ahead with taking her Bill forward, and she can still pass her Bill into law, albeit with an extended implementation period.
Where this extended implementation period may help us defeat the Bill at Third Reading is that it is possible that assisted suicide will now continue to be an issue right up to the 2029 General Election. Most MPs are not going to want to be dealing with this issue running up to an election, so a scenario where the Bill is defeated at Third Reading will now be more appealing to wavering MPs who have previously supported the Bill.
So this development is likely a positive, but you must know that this fight is not over. Leadbeater’s Bill can still become law. We must not let our guard down.
BUT I DON’T NEED TO EMAIL MY MP BECAUSE…
Some of you have asked if there’s any point in contacting your MP. I want to explain why it’s incredibly important that you still contact your MP regardless of their past votes or statements on this issue. Even if you have contacted your MP multiple times on this issue, each email tool we ask you to use has new content that is vital for MPs to read.
…MY MP IS PRO-ASSISTED SUICIDE:
Some of the most supportive pro-life MPs we have worked with over the years started as the most staunch opponents. Even if your MP is publicly appearing to be very pro-assisted suicide, you can never know what private doubts they might have. Your email or meeting with that MP could be the deciding factor that convinces them to vote with us.
And even if they’re not quite ready to oppose the Bill outright, they might already be unsure about their pro-assisted suicide stance and choose to abstain rather than risk alienating the many constituents who’ve been in touch.
…MY MP NEVER REPLIES:
You may have an MP who you never hear back from. Please don’t think that this means that your emails make no difference. They do! We have spoken to MPs who have not replied to emails from constituents on this issue but said that correspondence from constituents impacted how they voted.
…MY MP IS ALREADY ONSIDE:
Finally, some of you have MPs who always vote pro-life and have asked whether you still need to engage with them. It’s still vital that you contact them. For example, they may have a diary clash that you don’t know about and are currently not planning to attend, so emails from constituents may cause them to change their mind and attend the vote. We have seen this happen many times before.
Even if they are pro-life and plan to attend, it's so important that you still contact them. This will ensure they know they have a strong base of people in their constituency who support their position on this.
This will also help put this issue on the radar for them and encourage them to be more active in ensuring the Bill is defeated by actively speaking to colleagues who are wavering and taking other actions to help move more MPs to vote against this Bill.
Every email, letter, call or meeting with an MP counts.
Your MP needs to hear from you.
A CLEAR PATH TO VICTORY
With Committee Stage now over, the spotlight turns to the 650 MPs who will decide if this Bill becomes law. These next 23 days, and how effectively we mobilise to contact local MPs, will play a huge part in determining whether this dangerous Bill is passed or defeated.
The margin at the last vote was 55, which means just 28 MPs switching their stance would be enough to ensure it fails at Third Reading.
Our team here have spoken to a number of MPs, who say, based on their conversations with other colleagues, that this is very much winnable. However, they have emphasised that it comes down, in a big part, to how much pressure MPs get from their constituents to vote the right way.
If everyone reading this email takes action, I’m confident we can win. But every single one of you must act.
I can’t emphasise enough how important it is that you take action over these final days to ensure your local MP votes the right way on 25 April.
Every MP needs to see that the overwhelming majority of emails, letters, meetings and calls they receive are from those who oppose the Bill.
The only way this can happen is by you taking action.
I am going to be in contact again over the next 23 days. Please open every email and follow through on any action steps we suggest - this is vitally important.
If you haven’t had a chance to email your MP highlighting the serious problems with how Kim Leadbeater and her allies have conducted Committee Stage, please contact them now by clicking here. If you are unsure if you have already sent this email, there is no harm in sending it again.
Thank you for everything you have done to get us to where we are now.
We are in the final sprint.
With your hard work over the next 23 days, we can make sure this Bill is defeated and prevent tens of thousands of lives from being put at risk in the years to come.
Many thanks,
Catherine Robinson
Right To Life UK Donate now – click here to support our vital work to protect life
THE GOOD NEWS
An analysis published inThe Independentshows that at least 36 MPs who supported the Bill at Second Reading did so only to allow time for further debate or they have concerns that mean they won’t commit to supporting the Bill at Third Reading. Our Public Affairs team has also identified a number of other MPs who share these reservations.
With the vote passing at Second Reading by a margin of 55,just 28 MPs switching their stanceto oppose the Bill would ensure it is defeated at Third Reading, so there is a clear path towards this Bill being defeated.
We can still win this.
THE CHALLENGE
We know from all our past work in Parliament on this issue that when MPs see the undeniable evidence that the so-called ‘safeguards’ around assisted suicide laws just don’t work, they overwhelmingly vote against introducing assisted suicide.
But the assisted suicide lobby knows this too, which is likely why they strategically published the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill barely two weeks before the Second Reading vote.
Before this vote, we ran our largest ever campaign across Parliament, the media and online, working with many MPs, media personalities, online influencers and other organisations.
Hundreds of thousands of people like you lobbied their MPs to oppose this Bill.
Our Public Affairs team have analysed past votes on Private Members’ Bills and have found that more MPs voted against this Bill than inany other Private Members’ Bills in the last decade.
We were able to build up a massive amount of opposition to the Bill, but as the Bill was published so late, there was an incredibly short amount of time to get the right arguments in front of a large number of new MPs ahead of Second Reading.
The next stage of the Bill process (Committee Stage) will start as early as next week, but the Third Reading vote will likely not be until 25 April,so this time we have the advantage.
We will now have much more time to persuade more MPs that this Bill will be a disaster for our country if it becomes law and that they must vote against the Bill at Third Reading, but this will not be easy.
The assisted suicide lobby (led byDignity in Dying, along with several other organisations, includingMy Death, My DecisionandHumanists UK) have spent millions of pounds on lobbying MPs, in the media, online and among many other tactics, outrageously covering tube stations in London, where many people tragically take their own lives each year, with pro-assisted suicide posters.
The assisted suicide lobby are fully aware that support for the Bill is very fragile. They will fight fiercely to prevent 28 MPs from switching their votes to oppose the Bill.
They will also do everything in their power to pressure all MPs to vote in favour of the Bill.
For the sake of the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable lives that will be put at risk,we must win the voteand defeat this dangerous Bill.
WE NEED YOUR HELP
Our campaign in the run-up to Second Reading was the biggest and most expensive we have ever run and so it has made a significant dent in our limited financial resources.
We are now working on an even bigger campaign to defeat this dangerous Bill at Third Reading.
To ensure we effectively defeat this extreme assisted suicide Bill, we are aiming to raise at least £100,000 by midnight this Sunday (15 December 2024).
With Committee Stage starting as early as next week, we are running an appeal now to ensure we have the funds to begin our work on the campaign immediately.
£100,000 is the minimum we need. If we can raise more, we’ll be able to do even more to win this battle.
Please give as generously as you can. Every donation, no matter the size, will mean YOU can make a crucial difference in saving vulnerable lives from this extreme law change.
Will you make a donation now to help protect vulnerable lives from this major threat?