Last month Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, introduced a private member’s bill to reduce the time limit on abortions in the UK from 24 to 21 weeks and establish a 10-day waiting period before an abortion could proceed.  Despite the fact that the bill was handily defeated in the House of Commons, she and her staff received a barrage of death threats.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries needed police protection after threats from crazed abortion rights ‘extremists’ Fanatics bombarded her with anonymous phone calls after she introduced a tenminute Parliamentary Bill to make abortions harder to obtain.

Her worried staff were warned that they would burn in hell if they continued to back her campaign.

Eventually Mrs Dorries called in the police and House of Commons security She said: “I was told by a colleague that I would unleash the gates of hell if I tried to bring down the legal age of abortion from 24 to 21 weeks and it looks like he was right.

“My staff have been told they will burn in hell, my home has been besieged by anonymous telephone calls, extremist groups have sent out inflammatory messages to their members, “It got so bad that we had to alert House of Commons security and my constituency police.

In response to the threats, Mrs Dorries, a former nurse, vows to continue efforts to persuade her colleagues and the British people that her proposal is an idea whose time has come.  Her argument is based on recent scientific advances indicating that unborn babies become sentient by 21 weeks of gestation.

After British media reported the threats, Mrs Dorries was flooded once again—this time, with offers from bodyguards.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries has been inundated with CVs from bodyguards following a spate of threats.
. . .
Mrs Dorries said: “After the article appeared in the BoS [Bedfordshire on Sunday] I did receive a number of CVs and pictures from people offering to protect me and to be with me every minute.

“It was all a bit of a joke in the office, but I won’t be requiring anyone’s services.”

The clamour over Mrs Dorries’s bill seems odd in view of the fact that, only a few months ago, Tony Blair said he was willing to consider reducing the legal time limit for abortions.  The prime minister was not mentioned in press reports of the Commons debate, however; the only Labour MP who spoke was Chris McCafferty, who denounced the bill as "an attack on women's reproductive rights".  She apparently did not confront the contention that 21-week-old foetuses are sentient.

h/t: Verum Serum

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