A cross-bench peer has accused the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of double standards after it approved charges against a number of pro-life campaigners but refused to prosecute two doctors who arranged illegal sex-selection abortions.
The CPS said that even though it found enough evidence against the doctors for “a realistic prospect of conviction,” prosecution would not be in the “public interest,” as the cases could be brought before the General Medical Council.
Criticism
The decision has attracted strong criticism, with the Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Steirmer QC supporting calls by the Health Secretary and Attorney General for an urgent review of the ruling.
Lord Alton, the cross-bench peer, said: “It is worthy of Alice in Wonderland that, on one hand, the CPS will prosecute a pensioner who shows a graphic image depicting the heart breaking reality of what occurs in an abortion whilst, on the other hand, declines to take action against a doctor who is willing to flout the law by undertaking illegal gender abortions with the justification and sole objective of taking the life of a little girl.
Incoherent
“This is an incoherent and upside-down world which also violates a basic maxim of legal jurisprudence, that all parties should stand equal before the law.
“Holding different people accountable to different standards should not be the basis on which the CPS operates.”
In 2007, Veronica Connolly (56) was convicted under the 1988 Malicious Communications Act after sending pictures of aborted babies to pharmacists in the West Midlands. In 2012, Edward Atkinson (now 83) was given a suspended jail sentence for sending similar pictures to his local hospital in Norfolk.
The CPS also approved charges brought against pro-life campaigners Andy Stephenson and Kathryn Attwood who were arrested after holding peaceful demonstrations outside a BPAS clinic in 2011. The charges were later dismissed byBrighton Magistrates' Court.
Alarming
Andrea Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre, which represented Stephenson and Attwood, said: “What is alarming is the power of individual officers or those prosecuting to determine what the public can see or not see, to determine what constitutes the public interest.
“They seem to be applying one standard for those who oppose abortion and quite another for those who practise it.”
Laura Perrins, a former barrister and teaching fellow of criminal law at University College London said: “We should be under no illusions that this decision is a grave breach of the rule of law.
“It is not for the CPS to pick and choose which laws they wish to enforce, and the use of prosecutorial discretion with the public interest test and consequent intellectual acrobatics they attempted to form are desperate attempts to act within their powers.
“The CPS has usurped not only Parliament, that has laid down the law in the 1967 Act, but the role of the jury also.”
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