Health cash call by Pro-Life party

Pro-Life candidates Madeleine Jeremy and Anthony Jeremy

The Pro-Life Alliance has launched its Welsh Assembly election campaign by calling for NHS money to be switched away from abortion services.

The alliance would ban all abortion apart from in exceptional circumstances, and would also outlaw embryo experimentation.

It wanted to redirect money spent by the assembly on abortion services into re-education and "pro-life pregnancy and post-abortion" counselling.

The alliance said that while the assembly did not have the power to outlaw abortion, it believed those measures would reduce demand for it.

Re-education

The party is fielding four candidates in each of the five Welsh regional list areas as well as one constituency candidate in Cardiff Central.

Welsh chairman Gerry Brienza said the primary aim of the campaign was to educate and raise awareness of what, for the alliance, was a fundamental issue.

Pro-Life Alliance manifesto

Repeal Abortion Act 1967

Ban euthanasia

Move NHS abortion funds

The party said it would be willing to ask its supporters to vote for candidates of other parties who took a pro-life stance.

But Mr Brienza said most candidates found it difficult to make their position clear in a survey carried out by another pro-life organisation, SPUC (the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children).

He denied it was a single-issue party. For the alliance the right to life covered not just unborn children but also elderly people and disabled people and embryo research, and Mr Brienza said it was a fundamental issue which impinged on all policy areas.

Bedrock

Chairman Gerry Brienza says the party wants to raise awareness

Madeleine Jeremy, the party's candidate in Cardiff Central, said most people did not know about the way a child developed in the womb.

Anthony Jeremy, who is standing on the North Wales regional list, said money should be used from health and education budgets to explain to children the stages in the development of an unborn baby.

If elected, its candidates would try to move money away from abortion services. This would then be used to support the funding of hospices and counselling in "pro-life pregnancy and post-abortion".

The party also says it would "seek to promote marriage and family life which is the bedrock of our society."