Pro-Life Group Wants Anglican Church to Have Stronger Abortion Stance

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 13, 2007

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A pro-life group working within the Anglican Church has launched a petition drive to ask the archbishops and bishops of the Anglican Communion to take a stronger stance against abortion. The group says the church has always enunciated a pro-life position but never an official one.
Georgette Forney, the president of Anglicans for Life, tells LifeNews.com that her group hopes the Anglican Communion will proclaim that the Anglican Church affirms the sacredness of every life, including unborn children.

The petition drive is asking for that official statement during the June 2008 Lambeth Conference, a meeting of all bishops and archbishops of the Anglican Communion held once every decade.

The worldwide petition for both laity and ordained members of the church says the Lambeth Conference resolutions passed since 1930 show that the Anglican Communion has consistently upheld the biblical view of the sanctity of life.

Forney says the conference has expressed concern about abortion but never officially declared itself to be pro-life.

"We need our Archbishops and Bishops to state unequivocally what the Anglican Communion believes regarding life, abortion and euthanasia," she told LifeNews.com.

Forney also wants to see pro-life language make it into the Anglican Covenant the church is formulating.

"Anglicans for Life believes that it is time for the Anglican Communion to take a stand concerning the dignity of life," Forney explained.

Her group will collect signatures from now through March 2008 and will present them to the bishops at the Lambeth Conference along with a proposed resolution to affirm the sanctity of life. Anglicans for Life is circulating the petition through its 75 chapters throughout the US, the UK and Africa and online at its web site.

Anglicans for Life, formerly the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life, hopes to collect at least 100,000 signatures before the conference begins.

Related web sites:
Anglicans for Life - http://www.AnglicansforLife.org