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A public relations company co-founded by the Conservative leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt did paid lobbying work for an evangelical doctors’ group that wants to outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape, while she was still listed as a director and shareholder.
Mordaunt’s campaign denied that she was “still working” for Media Intelligence Partners (MIP) when it agreed a public relations contract with the Christian Medical Fellowship. It has been unable to deny that she remained one of three company directors and a shareholder, however, and it is unclear whether Mordaunt, now Trade Minister, benefited financially from MIP’s lobbying for the Fellowship.
One of the reports on the Fellowship’s website suggests abortion is wrong, even when a woman has been the victim of a sexual assault, because keeping the child is “a display of courage, strength and honour”. Abortion in cases of rape “simply sacrifices a second innocent party to the crime”, it says: “Many women who have been raped believe that abortion is immoral, and that the child is simply a second victim, and that if they can get through the pregnancy they will have conquered the rape.”
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The Fellowship has been sharply criticised in the past. In 2007 MPs on a committee reviewing abortion laws accused it of confusing the evidence given to them. Six doctors who gave evidence to the 2007 inquiry, which was considering recent scientific research related to abortion, failed to disclose that they were members or activists with the group, which had already given its own evidence. When this was discovered the MPs asked that all witnesses disclose relevant affiliations.
Source: New Statesman