Posted on 05/09/2006 4:59:12 PM PDT by wagglebee
NORFOLK, England, May 9, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A man who sent graphic pictures of mutilated and aborted babies to staff and officials at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn was jailed for a month, given a five-year anti-social behaviour order, and threatened with five years incarceration if he disobeys the order. Atkinson was charged with “sending malicious communications” to the hospital.
74-year-old Edward Atkinson told the judge, “Then you may as well lock me up and throw away the key,” reported the Eastern Daily Press. During the hearing, he said, “Since 1968, seven million unborn babies have been brutally and callously murdered with the full connivance of the state.”
The feisty Mr. Atkinson sent the photos and a video of a child being aborted to hospital chief executive Ruth May who described them as “offensive, horrendous and absolutely disgusting.”
Ms. May said she received an envelope of “very upsetting and offensive literature” and became tearful when she told the Press, “It is upsetting for everyone. I believe people who work for the NHS, and particularly at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, are passionate about providing excellent care for their patients.”
Since the court case, Mr. Atkinson has been removed from the hospital’s wait list for an evaluation for hip surgery and has been banned from anything other than life-saving treatment as a punishment for his activism. A hospital spokesman said he had broken its “zero tolerance” policy by ignoring its warnings to stop. Hospital staff said they were upset and “quite disturbed’ by the images.
The hospital said, “We exercised our right to decline treatment for anything other than life-threatening conditions.”
The pro-life advocates at the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform (CCBR) – an organization that pioneered in Canada the public display of graphic images of abortion to make the case for life – were “appalled” at the conviction and the hospital’s denial of care.
“This is one of the most disturbing cases of intolerance for the pro-life perspective I have ever heard,” said CCBR executive director Stephanie Gray. “To disagree with or be horrified by the pro-life perspective is one thing, but to put an elderly man in jail and to deny him health care is outrageous.”
Gray added, “In a society that kills the most weak and vulnerable lf human beings, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.”
Gray said the pictures show the horrors of abortion to a culture that does not want to know. “People hold a double standard about abortion. They’re fine with graphic images of the Ethiopian famine or Abu Ghraib prison, but if it’s closer to home then they respond with hostility.”
James Dowson, the national co-ordinator of the UK Life League, told The Scotsman, “It is ridiculous. I think it is completely unfair. They are refusing to treat him. Would they refuse a murderer or a paedophile? He has paid his taxes, he is entitled to that treatment, who are they to withhold it from him?”
Atkinson, who refused to give the oath at the hearing until a Roman Catholic Bible was obtained, said the purpose of sending the images had been “to educate.”
“I accept that the documentation was highly distressing. It’s horrendous, monstrous and sickening but it represents the truth of what is going on in our world. Everyone in this courtroom knows that abortion is murder and no one has the guts to say it.”
Atkinson was found guilty on three counts of sending malicious communication to the hospital, and jailed for 28 days concurrently on the charges, with an additional 14 days for failing to pay a £650 fine, received for a similar offence in 2002. He was also told £500 would be deducted from his pension to cover court costs.
See Centre for Bioethical Reform website:
http://ccbrinfo.ca/index.html
Since the court case, Mr. Atkinson has been removed from the hospital’s wait list for an evaluation for hip surgery and has been banned from anything other than life-saving treatment as a punishment for his activism.
Do you hold views inconvenient to the state, or anathema to the larger culture? If so, get ready, because the left can be ruthless when they have power. You'll be barred from medical treatment, and if you are permanently crippled as a result, well, that's just the cost you must pay for pointing out the hypocrisies of the state.
I am no fan of socialized medicine, but I'm quite sure that Mr. Atkinson's taxes have not been reduced in concordance with his loss of privileges with the Health Service.
Horrible. Everything about his article is really difficult to believe .... and yet ...
See what I wrote in #20.
It wasn't spam (assuming he paid the postage) Obviously
unwelcome. I don't have any definite thoughts on whether
mail (unhazardous paper mail) sent to persons in their
official capacity could ever be harassing... I am not
utterly astounded at the sentence and the denial of insurance.
This is a dire precedent, and deserves more publicity.
I wonder what would happen if he kept sending pictures of hip replacement surgery, as a protest against the waiting time? Would the hospital executive call them “offensive, horrendous and absolutely disgusting?”
Isn't abortion just another procedure? For which the staff has a passion for providing excellent care?
Mrs VS
Gosh, I wonder if the British gov't would come after me if I started e-mailing similar information and pictures to hospital staff. I presume their spam filters would block the e-mail address pretty quickly. It's a shame that throw-away e-mail accounts are so expensive and hard to obtain.
Was just going to ping you to this. It's amazing what is happening in this world. My heart feels very oppressed by this article.
Now the culture of death is punishing people for trying to point out their immorality.
The ominous thing is that those who promote evil are not going to stop until THEY are stopped. People think "oh well, it can't get much worse. Let me just live my comfortable life, it's not that bad yet." But it is going to get so much worse that most people can't even imagine how bad. I can imagine, I've read a lot of books about the Third Reich. People think it'll never be that bad again. That's merely wishful thinking.
So throw them out if you don't like them. This fashionable notion that people should be treated as criminals (and someone 74 years old, for Heaven's sake!) for speaking their mind if someone else takes offense will be the end of our Western freedoms yet...
Isn't this sort of thing starting to happen more and more in the USA. Where evil is good and good is evil.
They will point fingers and shout: "LIES! LIES! LIES!"
Sheesh. The world is more nuts than we want to admit.
You don't want to know, but I'll try to explain as best I can (they don't make a lot of sense to those of us who are used to the American justice system). In essence, they are court orders that compel you to cease doing whatever it is they feel like telling you to stop doing. While they are, for the most part, issued for honest reasons (serious harassment, vandalism, etc.) they can be issued for any reason whatsoever; all you have to do is complain to a judge that so-and-so is causing you "distress", and if you can convince him to sign it, then that person is then barred for a certain amount of time from engaging in whatever action it is that bothers you. There have been a number of very bizarre ASBOs issued in the last ten years or so that they've been around, and practically none of them would ever survive the slightest court challenge here in the US.
They are considered "civil" orders, but if you violate them, it's a criminal offense and you can go to jail. Isn't that sweet?
Well said!
Ms. May said she received an envelope of “very upsetting and offensive literature” and became tearful when she told the Press, “It is upsetting for everyone. I believe people who work for the NHS, and particularly at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, are passionate about providing excellent care for their patients.”
What does Ms. May think happens when the hospital's 'excellent care', passionately provided, is abortion, the killing of a living child? How does she thing that healthcare goal is performed? I guess as long as she, and others, don't have to see or think about it, well, it's all good to them. How dare Mr. Atkinson confront her with the truth! (with sarcasm)
But this is not 'punishment', it's retribution, it's just twisted and sick.
What is the address? Let's all send them pictures of what they do.
I agree, it's a little lol that Ms. May feigned such shock and horror.
Oh, and heaven forbid that one of the 'patients' awaiting this 'passionate and excellent healthcare' of abortion see those pictures and realize fully what is about to happen. And worse still should she change her mind!!
~Wow, what has 'healthcare' become...
Yep, Stalin would be pleased. And Hillary wanted this kind of universal healthcare for us. Blech.
And Ruth if its so damned offensive and disgusting hows come your hospital does it regularly ?
Shhhh. We wouldn't want any of those patients seeing that literature, they might change their minds! Besides - it's part of the hospital's 'excellent healthcare, passionately provided'. Not so excellent for the preborn, though.
They are acting as if Mr. Atkinson personally murdered and mutiliated those babies, all of them, himself. I guess the truth hurts, and they don't want it getting around, what they actually do to the preborn.
Precisely. And this is the main reason why Democrats are pushing for socialized medicine in the U.S. Not content just to murder unborn babies, they also want to systematically (and legally) exterminate anyone who disagrees with their world view.
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