There was a time when those living in the European Union (EU) could turn to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), located in Strasburg, France, if they believed the courts in their own country had dealt unfairly or unreasonably with them. The ECHR was the final court of appeal for 800 million people across Europe, including the United Kingdom. This is no longer the case in regard to the U.K., which separated from the EU in January 2020.

Nonetheless, a woman living in the U.K. is currently bringing a case to the ECHR, which will likely be the final case it will hear from that polity. In 2018, this woman brought a legal challenge against an abortion bubble zone law surrounding an abortion clinic in London. She had, at one time, been pregnant, homeless, jobless, and all alone with no support, when she was stopped at the abortion clinic by a pro-life counsellor who turned her life around. This led to the birth of her much-loved daughter. The woman was determined that other women should be able to receive the kind of help that she had from the pro-life counsellor. This was the reason she brought her legal challenge of the abortion bubble zone law. It is significant that the pro-life presence at the abortion clinic had resulted in more than 500 women accepting an offer of help and choosing to keep their babies, rather than having an abortion. The abortion clinic regarded this as lost money for its business and, as a result, had successfully obtained the abortion bubble zone law, even though there was no evidence that women were being harassed or intimidated outside the abortion facilities. The U.K. High Court upheld the law and the U.K. Court of Appeal further upheld the bubble zone law last year. The U.K. Supreme Court refused to hear the case and this woman’s only option was to take it to the ECHR.

Even with the best of intentions and the best legal team, it is doubtful that her case will succeed before the ECHR. This is foreshadowed by the fate of two Swedish nurses, who were denied employment as midwives for their refusal to perform abortions. They appealed their case to the ECHR arguing that they had faced unjust discrimination on the basis of their religious beliefs. On March 12, 2020, the ECHR refused to take up their case.

The ECHR Has Been Corrupted

A pattern has developed at the ECHR, which supports a growing campaign to eliminate conscientious objection to abortion. This places abortion, which is not an international human right, above all other rights, including religious freedom.

This pattern was disclosed in February 2020, when the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), an international organization dedicated to the promotion and protection of human rights and religious freedom throughout the world, exposed the fact that the ECHR had been corrupted by pro-abortion agencies. The ECLJ’s report included the names of the judges on the Court who had been involved and influenced by pro-abortion NGOs and especially those funded by billionaire George Soros.

In its investigation, the ECLJ disclosed that, between 2009 and 2019, from a total of 100 ECHR permanent judges, almost a quarter of them (22) had links to specific pro-abortion NGOs. In fact, before becoming judges on the Court, these individuals had been collaborators and sometimes even managers of the pro-abortion NGOs. Of 22 judges from such NGOs, 12 had direct relationships with George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Six other NGOs were financed by that organization.

The report also found that 18 of the 22 judges had heard cases on the Court presented to it by Soros’s Open Society. The most controversial judge on the Court is a Bulgarian lawyer, Yonko Grozev. He has spent his entire career as a lawyer working with NGOs close to George Soros or financed by him. Grozev worked with Soros’s Open Society Foundations specializing in using judicial institutions for political purposes. Grozev now heads one of the five sections of the ECHR with general management powers and he systematically sits in most court cases. He alone also has power to decide to invite, allow, or refuse the intervention of NGOs in the cases the Court will hear.

The ECLJ has alerted the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe about this conflict of interest held by the judges. Unless and until this situation at the European Court of Human Rights is corrected, there’s no point in arguing cases before it, since the Court’s objective has been exposed as promoting anti-life, anti-family policies.