Pro-life group fails to win support for initiative

Before 2002, women asking for an abortion needed to have a professional verify that the procedure was necessary for mental health reasons Keystone

The initiators of a popular initiative demanding a ban on abortion in Switzerland have failed to collect a sufficient number of signatures.

The deadline for the collection of signatures for the initiative entitled  “Protection of life to plug a multi-billion pound hole” will run out on August 26.

But it is already clear today that the committee will not manage to gather the necessary 100,000 signatures within the required 18 months, national radio and television RTS reported.

“We have collected so few signatures that it’s not worth even starting to count them,” Heinz Hürzeler, head of the committee, told RTS.

The pro-life initiative demanded that the sentence “Human life is protected” be added to the Swiss constitution.

Since October 2002 abortions in Switzerland are reimbursed and legal within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy.

In February 2014, more than two-thirds of Swiss voters rejected an initiative demanding that abortions should no longer be covered by compulsory health insurance.