Britain Now Allows Abortion Up to Birth for Any Reason – and the Public Don’t Care
With news the House of Lords last night voted to allow abortion up to birth to be introduced into law, the general public must shoulder some responsibility. Baroness Monckton’s amendment (424) to overturn abortion up to birth clause 208 was rejected by Peers who voted 185 to 148 against it; and Baroness Stroud’s amendment (425) to reinstate in-person consultations with a medical professional prior to an abortion taking place at home was also rejected by Peers who voted 191 to 119 against it.
While defenders of the clause say they are only following the advice of abortion providers such as British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) in wishing to end the prosecution of vulnerable women, peers who voted it through are arguably not solely responsible. The banal sounding “Clause 208 of the Crime and Policing Bill” progressed to such dizzying legislative heights because the majority of the population, to paraphrase Mandelson, is intensely relaxed about the killing of unborn babies.
Yes, there are determined and vocal pro-life campaigners, but they are in the minority. As it stands today, public opinion, public activity and general social mores are firmly and solidly in the pro-abortion camp. I mentioned recently to a teenage girl that I was not instinctively keen on abortion. She screwed up her face and said: “God, that is SO cruel, what’s wrong with you?”
According to British Social Attitudes (BSA) trends updated in late 2024, 76% of people believe a woman should be allowed an abortion simply because she does not wish to have a child (up from 37% in the 1980s). The abortion rate in over-35s almost doubled between 2013 and 2023 and over half of abortions are for existing mothers. In another win for the wisdom of lockdowns, the introduction of abortion pills by post now sees 72% of abortions being done at home. Since 2013 the proportion of abortions done by pill rather surgery has gone from 49% to 87%. Apart from the dead baby, what used to be a serious medical procedure has been ‘sanitised’.
At a time when we are increasingly worrying about our low birth rate, it is worth remembering that there are approximately 250,000 abortions a year – around a third of all pregnancies, meaning there would be around 50% more live births if all were allowed continue. Latest figures report 277,970 abortions for residents of England and Wales in 2023, the highest number since the Abortion Act was introduced and an increase of 11% compared with 2022. A third of women will have a legal abortion at some point in their life.
I have not had an abortion but many women I know, love and respect, have. I do not consider them to be murderers, but there is something around the discussion of this issue that frightens me. That the issue of the termination of a viable human life has been reduced to “Clause 208 of the Crime and Policing Bill” is the classic sterile bureaucratisation of wrongdoing. House of Lords discussions of the issue focused for the most part on the “need for in person GP appointments, impact assessments, public consultations and informed consent”. The gravity of not only what is being proposed but also what is already happening was generally avoided. The meagre two-and-a-half-hour debate was strange, rather like a group of inspectors tip-toeing across a corpse-filled battle field asking whether the ‘appropriate risk assessments’ had taken place.
When the usually admirable Baroness Fox talked about “that old chestnut” of human life starting from conception – when else would it start from? – she ably demonstrated the enormous shift that has taken place in recent decades concerning our general disenchantment with the miracle of life and the gravity of death.
The Archbishop of Canterbury gave a short, forgettable and procedural observation that she would oppose the clause and support various amendments. Though beginning her speech by saying that the Church of England’s view on abortion was “one of principled opposition”, she focused on “the safeguards and enforcements of legal limits”, rather than giving a spirited tirade about the fundamental issue at stake.
Since Sarah Mullally took a detour from the Becket Way pilgrimage to debate the issue, she might do worse than to dust down a copy of the former Archbishop of York’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (Sermon of the Wolf) delivered in 1014 when England was being mercilessly attacked by the Danes. Wulfstan blamed not the Danes (read Labour /The House of Lords/BPAS, RCOG etc.), but the nation at large (us) for living badly – thus inviting devastation.
Nothing has prospered now for a long time, at home or abroad; but there was harrying and hunger, now burning and bloodshed in every place often and frequently… and excessive tax has greatly oppressed us. … Therefore in this country, as it appears, there have now been many years of many injustices, and unstable loyalties everywhere among men. … None of us has ordered his life as he ought to… we have not kept the teachings or the laws of God or man as we ought to do.
To call on the 11th century Wulfstan as a guide to the very modern-day problem of ‘abortion pills by post’ might seem absurd, but as ever with ethics, fundamentals don’t really change, only public opinion. Does public opinion now need a thunderous telling off?
Wulfstan’s solution to the mess the Anglo Saxons had made for themselves was for his congregation to turn towards the right. “Let us order words and deeds justly, and cleanse our thoughts with zeal, and keep oaths and pledges carefully, and have some loyalty between us without evil practice.”
It’s preposterous that any public figure would say such a thing today. But now the law offers scant protection to unborn life, ought we as individuals make a better effort at doing so? As Augustine of Hippo wrote: “Let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: such as we are, such are the times.”
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Routinely aborting a baby which could otherwise have survived had it been a premature birth and not an abortion, is an abomination. Murder. Evil beyond belief.
This policy comes from The Left. The Left is evil.
The first country that legalized abortion was the Soviet Union, under Stalin.
The overall idea is certainly in line with leftist ideology, most notably atheism: if a human being is nothing more than a clump of cells, there is no notion of anything sacred about it, if we set the rules, then why shouldn’t we abort babies?
Proponents of this ideology conveniently forget that extending the idea the conclusion is that they themselves might one day be regarded as nothing more than a clump of cells that can be annihilated if those in power deem necessary. First just the old, of course. Than those who are “unworthy of life” (lebensunwertes Leben). Or political opponents.
Personally I think the progress from abortion to totalitarianism and the accompanying forced labour camps and mass murder is fairly logical, from one comes the other, sooner or later.
(By the way, if not clear from the above, then let me state: I find abortion abhorrent.)
There is NOTHING SACRED ABOUT INCEST OR GANG RAPE.
A downtick on here for saying that – come on , who was it ??
I don’t understand your association of atheism with this abomination that has just passed through our Parliament. As an atheist, I cling dearly to all life, my own and the defenceless, young and old, which is why I also object to the assisted suicide bill. If this life is all there is, then I want all I can from it. Many religions talk about afterlife and better places, people going to somewhere else and, surely, it is those who think there is a better place that value this place less. But whatever your beliefs or non-belief, this choice of our MPs and lords is disgusting,
That’s fine, I don’t consider atheists enemies. It’s great that you find the bill abomination and the fact that you accept the intrinsic value of life and want to defend the young and the old shows that you have solid, clear moral values. We are therefore on the same side.
I do see things from a religious perspective; there is no other option for me. But being religious is not in itself a virtue: I’m sure that Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban leadership are also deeply religious. So in itself being religious guarantees nothing.
👍🙏
Perhaps the public ‘don’t care’ because they are fed up with political theatre between activists on both sides – which they, the public, cannot influence.
There’s people quibbling about this verdict so somebody’s going to have to explain this to me like I’m 5yrs old because all I see is semantics. So the upper limit for abortion is still 24 weeks, it’s just that now a woman can do her own ‘DIY’ termination at home and not get prosecuted. But if it’s the same outcome either way, what’s the difference whether we refer to it as ”legalizing abortion up to full term” or ”decriminalizing abortion up to full term”? The viable baby, that would’ve survived if it were born prematurely at hospital, is still being killed and the woman is still not being prosecuted. Same difference. Haven’t they basically legalized ‘backstreet abortions’, then? And can somebody explain to me why in the world the woman would choose to kill her baby in the final trimester as opposed to give birth at hospital then give it up for adoption? Where on earth is the rationale? There is none. It’s f**ked up. At least if she’d done the former she could be viewed as being of sound mind, whatever her reasons for giving the baby up, but with the latter I think it’s the actions of somebody… Read more »
If someone assists a woman terminate a pregnancy after 24 weeks, then that person is liable to prosecution.
We’ve lost our way here with ridiculous performative laws. For example, suicide is legal, but helping someone to commit suicide is illegal. The new suicide, sorry ‘end of life’ bill, caters for people perfectly able to commit suicide, should they wish. But, it does nothing for, the blind, those with poor motor skills, the bed bound, all sorts of difficult cases.
Both laws allow a shallow government to say to their supporters, ‘look, we did something!’ While in reality they done virtually nothing except weaken the binds that tie societies together.
‘We’ dont care, for the same reason that ‘we don’t care about, national security, energy security, food security, the police becoming the Stasi, the dirty deals and the general shitification of our country. A good portion think its great and would cheer it on. A good portion are really unaware. The rest are keeping their heads down and waiting for the moment to try and do something about it democratically. As heinous as this bill is, is it any worse than a dozen other bills that have slid through parliament with little herald.
I may be missing something here. Why would a woman carry a pregnancy for 9 months then “abort” it?
Sometimes because women get pregnant in order to trap a man into marriage, and when it becomes apparent that the man will continue to refuse to marry the woman or even have a relationship with her regardless of her pregnancy, it is no longer of any use to her as a blackmailing tool.
There are also women who are not sure which of their sexual partners is the father of the foetus, and some react in an honest way, admitting the truth even though they know the man they prefer will then refuse marriage, while others react in a way to be fair to the man they prefer, by getting an abortion though not telling him the reason, and other women react in a completely dishonest way, concealing the truth from the man who marries them in good faith, but discovers too late that the child is not his.
DNA research decades ago found that ONE out of every SIX CHILDREN has a different biological father than the man who raised and paid for them, thinking they were his own genetic offspring.
Nope, still no justification here for killing babies.
Yes, there is.
And it takes 9 months to figure this out?
They wait until the last minute hoping the man will relent and marry them, even if it means leaving his own wife and children. The child’s life means nothing to them— just a disposable means to an end.
The death bills of which this is one, were not featured in the Labour Manifesto, the Public were not asked to vote on the killing of a baby at the point of birth
So how exactly were the public supposed to stop it, when at no point are we allowed to vote?
Writing to an MP is pointless S they do as the Party instructs not the constituency.
We have a wicked and decadent government who have a soft spot for Nonce’s, Child Rapists and tortures and clearly quite comfortable with murdering babies
So folks out there who may have just had a baby, or grandparents when you look at the newborn just remember you could have legitimately killed that child an hour before the first pangs of Labour and the Government would have applauded your choice.
It’s important not to confuse a woman’s right to abortion as soon as she discovers her unwanted pregnancy… with her deciding to carry a healthy foetus for NINE WHOLE MONTHS until it is actually born, and then kill it. There can be no justification of any kind for a woman, or young girl, to do that. None.
Likewise, there can be no justification for FORCING A GIRL OR WOMAN to continue an unwanted pregnancy for any reason, especially in cases such as incest, rape, or gang rape, as well as the horrors experienced by women such as Sarah Ewart in Northern Ireland after she discovered at 20 weeks of pregnancy that the foetus was HEADLESS:
Woman’s abortion ‘ordeal’ considered by NI health officials – BBC News
“There can be no justification…to continue an unwanted pregnancy”. Yes there is, it’s called taking responsibility for your own actions. pregnancies from incest, rape etc form a tiny number of the millions of abortions carried out each year around the world. Your example of a headless foetus is just moronic.
No, your Vatican Obsession with FORCING every girl and woman to carry the products of RAPE, GANG RAPE, INCEST and HEADLESS FOETUSES for nine months to give birth to them is EVIL and MORONIC.
Jesuit Fanatics like you should be FORCED TO ADOPT all foetuses and babies born of INCEST, GANG RAPE, pay for them their entire lives.
When it comes to abortion, women are always loudly shouting about “their body their choice” (and their entitlement means to hell with whatever the father may want who contributed equally to the creation of life). But this is the choice:
That is, and always has been, the choice. Many, many, women are now so brainwashed by the machine that they believe it is their right to murder their child – in direct conflict with the single most natural act of the female of any species; the machine smiles.
Murder has been legalised.
Abortion is most certainly murder and the British public are not, I would argue, apathetic. I get annoyed when I hear things like this. There is not one single avenue by which the British public can get their voices heard. The internet is controlled, the media is controlled, protests are controlled and surveilled and MPs are, by and large, as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Less in fact. At least you could eat a chocolate fireguard. The British public has been gagged. Silenced. For this reason. Precisely. So that they have no means to protest or speak out about the atrocities being legalised by the owners of our Parliamentary class.
I agree. Pro-life marches are scarcely ever reported by mainstream media; pro-life groups (to one of which I belong) are described as being infiltrated/funded by American extremists, and measures like the appalling one just passed get little or no coverage by the BBC or the press. We live in a very sick society.
As a Christian I’m strongly opposed to the murder of any child in the womb. However, I do try to find logic and sense in opposing arguments.
In this case, I cannot understand how this legislation could be passed. Rushed through the Commons (without prior warning), it doesn’t provide medical protection to women nor protection from those coerced (e.g. by grooming gangs). It continues, or facilitates the destruction of children based on gender (pandering to certain ethnicities, again).
I watched what passed for debate in the HoL last night. Some of the advocates for clause 208 were clearly under the influence of evil spirits (trust me, that’s not something that disappeared in medieval times).
Sadly, the Lords Spiritual were weakly represented. I presume Toby had other plans too.
I care a lot. What the Labour Government have just pushed into law is pure evil. But what can we “little people” do? To think that we probably have at least three more years of this tyranny.
”what can we little people do”? Repent and pray to God….
How is there any difference between aborting a child about to be born, and murdering a 1-year-old child (which would earn you life in prison, and in some countries the death penalty)?
Just last week I read an article about an 18 day old baby who died by falling from a window. The mother was arrested under suspicion of murder.
If she’d only done it 19 days earlier…
I could get behind the original 12 week limit. The 24 week was a bit too far for my liking. Now we have a 39 week limit. Disgusting.
I would go further: If a life is terminated at any point from conception, and the natural process that would produce a life if allowed to proceed is prevented from happening, it is literally the definition of murder. Why should the legality or otherwise of killing a child be determined by when that killing takes place?
As I said, I felt the 12 week limit was acceptable. You are of course entitled to disagree.
But what they’ve done now is entirely evil.
I agree with 12 weeks as the upper limit, which is also inline with many other European countries, though here in the Netherlands it’s 24 weeks. I’m a realist, not an idealist, so I don’t look at this topic as being simply black and white, nor do I judge every female who seeks an abortion as being on a par with Myra Hindley. That would be beyond ridiculous because people’s reasons and circumstances are many and varied.
I agree with you completely. Only the 12-week limit is reasonable, because it sometimes took that long in the past for the girl or woman to be certain that she was pregnant.
6 months (24 weeks) is too long, because the earliest a foetus can survive outside the womb is 22 weeks (with help from modern machinery), when all their internal organs are sufficiently developed. Unless the mother discovers, as Sarah Ewart did at 20 weeks, that the foetus was headless, or some other horror rendering the foetus a mass of cells incapable of surviving in human form.
So if you’re correct in your assertion that in some cases it took at least 12 weeks for pregnancy to become apparent or register on a pregnancy test, then why on earth would you need that limit? If a woman is unaware she is pregnant then obviously she is not going to get an abortion.
So I ask you, is it OK to murder a 13-week-old baby?
The fact remains that a human life terminated at ANY point is tantamount to murder.
You are entitled to your extremist Vatican viewpoint about ejecting from a human woman an object the size of a plum.
Again, they’re not ‘ejected’ and don’t forget, you were once the ‘size of a plum’ in the early stages of your development.
The only reason your Jesuit Vatican Masters have instilled this Obsession with Abortion into you is because the Vatican is obsessed with claiming as many converts to Maryolatry as possible.
What is your view on the average of 15 human embryos artificially created for each woman during IVF treatment, resulting in this:
1.7 million embryos created for IVF have been thrown away, and just 7 per cent lead to pregnancy | Daily Mail Online
So in your view, all IVF treatment for infertile women should be banned, especially for Christians, because it artificially creates millions of embryos which are then discarded?
This is my view: all IVF treatment is an abomination, and no Christian should be participating in such an open defiance and perversion of God’s will.
1.7 million embryos created for IVF have been thrown away, and just 7 per cent lead to pregnancy | Daily Mail Online
The Left is Evil. Because the Left worships The Prince of the Air. He whispers praise in their ears, he tells them they’re important, clever, wise and compassionate. They place the image of their own desires upon the throne of their lives and bow down and serve it. This is Evil: The placing of Self above all other considerations.
In my opinion, if an unborn baby is viable (effectively age 22 weeks or more) then carrying out an abortion is murder.
Abortion at all stages will always be a contentious issue, quite rightly. There are good arguments for and against. The Commons and the Lords allowing full-term abortion is a step too far in my opinion.
The conversation about the need for late -term abortion seems to be focussing on the distress to the mother who may face prosecution, however, the conversation I have not heard in this country is what happens to the aborted baby.
With this government, and the previous one, wanting make the U.K. the Life Sciences Hub of the World, the additional aborted material may well be of benefit. I understand that there is a very lucrative business in aborted material for research and such like.
The passing of this clause makes me wonder if the women that are in a vulnerable position, such that they feel the need to abort their baby at such a late stage, will be made more vulnerable by financial exploitation.
No, there are no arguments for abortion. I suspect that the vast majority of abortions are just a barbaric firm of birth control for lazy immoral couples. I wonder if Monsters Inc were shown a film of one being carried out before they voted?
I wonder if you are personally willing to adopt all the ejected foetuses resulting from incest, gang rape, or headless foetuses like Sarah Ewart’s. Perhaps you could freeze them to use for medical research.
Am I personally willing to adopt all the ejected foetuses? What a very silly comment. (BTW, they are not ‘ejected’, they’re surgically removed)
Not “silly”, but completely LOGICAL & JUST.
You must be FORCED TO ADOPT all the foetuses, since you want to FORCE every girl and woman to carry them and bear them.
YOU PERSONALLY MUST BE FORCED to pay for them all.
Having lived through 2020 and gone through the massive psychological operations; recognising that the powers that shouldn’t be are always manipulating the minds of people particularly to form divisive societal arguments, so that they argue and fight with each other, rather than see the unlawful and unconstitutional crimes that the State does to the people, and hold the State accountable, you have to ask why this extension to abortion term limits has been brought forward, under the guise of a Police and Crime Bill. Usually, the answer is found by following the money. Conversations in the USA about abortion include the topic of what happens to the material that is aborted. That does not happen here. Why? Morals rarely factor in the decisions of those that are grossly materialistic. However, the normally ‘good masses’ can be persuaded to do, or go along with, utter abominations in the name of ‘welfare’/‘to protect the vulnerable’ and so on. To reduce decisions about undergoing abortion as being due to lazy birth control is to utterly ignore the many complexities that can surround the issue – women found to be pregnant can be in position of weighing a multitude of moralities and dammed either… Read more »
You make an excellent point. The aborted material IS A LUCRATIVE COMMODITY, just like all the AMPUTATED FORESKINS OF BABY BOYS in the West, which are sold by hospitals for cosmetic and medical research, the “stem cells” of baby foreskins being particularly prized.
Yes, ladies, it’s in your Rejuvenating Face Cream.
Everyone is horrified by Female Genital Mutilation, but hypocritically silent about Male Genital Mutilation of baby boys.
Latest figures for 2023 show 300000 abortions in UK. This number of murders should not be tolerated in any society let alone in Britain. How did we get to this position and although I come from a Christian perspective, surely no one, atheist or not, can agree with this senseless killing of unborn babies or, as the latest decision in the Lords, killing at birth.
Then you would agree that all IVF fertility treatment is an abomination, especially since it results in millions of artificially-created embryos being discarded every year worldwide?
1.7 million embryos created for IVF have been thrown away, and just 7 per cent lead to pregnancy | Daily Mail Online
I care. My MP Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat, Edinburgh West) voted for this. When I wrote to her in advance asking her not to, she accused me of spreading misinformation, then lied (or exposed her ignorance, I can’t tell which) on three separate factual points. I received no reply to my followup letter and two polite reminders asking her to withdraw her accusation and reconcile her statements with government data, criminal case evidence, and parliamentary proceedings. I wrote to Lord Alton, Baroness Finlay, Baroness O’Loan, and Baroness Eaton. Baroness O’Loan replied. I wrote to spuc.org.uk, care.org.uk, christian.org.uk, and karmanirvana.org.uk – leading pro-life advocacy groups – to notify them of an open letter and website I had created to make transparent Ms Jardine’s misinformation. I received no reply. I wrote to the letters section of the Scotsman, Edinburgh Evening News, The Herald, and the Sunday Times. I received no reply. I wrote to Daily Sceptic last week inviting it to publish my open letter detailing Christine Jardine’s statements of mistruth. I received no reply. I’ve never tried to participate in politics before. I don’t really see the point. However, I published the details together with the contact details of the 379… Read more »
Thank you so much and bless you for this. There are those of us who do care, who are mourning for those killed and those who will be killed and who have spoken where we were allowed to, but not listened to. Fidelium animae per miseracordium Dei, requiescant in pace.
Yes, there are two words in the English language that make every Catholic gnash their little teeth, stamp their feet, tear their hair, and long for the good old days of burning Christians alive at the stake. Those two words are: “Abortion” and “Protestant”.
Life arguably starts at quickening, when the spirit enters the foetus. Some may argue with this observation, but if you believe in a spiritual life, then this makes enormous sense.
Just as a person may be brain dead but still kept living mechanically, a foetus lives but doesn’t have a spirit until one enters the body – at quickening.
God said “I knew you when I knitted you in your Mother’s womb”…Amen
So what is your view on the millions of human embryos artificially created during IVF treatment, and then discarded?
1.7 million embryos created for IVF have been thrown away, and just 7 per cent lead to pregnancy | Daily Mail Online
Exactly. Excellent point.
What’s to stop a woman finding a quiet spot, giving birth then immediately killing the baby, still connected umbillically? She could say that she had inserted the killing implement before birth, so no prosecution.
Realistically, no woman is going to stick things inside her in the hope of killing a baby and not worry about harming herself. Better to do the job immediately upon birth.
I disagree. No normal woman would be such a monster as to deliberately carry a healthy foetus for nine months and then deliberately kill it after it is born! That is murder, and there can be no justification for it, nor even for carrying a healthy foetus until it is viable at 22 weeks, and then killing it. 12 weeks is a reasonable limit, unless the mother doesn’t find out her foetus is headless, for example, until much later, as in the case of Sarah Ewart.