The news out of the United Kingdom these past weeks read like dispatches from a once great but dying civilization.
Since the 1967 Abortion Act, abortion has been legal up until 24 weeks; it is permitted up until birth if the child in the womb has Down syndrome or a range of other conditions. At 24 weeks, a baby in the womb sucks her thumb, recognizes music and her mother’s womb; she can feel pain much earlier. We have known these facts for a long time.
Next week, MPs will vote on an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill tabled by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi decriminalizing abortion at any stage without legal repercussion. Abortions would only need signoff by two doctors, as the law currently stipulates, if the procedure takes place in a healthcare institution.
According to Antoniazzi, her amendment is necessary to prevent women from being investigated or prosecuted for aborting babies later in pregnancy; many of these children, it must be emphasized, could survive outside of the womb. Six women have appeared in court over the past three years for breaking the abortion law; several high-profile cases involve women taking abortion pills far past the legal limit.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, as well as several charities, trade unions, and royal medical colleges, have backed Antoniazzi’s amendment, as have 136 MPs. The UK’s largest abortion provider, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, supports the amendment. Another amendment, put forward by Labour MP Stella Creasey, would make abortion a human right; that amendment has received the backing of 101 MPs thus far.
Those pushing for abortion up until birth know precisely what they are doing. Decades ago, there was little excuse for pretending that the child in the womb is a clump of cells; now, as preemie babies can be kept alive earlier and earlier and medical technology makes “viability” a moving line, there is none. When asked if she was comfortable with a woman procuring an abortion at 37 weeks—shortly before birth—even if the child was viable, an MP bluntly told Times Radio: “Yes.”
That isn’t a hypothetical scenario. In 2012, a woman aborted her baby at 39 weeks to cover up an affair. Antoniazzi has claimed that “no woman … wants to kill her child” (her words). But this is demonstrably untrue; indeed, the only reason she is pushing her amendment is to ensure that this can take place. She admits that late-term abortion is killing a child, and yet she champions it. Her amendment is nothing short of an endorsement of prenatal infanticide.
It cannot be stated more strongly: This is brazen, conscious wickedness, and there is no excuse for it. It is an invitation to divine judgement.
Many UK women are horrified by the proposal. Feminist Kathleen Stock, who is no pro-lifer, wrote on X: “I think a lot of women are uncomfortable with this extreme proposal but don’t want to say so for fear of drawing the ire of a small number of feminists who (in my view) are quite fanatical about abortion as an issue. I have no doubt that my posting this will do the same but I don’t care. Just for the record, I think this is very wrong.”
Times columnist Janice Turner concurred: “If you want to ignite an abortion culture war saying you’re ‘comfortable’ with women terminating a pregnancy at 37 weeks, is a can of petrol. Yet this radical change is set to go through with almost no debate. And I’m a life-long, pro-Choice advocate.”
UK writer Mary Harrington put it more succinctly: “Decriminalising abortion to term, including babies that would survive if born prematurely, would be to say basically we’re ok with infanticide. Are you ok with infanticide? I am not ok with infanticide.”
“Maybe it’s just me, but I cannot understand why any MP would choose to be remembered for championing a bill that allows to end a life just moments before its first breath. And I cannot understand why anyone would vote for it,” wrote former MP Nick Fletcher. And yet, barring a miracle, a majority of MPs will vote for it. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is allowing a “free vote,” and will in all likelihood vote for the amendment himself.
All this unfolds as the UK debates assisted suicide and prepares to burn the candle at both ends of life’s spectrum. As veteran UK pro-lifer John Smeaton wrote recently: “As abortions reach their highest-ever levels in the US, in England and Wales, in Ireland, in France and in many other countries, those of us engaged in the battle to protect unborn children are in the toughest situation imaginable and the only possible solution is heavenly assistance.”
