The House of Lords rejects amendments calling for safety measures for women, such as an in-person consultation before receiving medication by post to induce abortions outside a clinic.
The House of Lords has not made any significant changes to the law passed in June by the United Kingdom lower house (House of Commons), which fully decriminalised abortion, including when performed shortly before the baby’s due date.
Pro-life groups had hoped that two amendments tabled by conservative politicians and representatives of the Church of England (which has representation in the House of Lords) would be accepted. But this was not the case.
The House of Lords voted on Wednesday 18 March, with 185 against and 148 in favour, to reject an amendment to the bill that would have removed clause 206 – the part of the text that allows abortions beyond the legal limit of 24 weeks to no longer be considered a crime.
In effect, therefore, any abortion carried out outside a medical practice will go unpunished.
A second amendment was also rejected. It called for women to have at least one in-person consultation at a medical centre before carrying out an abortion elsewhere. It was defeated by 191 votes against to 119 in favour.
This means that, barring any surprises, the law decriminalising all forms of abortion up to birth will go ahead. The legal limit for having an abortion in healthcare centres will remain at 24 weeks, but there will be no consequences for those who have an abortion at home beyond that timeframe.
Pro-life groups such as Right to Life regard the law now set to be passed as the most significant change in these 60 years. “If this bill becomes law, it will likely lead to a significant increase in the number of women performing late-term abortions at home, endangering the lives of many more women,” said this group, which organises pro-life marches every year.
They believe the new law will also encourage abortions based on the baby’s gender, a practice which, according to a recent survey by Savanta ComRes, is rejected by 89% of the British population.
The Evangelical Alliance UK reacted to the vote with “deep concern” over the “bad news” coming from Westminster. If the law does come into force, the evangelical body added, it is necessary to “ensure that women facing crisis pregnancies receive compassionate, life-affirming support, and that both mother and child are cared for with dignity before and after birth”.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children regrets that this liberalisation of the abortion law has been “pushed through without any pre-legislative scrutiny, public consultation or a detailed impact assessment”.
They believe the new law “will lead to late-term abortions being carried out on babies who, if born in hospital, would stand a good chance of surviving”.
More abortion in Europe
Attempts to further liberalise abortion laws are also taking place in other European countries.
A Queensland case of a baby left to die re-ignites abortion debate, urging Christians and conservatives to confront late-term terminations, hold politicians accountable, and attend a united pro-life rally at Parliament.
by Dave Pellowe.
A medical professional in the Queensland “Health” system has taken a heartbreaking photo that should deeply grieve and anger a normal person. It’s not okay to look away from the betrayal of justice happening in our name and funded by public money in every state of this Commonwealth.
Baby Samuel was at just 16 weeks gestation when his mother, God forgive her, recently decided to have an abortion. He was born alive, and left to die alone, sucking his thumb.
In Queensland, the deliberate termination of healthy babies in utero happens about 33 times every day for any reason — there are no good reasons. This is happening under the Liberal/National Party government: allegedly representative of Christians and conservatives, allegedly full of pro-life and Christian MPs.
If our “conservative” MPs can’t convince the voting public of the humanity of preborn people and the injustice of killing them with taxpayer funding, what use are they at all? That’s gross incompetence and cowardice.
I’m sometimes told we lose public moral battles like marriage, euthanasia and abortion because we’re not sophisticated or subtle enough with language, and Christians are too easily dismissed as “fringe radicals”.
Let me be clear — this is child sacrifice: medicalised, normalised, subsidised and industrialised, but nevertheless as barbaric and brutal as ancient pagans putting their screaming babies in the searing hot hands of bronze idols with prayers for prosperity.
Every new day that our politicians turn their face away from the preventable, unjust suffering of innocent living humans like baby Samuel is another day they collaborate with abortionists, their hands also drenched in blood.
Yet every new day is another God-given chance to finally offer their careers “perhaps for such a time as this”, as a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice in His service, in the righteous cause of justice and mercy for the frailest, most vulnerable people.
While we can certainly judge their failures, we, Christian and conservative voters, must simultaneously exhort their repentance and reformation, and offer as much support for renewed courage as we do electoral punishment for turning their faces away from the greatest moral tragedy of this age.
There is more than politics available to Christians as a solution, but in a liberal democracy like Australia, politically intervening in injustice is not optional — it’s morally compulsory.
Here’s what you can do to help
Will you interrupt your routines and choose some inconvenience next Monday, 9 February, to join me in a Public Gathering for Queensland Babies night outside the Queensland Parliament?
CLICK HERE now to let us know you’ll be there to bear witness to the Qld government that baby Samuel’s life matters to God, as does every baby killed every day by the government and taxpayers in Queensland, and they matter to us. We the Church will not turn our faces away. We will not be silent.
Will you please do whatever it takes to be there? This is a watershed moment in the abortion debate in Queensland. I have been to many such rallies, and can assure you it’s safe, positive and suitable for children of all ages.
Please be in prayer this week for the Qld Life Coalition, Joanna Howe and our pro-life MPs. Do not underestimate the spiritual battle raging over us all as heavenly light battles demonic darkness.
Finally, please share my short videos on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and X this week to build attention and awareness of this moral emergency and the epidemic of injustice being suffered like that of baby Samuel’s.
by Dave Pellowe. Dave Pellowe is a Christian writer and commentator, founder of The Good Sauce, convener of the annual Australian Church And State Summit and host of Good Sauce’s weekly The Church And State Show, also syndicated on ADH TV. Since 2016, Dave has undertaken the mission of arming Christians to influence culture through events from Perth to Auckland, videos, podcasts and articles published in multiple journals across Australia and New Zealand.
The Daily Declaration is Australia’s largest Christian news site. We are dedicated to providing a voice for Christian values in the public square. Our vision is to see the revitalisation of our Judeo-Christian values for the common good. We are non-profit, independent, crowdfunded, and we provide Christian news for a growing audience across Australia, Asia, and the South Pacific.
Upper-limit abortion legislation such as that currently being put forward in the UK is ultimately detrimental to the pro-life cause, warns John Smeaton, co-founder/co-director of Voice of the Family. Similar legislation is being considered in the South Australian parliament.
In my article last week, I explained how, nearly 40 years ago, British anti-abortion parliamentarians and campaigning organisations, including SPUC in which I had a leading role, paved the way for the catastrophic 1990 legislation which raised the upper limit for abortion to 24 weeks for most abortions in the UK while allowing abortions up to birth in cases of disability and for certain other reasons.
John Smeaton
The UK Government and parliamentarians were following the example set by the anti-abortion lobby, including by the Catholic bishops, which had backed David Alton’s1 Bill, published on 16 December 1987. The Alton Bill sought to introduce an upper limit of 18 weeks for most — so-called “social” — abortions, while permitting disabled babies to be killed up to 28 weeks.
The rationale for supporting Alton Bill-style legislation was presented in Human Concern, the flagship newspaper of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), of which I was general secretary, in these terms:
“SPUC will be stepping up its educational programme in the fight to win equal rights for the handicapped. The decision followed the results of the David Alton Bill in which an exception clause allowing abortion for severe handicap has been included.
“‘Of course we are continuing our support for the Bill’, said Phyllis Bowman, National Director. ‘It will save a considerable number of lives and will be the first step in the right direction.’” (My emphasis)
Tragically, it is more accurate to say that it proved to be a major step in the wrong direction.
Today, Right to Life UK is promoting another upper-limit bill which, if pursued, will result in similarly disastrous legislation. Support for exceptions for disabled babies is even more deeply entrenched in the parliamentary and public psyche and, as debates and votes in Parliament over the decades have demonstrated, politicians are likely to demand abortion up to birth for other reasons too.
The details of the bill backed by Right to Life UK have not been published but it’s reasonable to expect that it will be along the lines of one of two legislative measures which were under consideration in 2024, one proposed by Baroness Nuala O’Loan and the other by Sir Liam Fox MP. Both were backed by the Catholic bishops — with, no doubt, the same rationale as SPUC put forward in 1988, that they would be the “first step in the right direction”.
Both legislative measures expressly supported the killing of unborn children up to a certain number of weeks, while leaving in place abortion up to birth for disabled babies and for other reasons.
Baroness O’Loan’s Bill states: “In section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 (medical termination of pregnancy), for ‘twenty-fourth’ substitute ‘twenty-second’.
Parliamentarians backing Baroness O’Loan, therefore, would have been voting for the following provision to become part of the Abortion Act:
“1 (1) Subject to the provisions of this section, a person shall not be guilty of an offence under the law relating to abortion when a pregnancy is terminated by a registered medical practitioner if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion, formed in good faith
“(a) that the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-second week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family;
“Sir Liam Fox’s proposed new clause to the Criminal Justice Bill stated: “In section 1 (Medical termination of pregnancy) of the Abortion Act 1967, at the end of sub-subsection (1)(d) insert ‘provided that, where that chance arises from a foetus having Down syndrome, the pregnancy has not exceeded the gestational limit identified in sub-subsection (a).’”
Parliamentarians backing Sir Liam Fox’s measure, therefore, would have been voting for the following provision to become part of the Abortion Act:
“(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, a person shall not be guilty of an offence under the law relating to abortion when a pregnancy is terminated by a registered medical practitioner if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion, formed in good faith—
“(a) that the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family; or
…
(d) that there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped ‘provided that, where that chance arises from a foetus having Down syndrome, the pregnancy has not exceeded the gestational limit identified in sub-subsection (a).”
Both legislative measures were inviting parliamentarians expressly to support abortions on babies up to a certain number of weeks — 22 weeks in the case of Baroness O’Loan, and 24 weeks in the case of Sir Liam Fox — just as David Alton’s Bill, back in 1987, invited parliamentarians expressly to support abortions up to the 18th week of pregnancy. The Alton Bill stated:
“1 (1) A woman’s pregnancy may be terminated in accordance with section 1 of the Abortion Act 1967 at any time up to the beginning of the 18th week of gestation.
“(2) Thereafter, up to the 28th week of pregnancy … [for various reasons, including in the case of disability).”
The Catholic Church teaches that a law permitting the killing of certain unborn children is an unjust law which, in the words of St Thomas Aquinas, “ceases to be a law and becomes instead an act of violence”. Pope John Paul II in this connection, citing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and its 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion, said:
“In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it.”
The meaning of this statement quoted in Evangelium Vitae (no 73) is 100 per cent clear, and yet during the past fifty years, pro-life leaders, myself included, have backed legislation which permits abortion in certain circumstances on the basis that such legislation is an improvement on an existing law and will save lives.
However, such permissive anti-abortion campaigning sends the message to friends and opponents alike that abortion can be the right thing to do. Is it not likely that one of the reasons why the evil of abortion is so overwhelmingly accepted in particular circumstances by our fellow citizens, including by our fellow Catholics, is that pro-life groups themselves have almost universally been prepared to accept legalised abortion in certain circumstances?
Since 1995, many of us have justified our campaigns in support of unjust laws by quoting another paragraph in section 73 of Evangelium Vitae, where Pope John Paul II famously wrote:
“A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on … In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.”
For the past 30 years perhaps the majority of pro-life leaders have interpreted this paragraph as meaning that politicians may vote for, and campaigners may campaign for, laws which of themselves expressly permit abortions. But this is contrary to the teaching of the encyclical, as shown by the immediately preceding paragraph:
“In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it.”
According to Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, “the principle (or law) of non-contradiction is the firmest … without the principle of non-contradiction we could not know anything that we do know”. On the basis of this foundational principle of rational procedure, it is not possible for this statement to mean both one can vote for an unjust law and one cannot vote for an unjust law — on the basis of one’s motives in doing so or for any other reason.
Imagine it was lawful in our countries to kill children up to 6 months after birth. Imagine a parliamentarian putting forward legislation to stop the killing of children after three months, while authorising killings of children up to the three month limit — and with exceptions for disabled children who could be killed up to 6 months or even later. It would clearly be wrong to vote for such a law or to campaign for such a law, however many lives, allegedly, such a law would save, on the basis that it would be “a step in the right direction”.
Regarding exceptions for the abortion of disabled babies, Rachel Hurst, vice-chairman of Disabled People’s International, has said that pro-life groups which tried to stop social abortions but not eugenic abortions were being “extremely discriminatory and obviously show[ing] eugenic tendencies, even though they would refute them”. She argued that the lower status given to disabled unborn children reflected a view that “disabled people are not seen as human beings”.2 This was absolutely not the attitude or intention of David Alton or the Catholic bishops SPUC’s national director or myself back in 1987, but we must face the fact that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
There is a crucial moral difference between, on the one hand, limiting, in an ethical way, the harm of pro-abortion legislation, such as we saw in the triumphant pro-life campaign to overturn the Roe v Wade decision; and, on the other hand, campaigning for politicians to vote for abortion in the case of rape, or in the case of disability, or in the case of a baby being below a certain number of weeks’ gestation. We will never defeat abortion by campaigning for politicians to vote for abortion in particular circumstances. As long as legislators accept that “it’s OK” directly to kill an innocent child in the womb, the defence against killing any unborn child is torn away.
by John Smeaton of Voice of the Family. Voice of the Family is an initiative of Catholic laity, formed to defend Catholic teaching on the family. Voice of the Family was founded in 2014 to offer our expertise and resources before, during and after the Synod on the Family 2014-15.
Voice of the Family is praying for Lord Alton who, last week, was being treated in hospital for injuries received in a road accident while on a bus in central London. ↩︎
Cited in Colin Harte, Changing Unjust Laws Justly (CUA Press, 2005) p 50. ↩︎
There is renewed scrutiny of the decades-old practice of the federal government paying mothers who have their babies killed by late-term abortion.
The Albanese government is now paying mothers for killing their healthy babies before they are born. Incredibly, this means that an Australian mother who aborts her baby — after 20 weeks in her pregnancy and up until birth — can choose between a Stillbirth Parenting Payment of $4,255 or a Paid Parental Leave Payment of $20,147!
Not even Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom, or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World could have envisaged such a grotesque inversion of meaning. But such is the time in which we now live.
Late-term abortion is an horrific and barbaric practice. Not only that, but it is a pre-mediated act of murder to take the life of another human being. As pro-life lawyer Dr Joanna Howe explains:
Killing a baby after 20 weeks and up until birth entails injecting the baby’s heart with potassium chloride or digoxin and is followed by the early induction of labour of that now stillborn baby.
This is a deliberate and wilful act to kill a healthy baby very late in pregnancy and deliver them stillborn.
In South Australia, 80% of late-term abortions kill healthy babies.
The Corruption of the Baby Bonus
Australia has a very generous policy for families to have a child. But the Albanese government is now extending that financial provision for their murder as well. Indeed, it not only supports but also encourages the termination of pregnancies after twenty weeks. As Dr Howe argues:
The Howard Government’s Baby Bonus was criticised because it incentivised teen pregnancies. This is far, far worse. Instead of receiving a $5,000 cash payment for birthing a baby at full term, the Albanese Government is now incentivising late-term abortion in half the time.
One midwife relays the traumatic situation of assisting a woman to terminate her child, only to be then told that she is looking forward to using the Stillborn Parenting Payment to fund her upcoming trip to Bali.
In the dystopian classic 1984, George Orwell coined the term ‘newspeak’, a fictional language for the totalitarian state of Oceania. By re-defining the meaning of words, the government could exert complete control over its citizens. Hence, the Ministry for Truth was the government agency responsible for propaganda, historical revisionism, and controlling information. Alternatively, the Ministry of Love was responsible for perpetrating violence through fear, torture and brainwashing.
As we can all see now, Orwell was not only a brilliant novelist, but also very prescient in what he perceived would soon occur. But not even he could have envisioned a situation where a “baby bonus” would be paid to a mother for killing her baby or a Paid Parental Leave payment be given after one decided to not actually be a mother. And the fact that the political party responsible for this perversion is called the ‘Labor’ Party just beggars belief.
Appendix: SA Pregnancy Advisory Centre Form
The below form from the Pregnancy Advisory Centre outlined how to claim the maternity payment for “termination of pregnancy at or over 20 weeks gestation”. In 2013, Catholic pro-life advocate Bernard Gaynor published this on his website which was given to him “by a family hurt by abortion”. For more information, see the article, “Is the Australian Government Really Paying Women $4,200 to Abort Their Babies? Here’s the Evidence“.
This article first appeared at The Daily Declaration and is reproduced here by permission.
Mark Powell is a passionate advocate for faith, family, freedom and life. He is a gifted communicator and has made various appearances on radio and TV. Mark is unafraid to graciously speak the truth about contentious issues. He contributes to numerous online publications including The Spectator Australia, where his articles often appear in the most popular list.
The Daily Declaration is Australia’s largest Christian news site. They are dedicated to providing a voice for Christian values in the public square. Their vision is to see the revitalisation of our Judeo-Christian values for the common good.
Press release from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) on the UK’s decriminalisation of abortion to birth.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has reacted with horror to a vote in the House of Commons decriminalising abortion.
The clause, tabled by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, was approved by MPs by 379 to 137.
The amendment changes the underlying laws on abortion so that “no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy”. Ms Antoniazzi’s explanatory statement says that the clause “would disapply existing criminal law related to abortion from women acting in relation to their own pregnancy at any gestation”, allowing abortion up to birth.
Alithea Williams of SPUC said “We are horrified that MPs have voted for this extreme and barbaric proposal. If this clause becomes law, a woman who aborts her baby at any point in pregnancy, even moments before birth, would not be committing a criminal offence. In fact, by dismissing the Infant Life Preservation Act intended to provide legal protection to a child during birth, a woman who killed her baby during delivery would not be committing an offence.
“Our already liberal Abortion law allows an estimated 300,000 babies a year to be killed. Now, even the very limited protection afforded by the law is being stripped away. And this has been pushed by an abortion lobby cynically exploiting a situation that they brought about. The cases they use of women being prosecuted for abortion – a number in the single digits – came about because of a policy they championed – sending women abortion pills in the post without in person appointments.
“This change has been made after only a few hours debate, with little notice. It was not in the Government’s manifesto, and it certainly doesn’t reflect public opinion. Recent polling found that 62% of the public agree that ‘Having an illegal abortion should continue to be a criminal offence to protect both the unborn and vulnerable women who could be coerced into losing a baby they may have wanted, for example by an abusive partner’. Only 5% support extending the abortion limit up to birth. We call on the Lords to throw this undemocratic, barbaric proposal out when it reaches them. We will never accept a law that puts women in danger and removes all rights from unborn babies.”
