Standing for life after abortion decrim

What took place in the House of Lords on Wednesday evening was tragic and devastating. Yet if you read the mainstream media, you would not have guessed so. The outcome of the votes on abortion barely registered. It’s as if our society has become so used to abortion, that we fail to notice when politicians pass a law change that is highly significant in its nature.

Members of the House of Lords voted to decriminalise abortion right up to birth for women who self-administer the abortion. They also rejected an amendment that would have reinstated in-person consultations. When MPs debated the decriminalisation proposal, they took a mere 46 minutes. The House of Lords at least gave it a bit longer. But the biggest ethical and social change to our abortion laws in decades still happened with minimal debate and scrutiny.

The law is supposed to act as a safeguard. It is supposed to protect lives, not harm them. But with this recent vote, parliamentarians have voted to remove most of the last remaining protections for preborn babies.

It is important to be clear about what this law change means. What Peers have accepted is that if a woman manages to procure abortion drugs and takes them herself, she will not face any criminal sanction, even up to the point of birth. Any doctor who provides abortion medication to a woman post-24 weeks will still face criminal charges.

Decriminalising abortion is portrayed as a ‘compassionate’ response, but the reality is that shielding women who induce an illegal abortion can only mean that more women, not fewer, are likely to risk dangerous, desperate steps to end their late-term pregnancy.

It is tragically ironic that the Abortion Act of 1967 was justified due to fears over dangerous, backstreet abortions. As my colleague argues, there are big questions over the reality of this justification. But by accepting decriminalisation and by refusing to reinstate in-person consultations, parliamentarians have made dangerous abortions more, not less likely!

By changing the law in this way, we have further entrenched the idea that the preborn baby has no status in the law and does not deserve to be protected. This directly contradicts the Bible’s teaching where instead we discover that all lives, from conception to life’s natural end, have intrinsic value and dignity because we are made in God’s own image.

I am heartbroken at this outcome. When I was an MP in Westminster, abortion was an issue close to my heart, and it remains so. I was working to reduce the time limit from 24 weeks to 22, on the basis that babies born at this earlier stage are now surviving and thriving, which would have been a very small change in the right direction. It never did come to a vote in 2024 because a snap election was called, but I know many MPs resisted even this modest attempt to change the law and save lives.

The UK already has, by comparison with other countries, one of the most extreme abortion laws anywhere in the world. Even before this latest change, our 24-week time limit for most abortions was significantly higher than the European average of 12 weeks. And now we have said that a woman can self-administer her own abortion, without any medical care or in-person consultation, right up to birth, for whatever reason, and face no sanction whatsoever.

We’ve moved from one extreme to another.

Surely, as believers in God’s better story for life, our response must be one of serious lament? Years ago, the songwriter Graham Kendrick wrote a hymn to mark the lives lost to the 1967 Abortion Act. The opening lines of this song capture what I suspect many of us are feeling:

“Who can sound the depths of sorrow
In the Father heart of God
For the children we’ve rejected
For the lives so deeply scarred?”

The second verse goes like this:

“We have scorned the truth you gave us
We have bowed to other lords
We have sacrificed the children
On the altars of our gods
O let truth again shine on us
Let your holy fear descend
Upon our nation, upon our nation
Have mercy, Lord”

That must surely be our cry: have mercy, O Lord! What does it say about us as a nation that we treat the most vulnerable – tiny, defenceless babies – in this way?

CARE’s work on this issue has always had three components. We’ve worked in Parliament, advocating for a law that respects the dignity of women and preborn babies.

Our OPEN Ministry offers post-abortion healing retreats to help women find peace and restoration in Jesus. OPEN also offers training and help for churches so they can be places where anyone who has had an abortion in their past can be loved and helped to find hope in the gospel.

But we also know that when it comes to the topic of abortion, we need to win hearts and minds. That’s why we’ve got a range of resources on our website designed to help Christians engage with what God thinks about abortion.

Perhaps like me you sometimes struggle to know what to pray about this issue. Our team chaplain, Celia Bowring, who has been involved with CARE since the beginning, has written a wonderful seven ways to pray about abortion. You’ll find it a huge help to give your prayers context and content. But you’ll also find some really helpful articles on the Bible and abortion and an article answering the question: when does life really begin?

It has been a strange week. On Tuesday, we rejoiced as the assisted suicide Bill in Scotland was defeated by a bigger than expected margin. Peers in the House of Lords are doing excellent work scrutinising the assisted suicide Bill at Westminster and it looks like it may run out of time.

Our parliaments have protected the most vulnerable at the end of their life. But they have agreed law change that undermines the value of life at its very beginning.

It is our calling, as the UK-church, to courageously call out this contradiction and to make the case for God’s better story. The result in the House of Lords on Wednesday night does not call for retreat and disengagement, but the very opposite.

For some, it will mean lobbying for law change. For others it will mean involvement in crisis-pregnancy related work. Others might get involved in fostering and adoption, following the example of the early church and giving homes to unwanted babies. Then others might get involved in education to promote God’s perspective in schools.

And all of us can pray for the Lord’s mercy. We can all do something as we act as salt and light (Matt. 5:13-16) and speak up for those more vulnerable than ourselves (Prov. 31:8-9). May God have mercy and grant us the grace to do what we can, while we can, to stand up for women and for babies.