On Tuesday June 17th 2025, the British Parliament (the ‘Mother of Parliaments’) voted after a short debate to decriminalise abortion up to birth when carried out by the pregnant woman herself, thereby shrugging through something which is claimed to be ‘widely popular’ but was not in Labour’s manifesto.
The sentiment is almost a cliché at this point, but I get the feeling that when future scholars are describing the fall of the West, this will be a feature. To my mind, it’s a tragic and profoundly evil development and I’ll explain why in this article, but, if you’re on the other side, it is the argument’s logical conclusion. If abortion has no moral quality to it because a foetus is not a living thing at 23 weeks and six days following conception (the legal limit for abortions to be performed by the NHS in the UK) then there is no moral reason to say that an abortion performed after this arbitrary cut off should have any implications either. The strongest arguments I have heard relate to premature birth survival rates, but an otherwise healthy unborn foetus growing in the womb doesn’t need to survive outside; it’s where it needs to be. There are, of course, many other arguments made in favour of abortion, but cleverer people than me have addressed them before now; Lois McLatchie Miller, Calvin Robinson and the Revd Dr Jamie Franklin to name just three. Nor will I provide detail of how abortions are completed and the pain inflicted on the foetus at different times of gestation; it’s described in other sources, and it’s horrific.
I grew up in an education system which taught us that abortion was effectively a final birth control, ready and waiting for when you forgot to use all the others which might come before – it was treated with indifference. I was a sceptical teenager generally, but I internalised this message without question. In fact, I internalised it without realising it was a message at all, and that it had arguments both for and against.
I was part of a tight-knit group of friends at school and into my early 20s, all of us reprobates, and some of us periodically in relationships with each other. When I was 18, two of my friends conceived a child together. The father, who was besotted with the mother, was quietly pleased. The mother was not. Being one of the few of us who could drive, I was asked to take her to the hospital and sit with her whilst an abortion was carried out. To my everlasting shame and regret, I played my part and I did it with indifference, just as I’d been taught. When, some time later, she thanked me for not making a fuss and quietly looking after her that day, I was genuinely perplexed – we hadn’t done anything of note, had we? If we had, the nurse might have discussed options or suggested we talked to parents. Aftercare might have been offered. But then, why do people mourn the loss of an unborn baby? If what we’d done had a moral implication then we had clearly chosen the immoral option, so that can’t be right. It cannot be simultaneously a medical procedure akin to having a mole removed and also something which warranted a heartfelt and profound emotional outpouring afterward. To my further regret, I could only think to shrug and say it was nothing. I’m still close with the father today, and, all these years later, we’ve never discussed it.
That little boy or girl would now be 14.
With numbers of abortions performed in the UK rising steadily from 185,000 per year in 2016 and heading towards 220,000 today, I seriously doubt I am alone in looking back on my experience with regret. Free speech around this issue is, to my mind, almost non-existent to any practical extent. If I were to tell my story and explain my view to my MP it would most likely be met with indifference, or possibly contempt (he is Labour, after all). If I were to tell it to an expectant mother considering an abortion (i.e., someone who really should hear a view from the other side) arrest seems like a distinct possibility.
I think members of the public who supported lockdowns partly did so for so long, and so vehemently, because to change one’s mind would require admitting to cheering on policies which were cruel, destructive and unnecessary. I was never a vocal or passionate supporter of a woman’s ‘right to choose’, I was just one of the many who took it as read that abortion was a simple medical procedure with no moral implications. Changing my mind was, and is, painful and it would be so much more difficult if I’d lost my own child to it.
The logical conclusion of the Left’s argument has been realised. The logical conclusion of mine is that abortion is immoral in all circumstances and should be illegal. I don’t say this with any malice or glee to those who disagree; I say it with compassion.
Perversely, with the line now so stark and so binary, mine seems a simpler argument to make. I hope more people will make it.
Oscar Evans is the pseudonym of an arborist who helps landowners to manage urban tree stocks.
This piece was first published in The Daily Sceptic, and is reproduced by kind permission.
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Yours sincerely,
Confused
I am adopted from a time before legal abortion. I was the second “accident”. I am very grateful and lucky to be here. I was not terminated and I was not sent off to Australia. I was “chosen” (my mother always said they chose me and didn’t just get what they were given!). I also grew up when abortion was indeed just a simple choice for those who forgot to take a pill or use a condom. I knew a few girls who had abortions – barely discussed other than to raise an eyebrow at their cheap behaviour in getting knocked up. I knew a few girls who didn’t get abortions – mostly they struggled, their parents struggled, society condemned them as irresponsible spongers. I wonder whether this new law allowing women to murder their babies with no consequences will actually cause society to stop and wonder. Presumably, it will please ethnic minorities who don’t want daughters (where I grew up, they didn’t tell you the sex of your unborn child because the local ethnic community would insist on aborting a female fetus). I wonder whether the rest of us will pause and wonder whether, having got that far down the pregnancy with all the hormones kicking in, anyone will actually smash in the head of their new baby. What would they tell the rest of the world? How would they live with themselves?
I totally agree with you.