Wednesday’s vote in the House of Lords to decriminalise abortion and legalise it up to birth is a deeply regressive and disingenuous development. The vote passed by 185 votes to 148. 

The attempt by some media outlets to downplay the result as simply being about “pardoning” women for performing illegal abortions is another vile twisting of the truth. 

The outcome is the culmination of what happens when the most powerful people in society arbitrarily pass judgment on the most vulnerable members of society and decide to strip them of every last bit of protection. 

Peers who supported the proposal – like MPs in the House of Commons before them – are well aware that women in the UK have not been routinely subject to criminal prosecution for procuring illegal abortions, despite claims made to justify the change in law. Nor can the peers plead ignorance about the inevitable consequences of their vote which puts women’s lives at risk as more opt for dangerous late-term abortions in the absence of any legal constraints.

Despite the huge number of abortions taking place in the UK each year, abortion on demand was until now a criminal offence there if it took place after 24 weeks of pregnancy – although there were a number of exceptions to that, including allowing abortion up to birth where an unborn baby has a disability of any kind.

Now that the vote to decriminalise abortion has passed in both houses of parliament, the criminal law will no longer apply in protecting the lives of unborn babies, at any stage in pregnancy, right up to birth.

And here’s the truly remarkable thing – it’s only in very recent years that prosecutions started to happen in a small number of cases concerning illegal abortions. Until 2022, only three women were convicted of having an illegal abortion in over 150 years via the 1861 Act, under which most illegal abortions would have been prosecuted. But, in the past four years, six individuals were charged for procuring illegal abortions.

There is a strong case to be made that the change in prosecutorial approach was deliberate, aimed at paving the way for the recently passed decriminalisation bill – thereby removing any deterrents to accessing abortion right up to birth.

It is a bleak and disquieting time for our culture when something like this can happen, but we must always leave room for hope. We congratulate the incredible members of the pro-life movement in the UK who fought so hard for victory on Wednesday night. We all stand united and will never give up the fight for human dignity and the right to life.