Dystopian UK has voted to Decriminalise Abortion – by Carl Duffy

Yesterday, 379 MPs voted to decriminalise abortion, after 24 weeks, despite those babies being able to survive outside the womb. The two SDLP MPs – Colum Eastwood and Claire Hanna – were amongst those in support of such an extreme position. One must wonder how we got to a stage where even a nine-month baby has no rights.

 Prior to passing through the vaginal canal, a human being would no longer have any legal protection. Is this ethical or just? What happened to the idea of every human life being sacred? Do any of us believe we only obtained a right to life after leaving our mother’s womb?

 I believe the abortionists succeeded because of effective narrative control and liberalising laws by attrition. In 2018, Ireland voted to repeat the 8ᵗʰ amendment – which protected the right to life of the unborn. Following the death of Savita Halappanavar – who died from sepsis after a prolonged miscarriage where an abortion was denied – there was national outcry. Ironically, abortion – which takes a life – could now be supported on the perception that it saves lives.

The tragic death of this young woman shaped a lot of the narrative surrounding this debate. In effect, abortionists in Ireland were just as clever and strategic as their global counterparts in how they shaped public opinion. Ireland eventually moved from the view that all human life is sacred, to now accepting that in some circumstances a human life is disposable. The abortionists were smart enough to sanitise the ugly reality of what they supported with effective use of language. Latin would strangely be used to refer to the baby as a foetus. The termination of a life became ‘reproductive rights.’ A developing human being became nothing more than a ‘clump of cells.’

What some view as a conflict of rights between the mother and baby became a woman’s right to choose. A universal human rights issue became solely about women’s rights. To argue in support of the unborn – something we all were at one stage – now made you a misogynist who hated women. The pro-life position argued that liberalising abortion laws would lead to abortion being treated as a method of contraception and would be abused. They also warned that accepting some life as disposable could have implications for attitudes towards euthanasia also.

In 2023, over 10,000 abortions took place in Ireland. This is over double the number of fatalities of ‘The Troubles.’ Risk to life was cited as grounds for 21 of these abortions. 1 in 6 pregnancies in Ireland now end in abortion and the procedure is almost perceived as an innocuous form of birth control.

The evidence vindicates the position of pro-life. Assisted dying laws have also been utilised for people with non-fatal disabilities in Canada. Despite the prescient arguments put forward by the pro-life contingent several years ago coming true, intolerance towards them has only increased. The Safe Access Zones Act now prevents protestors from gathering within 200 metres of abortion clinics. The abortionist’s style themselves as progressive, and we’re continuing to progress towards an anti-life culture. Children are increasingly being seen as a burden that curtails our freedoms. The fertility rate has fallen below replacement levels in many countries and majority of British MPs support decriminalising the abortion of a fully developed baby.

 The moral principle of human life being sacred may not have been perfect. Personally, I don’t know if I’d want to be alive with a condition such as locked-in syndrome. But as the American economist Thomas Sowell said, “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” By society accepting some human life as being disposable we are now in a dystopian reality where MPs support decriminalising the murder of an innocent full-term baby.

We shouldn’t have conceded a single inch to the abortionists. In nature the most empathetic relationship that exists is between a mother and her baby. In the West, a mother’s womb is now the most hostile place for human life. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, sexual technologies remove the procreational and serious part of sex and reduce it to meaningless pleasure. Sexual orgies replace romance, and the culture breeds selfish narcissists devoid of any depth. Perhaps, if he had seen the UK in 2025, he’d have preferred his fictional dystopia.