Many of us will have struggled with our vote yesterday with none of the leading parties offering any genuine protection for the preborn child. The bar ended up being set very low for most pro-lifers with people resorting to vote for the ‘least bad’ rather than anyone who really appreciates the sanctity of life from conception or the damage that abortion inflicts on society.
For better or worse though, as the dust settles, we have a new government. Maybe not the government we wanted but possibly the government we deserve as a nation. What are our hopes for this new government?
Every week I continue to pray outside an abortion centre as I have done for the last twenty years, working with a team who have supported hundreds of women who wanted to continue their pregnancy. My hope is that this will never be considered criminal.
A few weeks ago whilst I prayed there I heard the blackbirds issue their warning cry from a tree inside the grounds of BPAS as magpies invaded their nest. ‘How sad’ I thought ‘that these birds protect their young better than us humans’.
Whilst I would like to hope our laws at least recognise the right to talk about abortion or pray about it, wherever we happen to be, better still, I hope that our laws will one day offer as much protection to the embryonic human as they do to the embryonic blackbird for currently it’s illegal for someone to intentionally destroy the blackbird’s eggs thus killing the developing bird . . . but a developing human? We snuff them out at a rate of nearly 700 a day – and brand it healthcare.
And what about women? I hope that the next government will offer greater transparency regarding the negative impact abortion has on women. For too long now the abortion movement has hidden behind a smokescreen of counterfeit compassion, despite the mounting evidence both anecdotally through women’s own testimonies and through statistical data, for example the Freedom of Information requests to hospital trusts and mystery client investigations which have been documented at percuity.blog These have clearly shown that as many as 1 in every 17 women undergoing a medical abortion end up in hospital as a result of complications.
Nearly 90% of all abortions in England and Wales are medical abortions (by tablets rather than surgery) yet since the onset of Pills by Post abortions in 2020 there’s no way of even knowing the true annual abortion figures (estimated to be around 250,000) let alone the long term repercussions of these. We are hearing more women and teenagers come forward to share horrific stories of their at-home abortions where, without even speaking to a doctor on the phone let alone seeing one and despite having had no scan, they underwent an abortion in the isolation of their own bedroom or bathroom and then had to dispose of their own dead child.
This complete disregard of women’s physical and mental health must change but it will only be when the wound which our society carries is honestly exposed that we can ever hope for that change to happen and for healing to begin.
Are these hopes realistic though? Is this government likely to be the one to make any of the changes necessary to begin to create a culture where life can flourish, where even those who are ‘not perfect’ are valued as highly as anyone else and where genuine help is offered to women and men who have been sold the lie of the abortion solution?
If we put our hopes in politicians then the answer is probably ‘no’, which isn’t to discount the important role of politics in shaping the nation or the few true pro-life politicians who work tirelessly at much personal cost. As always, our hope must be in the Lord – the Divine Healer, Sovereign Lawmaker, Miracle Worker, and Ever Merciful Father – and if we want to influence our culture then that hope must be lived out in our daily lives because he who has the most hope, has the most influence.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce
Co-CEO March for Life UK
