Voice of the Family

A LAY INITIATIVE FORMED TO DEFEND

CATHOLIC TEACHING ON THE FAMILY

Religion and the abortion campaign (2)

By Ann Farmer   |   21 May 2025

This is the fourth of a twelve-part series, which began with Eugenics and the true history of the Abortion Campaign (1).

As we have seen, the British campaign for abortion emerged from the eugenics movement, whose members believed society was “breeding from the wrong end” and that the proliferating “unfit” should be sterilised; however, while eugenicists believed that the “fit” should have more children, and the “unfit” fewer, the equally secular Neo-Malthusians advocated the small “Malthusian family” as the model for all. They believed “overpopulation” caused poverty, hunger, unemployment, war and mental illness; with unerring logic, they insisted that lowering the birth rate would lower the death rate — which indeed it would, since those who are not born cannot die. In addition, by abolishing the spiritual dimension, any non-physical and/or behavioural problems were deemed to be mental in origin, inevitably leading back to eugenics. In a broadly Christian society, humanists used “compassionate” arguments to demonstrate that their “Christless Christianity” was more Christian than actual Christianity; and this mindset influenced all the post-war abortion Bills prior to David Steel’s.

The humanistic approach also appealed to left-liberal progressives and Marxists looking for a “positive” worldview; and although all the pre-Steel abortion Bills failed, since the 1960s, when Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins steered through Steel’s Bill, the humanist worldview has cut a swathe through British society, not as a joined-up philosophy but through a number of apparently discrete campaigns. All, however, have attacked vital aspects of Christian teaching: campaigns for contraceptive provision, easier divorce, more sex education, all offered as “solutions” to social problems — the “unwanted child”, the “unhappy marriage”, the “teen pregnancy” — and waiting in the wings, “assisted dying”, with strict safeguards of course, for those said to be “dying in agony”. “Assisted dying” is promoted with compassionate rhetoric, but very often it becomes apparent that the aim is to legalise the choice of “the right to die” at a time decided upon by the individual — although the “peaceful, punctual” death is not so easily managed in real life, moreover choice has little to do with it.

Humanists support such campaigns, all of them appealing to compassion which, however, when unmoored from Christianity, swiftly becomes cruel: Jesus commanded, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Lk 6:31; Mt 7:12) but when Christless Christianity is confronted by suffering, the “compassionate” impulse is “I wouldn’t want to live like that”, leading to the logical conclusion of euthanasia; or, upon seeing poor people, “If I were as poor as that, I wouldn’t want children”, leading to contraceptive promotion; upon seeing a pregnant woman, “I wouldn’t want to go through all that”, leading to abortion. And regarding the unborn, the reaction is “I would not want to be born into poverty”. True compassion means accompanying people in their suffering, not eradicating the sufferer. Christless “empathy” inevitably becomes self-centred because, having dethroned God, the atheist must worship someone — and, in an individualistic age, that someone is the self. 

In modern times, the descriptor “humanist”, an implied rebuke against a “god”-centred universe, has been associated with every campaign that Christians would regard as anti-human. Divorce was presented as the solution to unhappy marriages, but when the promised Nirvana of happiness failed to materialise, calls were made for even easier divorce, justified by the alleged need of children not to “suffer” from warring parents; this was followed by the “no-fault” divorce, a description that would not be considered acceptable regarding a broken-down car. In this humanistic heaven, marriage has been reduced to a contract almost as easy to break as a car contract, leaving even more children suffering from broken-down families. With marriage thus devalued, even more couples are cohabiting; and since marriage is a great protector of children, both born and unborn, children are placed at even greater risk.1

The secular undermining of marriage — the safest place in which to be pregnant and bring up children — has made the world a more dangerous place for nascent human life. 

In the 1960s, campaigners saw legalised abortion as the solution to illegitimacy and “shotgun marriages”, which they recognised as common in the lower social classes, and which they said inevitably led to large “unfit” families, to be maintained by the taxes of the better off. Much earlier, abortion campaigner Stella Browne was one of only a few sexual radicals who championed the right of the unmarried woman to have children — while telling the Birkett Enquiry that the mother ‘“should look after it properly”’.2 This in effect excluded poor women, and most eugenicists, including abortion advocate Bertrand Russell, saw illegitimacy in a family as a symptom of “mental deficiency” — a reason to sterilise the whole family; at the same time, studies of “degenerate” families — those with a history of crime, pauperism, prostitution and illegitimacy — created a climate of fear and encouraged support for sterilisation programmes as a solution to social problems.3

In the 1960s, psychiatrist W. Lindesay Neustatter supported abortion for eugenic s reasons:

“Now that it is almost axiomatic that delinquency is associated with bad homes, it seems illogical to insist that an unwanted child … be brought into the world, not only into bad physical circumstances but with a parent who will not love it. If, as so often, the child is also illegitimate, and its mother psychopathic, or alcoholic, or defective — what future has it got? It is said that legislation to permit abortion would encourage immorality; but this type of irresponsible woman is not influenced by moral considerations anyway.”

Under the frank heading, “Eugenics”, at a conference at the University of London Union, he spoke against the right to life of disabled persons, saying, “I wholly disagree with the view that we should allow cripples to be born to give them the supposed opportunity of overcoming their unhappiness”.4 At the same conference, obstetrician Sir Dugald Baird also saw illegitimate pregnancy as a problem of the lower social classes; he favoured sterilising those he classed as unfit.5

Much earlier, Bertrand Russell remarked:

“Feeble-minded women, as everyone knows, are apt to have enormous numbers of illegitimate children, all, as a rule, wholly worthless to the community. These women would themselves be happier if they were sterilised, since it is not from any philoprogenitive impulse that they become pregnant.” 

The equality-minded philosopher added that “the same thing, of course, applies to feeble-minded men”.6

Having an illegitimate child without any means of support became a reason for incarceration without trial thanks to the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913: largely the work of the Eugenics Society, it allowed “feeble-minded” and “mentally defective” children and adults to be placed in institutions, notably including “mentally defective” women “in receipt of poor relief at the time of giving birth to an illegitimate child or when pregnant with such a child.”7

A 1927 Amendment, also the work of the Eugenics Society, ensured that “moral defectives” (formerly “moral imbeciles”) could be institutionalised without coming into contact with the law on account of their “strongly vicious and criminal propensities.”8 It was no longer necessary to actually commit a crime to be imprisoned — indefinitely, in contrast to convicted criminals — an inherent threat to civil liberties noted by G K Chesterton, who observed:

“The man’s punishment refers to the past, which is supposed to have been investigated. But his restraint refers to the future, which his doctors, keepers, and wardens have yet to investigate … [A] man can be punished for a crime because he is born a citizen; while he can be constrained because he is born a slave.”

In a chapter entitled ‘The Anarchy from Above’, Chesterton described the unlimited state power to label men mad as a kind of tyranny.9

Many young couples, having “anticipated” their wedding night, simply brought the marriage forward, as eugenicists realised only too well10 and legalising abortion meant that poorer women were more likely either to have an abortion or become a single parent.11 In the event, legalisation did not eradicate illegitimate births, which continued to rise — as did abortions.12

Janet Chance (herself married, albeit to a rich man) claimed that women saw marriage as the “real prostitution”, asserting that “such women have often lain awake saying [this] to themselves”.13 Her mind-reading powers failed to reveal to her that the decline of marriage, especially among the poor, would lead to a form of unpaid prostitution; but from the anti-Christian viewpoint, legalising abortion could be seen as having two “positive” outcomes, as the “solution” to illegitimacy and, with the eradication of the “shotgun weddings”, the prevention of many large, poor families. However, with no pressing need to marry, marriage itself went into decline. With abortion now considered the “compassionate” option to problem pregnancies, unsupported expectant mothers often feel  that it is the only option. In a Nietzschean transvaluation of values, killing has become compassionate, while pro-life laws are condemned as cruel; killing is portrayed as the kinder option, while protecting life is seen as symptomatic of religious heartlessness. 

The various humanist campaigns have attracted support from freedom-loving left-liberal progressives, as well as Marxists keen to undermine Western capitalist society — but also from capitalists profiting from the removal of religious self-restraint, and atheists intent on destroying Christianity. All have targeted specific Christian beliefs: the sanctity of marriage, the protection of the innocent — especially the innocent unborn — the difference between male and female, the reality of free will, the existence of right and wrong.  Some Christians support abortion, most famously, former US President Joe Biden, who promotes it as a “Catholic” value; however, as seen, this claim cannot be squared with Catholic teaching,14 and although some Protestants support abortion, their position is not supported by the Bible. Finding “the right to abortion” in the Bible is not biblical exegesis but eisegesis — reading today’s priorities and preoccupations into the Bible, which nowhere supports abortion. The Judeo-Christian rejection of the horrors of pagan child sacrifice and the embrace of the inviolability of innocent unborn life, was a truly radical move, forming the foundation of Western civilisation; it ensured that the most powerful could not oppress the weakest and thereby dictate not only the present but the future of humankind.15

This series will continue next month with Religion and the abortion campaign (3).

Notes

  1. Data for 2020 from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that unmarried women had almost nine times as many abortions as married women; this confirmed data from the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-supporting organisation, and other earlier research. The CDA data “also revealed that women in their 20s have the most abortions, and women of colour continue to have disproportionately high rates of abortion.” ↩︎
  2. Stella Browne, Evidence to Inter-Departmental Committee on Abortion (Birkett Enquiry), November 17, 1937 (MH71-23, AC Paper No. 51)). ↩︎
  3. Kühl, S., The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 39–42. ↩︎
  4. Neustatter, W. Lindesay, “A Change of Outlook”, in Abortion in Britain: proceedings of a conference held by the Family Planning Association at the University of London Union on 22.4.1966 (London: Pitman Medical Publishing co. Ltd., 1966), pp. 22–24. ↩︎
  5. Abortion in Britain: proceedings of a conference held by the Family Planning Association at the University of London Union on 22.4.1966 (London: Pitman Medical Publishing co. Ltd., 1966), pp. 17–19. ↩︎
  6. Russell, B, Marriage and Morals (London: Unwin, 1929/1976), p. 167. ↩︎
  7. Four categories were listed: “Idiots”, “Imbeciles”, “feeble-minded persons” and “moral defectives” (Mental Deficiency Act, 1913 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office), pp. 136–7). ↩︎
  8. In addition to ‘defectives’ “neglected, abandoned, or without visible means of support, or cruelly treated”, detention was mandated for those about whom “a representation has been made to the local authority by his parent or guardian that he is in need of care or training which cannot be provided in his home” —The Mental Deficiency Act, 1927 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office), Sec. 2, p. 414. ↩︎
  9. Eugenics and Other Evils (London: Cassell & Company Ltd., 1922), pp. 22–30. ↩︎
  10. Solicitor Conway Loveridge Hodgkinson opposed “forced and unwilling marriage” in such cases (Memorandum to Inter-Departmental Committee on Abortion (Birkett Enquiry) (MH71-24 AC Paper 71)). ↩︎
  11. Higher levels of illegitimate births among lower-income groups suggest that after the Act, poor women, historically more likely to marry young and pregnant, were more likely to have abortions; Roberts notes that her pre-maritally pregnant working class respondents were characterised “more by their naivety and innocence than by worldliness and sophistication; and most did, of course, subsequently marry” — Roberts, E., Women and Families: an Oral History, 1940-1970 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 69-70. ↩︎
  12. In England and Wales in 1938, 4.30% of total births were illegitimate; in 1945 such births rose to a peak of 9.36%, gradually declining to 4.69% in 1955, subsequently rising to 8.55% in 1968 and continuing to rise. — MacFarlane, A., Mugford, M., Birth Counts: Statistics of pregnancy and childbirth (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1984), pp. 141-2. ↩︎
  13. Chance, J., The Cost of English Morals (London: Noel Douglas, 1932), p. 37. ↩︎
  14. Other Democrats have made similar claims in support of abortion. ↩︎
  15. See: Locay, A., How Christianity Built Western Civilization (Westbow Press, 2022); Woods Jr., T. E., Cañizares, Cdl. A., How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (Regnery History, 2012). ↩︎

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