Upper limit abortion legislation another major step in the wrong direction for the UK’s anti-abortion lobby
By John Smeaton | 10 September 2025
In my article last week, I explained how, nearly 40 years ago, anti-abortion parliamentarians and campaigning organisations, including SPUC in which I had a leading role, paved the way for the catastrophic 1990 legislation which raised the upper limit for abortion to 24 weeks for most abortions in the UK whilst allowing abortions up to birth in cases of disability and for certain other reasons.
The UK Government and parliamentarians were following the example set by the anti-abortion lobby, including by the Catholic bishops, which had backed David Alton’s1 Bill, published on 16 December 1987. The Alton Bill sought to introduce an upper limit of 18 weeks for most — so-called “social” — abortions, whilst permitting disabled babies to be killed up to 28 weeks.
The rationale for supporting Alton Bill-style legislation was presented in Human Concern, the flagship newspaper of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), of which I was general secretary, in these terms:
“SPUC will be stepping up its educational programme in the fight to win equal rights for the handicapped. The decision followed the results of the David Alton Bill in which an exception clause allowing abortion for severe handicap has been included.
“‘Of course we are continuing our support for the Bill’, said Phyllis Bowman, National Director. ‘It will save a considerable number of lives and will be the first step in the right direction.’” (My emphasis)
Tragically, it is more accurate to say that it proved to be a major step in the wrong direction.
Today, Right to Life is promoting another upper limit bill which, if pursued, will result in similarly disastrous legislation. Support for exceptions for disabled babies is even more deeply entrenched in the parliamentary and public psyche and, as debates and votes in Parliament over the decades have demonstrated, politicians are likely to demand abortion up to birth for other reasons too.
The details of the bill backed by Right to Life have not been published but it’s reasonable to expect that it will be along the lines of one of two legislative measures which were under consideration in 2024, one proposed by Baroness O’Loan and the other by Sir Liam Fox MP. Both were backed by the Catholic bishops — with, no doubt, the same rationale as SPUC put forward in 1988, that they would be the “first step in the right direction”.
Both legislative measures expressly supported the killing of unborn children up to a certain number of weeks, whilst leaving in place abortion up to birth for disabled babies and for other reasons.
Baroness O’Loan’s Bill states: “In section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 (medical termination of pregnancy), for ‘twenty-fourth’ substitute ‘twenty-second’.
Parliamentarians backing Baroness O’Loan, therefore, would have been voting for the following provision to become part of the Abortion Act:
“1 (1) Subject to the provisions of this section, a person shall not be guilty of an offence under the law relating to abortion when a pregnancy is terminated by a registered medical practitioner if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion, formed in good faith
“(a) that the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-second week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family;
“Sir Liam Fox’s proposed new clause to the Criminal Justice Bill stated: “In section 1 (Medical termination of pregnancy) of the Abortion Act 1967, at the end of sub-subsection (1)(d) insert ‘provided that, where that chance arises from a foetus having Down syndrome, the pregnancy has not exceeded the gestational limit identified in sub-subsection (a).’”
Parliamentarians backing Sir Liam Fox’s measure, therefore, would have been voting for the following provision to become part of the Abortion Act:
“(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, a person shall not be guilty of an offence under the law relating to abortion when a pregnancy is terminated by a registered medical practitioner if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion, formed in good faith—
“(a) that the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family; or
…
(d) that there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped ‘provided that, where that chance arises from a foetus having Down syndrome, the pregnancy has not exceeded the gestational limit identified in sub-subsection (a).”
Both legislative measures were inviting parliamentarians expressly to support abortions on babies up to a certain number of weeks — 22 weeks in the case of Baroness O’Loan, and 24 weeks in the case of Sir Liam Fox — just as David Alton’s Bill, back in 1987, invited parliamentarians expressly to support abortions up to the 18th week of pregnancy. The Alton Bill stated:
“1 (1) A woman’s pregnancy may be terminated in accordance with section 1 of the Abortion Act 1967 at any time up to the beginning of the 18th week of gestation.
“(2) Thereafter, up to the 28th week of pregnancy … [for various reasons, including in the case of disability).”
The Catholic Church teaches that a law permitting the killing of certain unborn children is an unjust law which, in the words of St Thomas Aquinas, “ceases to be a law and becomes instead an act of violence”. Pope John Paul II in this connection, citing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and its 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion, said:
“In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it’.”
The meaning of this statement quoted in Evangelium Vitae (no 73) is 100 per cent clear, and yet during the past fifty years, pro-life leaders, myself included, have backed legislation which permits abortion in certain circumstances on the basis that such legislation is an improvement on an existing law and will save lives.
However, such permissive anti-abortion campaigning sends the message to friends and opponents alike that abortion can be the right thing to do. Is it not likely that one of the reasons why the evil of abortion is so overwhelmingly accepted in particular circumstances by our fellow citizens, including by our fellow Catholics, is that pro-life groups themselves have almost universally been prepared to accept legalised abortion in certain circumstances?
Since 1995, many of us have justified our campaigns in support of unjust laws by quoting another paragraph in section 73 of Evangelium Vitae, where Pope John Paul II famously wrote:
“A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on … In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.”
For the past 30 years perhaps the majority of pro-life leaders have interpreted this paragraph as meaning that politicians may vote for, and campaigners may campaign for, laws which of themselves expressly permit abortions. But this is contrary to the teaching of the encyclical, as shown by the immediately preceding paragraph:
“In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it.”
According to Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, “the principle (or law) of non-contradiction is the firmest … without the principle of non-contradiction we could not know anything that we do know”. On the basis of this foundational principle of rational procedure, it is not possible for this statement to mean both one can vote for an unjust law and one cannot vote for an unjust law — on the basis of one’s motives in doing so or for any other reason.
Imagine it was lawful in our countries to kill children up to 6 months after birth. Imagine a parliamentarian putting forward legislation to stop the killing of children after three months, whilst authorising killings of children up to the three month limit — and with exceptions for disabled children who could be killed up to 6 months or even later. It would clearly be wrong to vote for such a law or to campaign for such a law, however many lives, allegedly, such a law would save, on the basis that it would be “a step in the right direction”.
Regarding exceptions for the abortion of disabled babies, Rachel Hurst, vice-chairman of Disabled People’s International, has said that pro-life groups which tried to stop social abortions but not eugenic abortions were being “extremely discriminatory and obviously show[ing] eugenic tendencies, even though they would refute them”. She argued that the lower status given to disabled unborn children reflected a view that “disabled people are not seen as human beings”.2 This was absolutely not the attitude or intention of David Alton or the Catholic bishops SPUC’s national director or myself back in 1987, but we must face the fact that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
There is a crucial moral difference between, on the one hand, limiting, in an ethical way, the harm of pro-abortion legislation, such as we saw in the triumphant pro-life campaign to overturn the Roe v Wade decision; and, on the other hand, campaigning for politicians to vote for abortion in the case of rape, or in the case of disability, or in the case of a baby being below a certain number of weeks’ gestation. We will never defeat abortion by campaigning for politicians to vote for abortion in particular circumstances. As long as legislators accept that “it’s OK” directly to kill an innocent child in the womb, the defence against killing any unborn child is torn away.
To be continued
Notes