Pro-abortion activists are using the sad case of a mother jailed for killing her late-term baby to call for abortion up to birth.
The woman, Carla Foster, was around 33 weeks pregnant when she took abortion medication at home, later giving birth to a stillborn daughter.
Foster obtained the pills under the DIY home abortion rules for England after deceiving a nurse from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) into thinking she was seven weeks pregnant.
In a rare prosecution for abortion, she received a prison sentence of 28 months, 14 of which are expected to be spent in custody.
It is undoubtedly right that Foster has been punished for this horrifying crime. A fully developed baby girl, who would have almost certainly been born healthy, has been killed in the very place she should have been safest. Her opportunity to live a happy and fulfilled life has been snatched away.
…the foetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being… If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man’s house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a foetus in the womb before it has come to light.John Calvin
So why are abortion activists up in arms?
Foster was convicted under Section 58 of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act (OAPA), which prohibits “administering drugs or using instruments to procure an abortion”. Many have claimed that it is “abhorrent” to jail someone using an ‘out-of-date’ and ‘Victorian’ law. But giving legal protection to babies in the womb, as the OAPA does, is right. The age of the legislation has nothing to do with it.
We need to remember that many pro-abortionists push relentlessly to create abortion on demand. It is therefore anathema to them that anyone should be censured for killing the unborn. Nothing less than abortion for any or no reason, right up to birth, will do. That’s why even very minimal efforts to increase protection of babies in the womb, such as Fiona Bruce’s attempt to make sex-selective abortion illegal, are casually dismissed.
In the UK today, even babies born before 24 weeks sometimes survive. Yet the sad truth is that babies can also be aborted up to 24 weeks for almost any reason, and even up to full term if they’re deemed to have a disability. This has included Down’s syndrome, and treatable conditions like cleft palate or club foot.
The time limit in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, and Greece is 12 weeks. In France and Spain it’s 14 weeks.
Women under ten weeks pregnant in England and Wales (or twelve in Scotland) no longer have to even see a doctor or nurse – they can have powerful abortion drugs delivered to their home after just a phone call.
Abortion is seen as a human right and part of healthcare. It has become normalised. But Christians cannot go along with this. We place a high value on human life – from conception to natural death – because we know that all human life, no matter how young or old, is made in God’s image. And we know that abortion damages women.
While Foster has been deservedly punished, she has also been duped by our culture. She has paid the price for absorbing the unrelenting message that unborn babies are merely an extension of a mother’s body, and can be discarded at will.
Tragically, Foster reportedly admitted she was “haunted” by the face of her dead baby daughter. Other women have shared their stories about inadequate checks during telephone consultations, partners coercing them into abortion, and medical and emotional trauma.
Caving in to campaigners’ demands and removing the criminal offence will mean abortion becoming even more normalised in our culture. Inevitably there will be even more stories of trauma, and even more women swallowing the lie that the living human being inside of them can be disposed of without consequence.
Despite our already liberal abortion law, and the 200,000 abortions carried out in Britain every year, campaigners are strongly pushing for abortion on demand across the UK.
When does human life begin? It is a fundamental and decisive question because your answer reveals your understanding of the nature and status of the human embryo. It also shapes your stance on the big bioethical issues of the day such as abortion, cloning and embryonic stem cell research. There are many voices sowing confusion, but the Bible is unmistakably clear that human life begins at conception. In this booklet, John Ling provides a wide-ranging explanation of biblical truth, the historical Christian perspective and evidence from modern science to support this position.
