Smiling proudly, the group of women surrounding Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey on Tuesday looked more like they were celebrating a birthday party than signing legislation. As Gov. Healey made her last pen stroke, the gaggle of women erupted in applause, some laughing cheerfully as if they had solved world hunger.

They were really witnessing the governor legalize abortion up till birth across Massachusetts.

The law Gov. Healey signed nullifies the state’s already flimsy pro-life protections, which technically banned abortion after 24 weeks gestation. Twenty-four weeks is already incredibly late into pregnancy. By just six weeks, unborn babies have a heartbeat. And by 15 weeks, they can feel pain.

What’s more, later abortions — anything past 20 weeks gestation — require incredibly invasive surgical procedures called “dilation and evacuation” abortions. These abortions “often include a gruesome process where the baby is fatally poisoned in the womb and then delivered dead. They can also involve an abortionist crushing and dismembering a baby before its delivery,” per a Daily Wire report. This involves excruciating pain for the unborn child. In fact, there are documented cases where unborn children have resisted and fought against the tools used to end their lives.

Yet Gov. Healey’s new law will ensure that babies as late as nine months into pregnancy — 40 weeks gestation — suffer this gruesome fate.

Massachusetts was already one of the most hostile states toward life even before Gov. Healey signed her death bill. Though the state law restricted abortion after 24 weeks, it made exceptions for the life and “health” of the mother, the inclusion of the term “health” meaning that women could easily procure far later abortions if the state’s pro-abortion medical professionals deemed it was “necessary.”

Not only that, but a few years ago, I travelled to the Massachusetts State House to join other pro-life advocates and leaders in protest against Gov. Healey’s attempts to shut down pregnancy centers across the state.

Gov. Healey had launched a $1 million campaign to smear pregnancy centers for offering women and children necessary resources such as diapers, baby clothes, career and educational assistance, housing, and so much more.

The reason for her opposition? Merely that pregnancy centers in the state were giving women the means to avoid abortions that many of them do not want and are only choosing out of desperation.

In fact, studies have found that almost 70% of women with a history of abortion believe their abortions contradicted their values and preferences, and many women say they were coerced into unwanted abortions. Organizations such as the pregnancy centers across Massachusetts exist to provide such women with an alternative. They have transformed countless lives and are supported by 84% of all Americans.

In response to Gov. Healey’s senseless attack on the centers giving Massachusetts women real options, dozens of women and children who benefited from Massachusetts pregnancy centers showed up at the State House in protest.

Gov. Healey has continued antagonizing them anyway. Funny how the women who claim to “champion” other women are often the nastiest towards their own sex.

Massachusetts Citizens for Life President Myrna Maloney Flynn, who spearheaded the protest against Gov. Healey’s smear campaign a few years ago, condemned this new law as a devastating blow for women and children.

“Legalizing election abortion up to birth on healthy mothers and healthy, pain-capable unborn children is not about protecting the doctor-patient relationship,” she said. “It is about abortionists normalizing the deaths of fully-developed infants and pressuring vulnerable women to permit their unborn children to die in heinous acts of violence.”

Gov. Healey may have gotten her applause this week. But history won’t remember this as a triumph for women. It will be remembered as the day that Massachusetts stopped pretending to protect the vulnerable at all.

The post Massachusetts Officially Enshrines Abortion Up Till Birth appeared first on The Human Life Review.

Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee has reintroduced a bill that would prevent federal courts from enforcing contract provisions that force surrogate mothers to obtain an abortion. The Preventing Forced Abortions Act of 2026 would also ensure that surrogate mothers would still receive compensation even if they refused to undergo an abortion.

Reintroduced to the House of Representatives last month after the bill’s 2024 version failed to pass, this bill is crucial amid the numerous headlines of surrogate mothers being pressured into abortions by the intended parents.

In one case currently making headlines, surrogate McKenna West is refusing to abort a baby with a congenital heart defect at the behest of the intended parents, who cited the “abortion on demand” clause in their contract.

“Every life matters. No woman should be forced to end the life of the baby she is carrying — including me… Baby Gabriel should receive a chance at life,” West said.

Surrogacy contracts currently allow the intended parents to dictate pregnancy termination for any reason from medical disabilities shown in the child to change in the parents’ situation to dissatisfaction with the child’s gender. Surrogate mothers who refuse abortion face lost income and lawsuits.

“No woman should ever be forced to murder a child because of a provision buried in a contract,” Ogles said. “My Preventing Forced Abortions Act ensures that federal courts cannot enforce these coercive clauses or allow intended parents to withhold promised compensation when a surrogate mother chooses life.”

Ogles’ co-sponsors for the bill are Republican Representatives Sheri Biggs of South Carolina, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mary Miller of Illinois, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, and Keith Self of Texas. The bill has received support from pro-life organizations including National Right to Life, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life, Concerned Women for America, and Catholic Vote.

“I want to thank Rep. Ogles for standing up for both women and the unborn,” said Kelsey Reinhardt, president and CEO of CatholicVote. “Every abortion treats the woman and child as a means to an end, violating her inherent dignity, and exploits the woman for an agenda of death.”

CEO and President of Concerned Women for America Penny Nance said, “Abortion always ends the life of an innocent unborn child, and forced abortions in the context of surrogacy arrangements are no different. Surrogacy all too often places unborn children at risk of abortion when the baby is diagnosed with certain complications. Congress must pass Rep. Andy Ogles’ Preventing Forced Abortions Act of 2026 to ensure that no child is subject to forced abortion when they aren’t exactly what someone wanted. Children are not commodities to be controlled or products to be perfected; they are gifts from God intended to be treasured by one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage.”

Surrogacy does not treat the child, or the mother, as living, human beings, but as merchandise to be bought or discarded at will. The Preventing Forced Abortions Act of 2026 will help protect the surrogate mother’s right to preserve the child she has nurtured in her womb and the living child’s right to be born.

The post Bill Targets Forced Abortions Through Surrogacy Contracts appeared first on The Human Life Review.

In our college biology class, one of our assignments was to follow the development of the chicken from its first day until it hatched on day 21. The chicken embryo develops from a single cell to a fully formed chick over three weeks of incubation at a temperature of approximately 99.5 F. The heart begins to beat at day two, limb formation occurs three days later, and feathers appear by day ten. On day 20, the chick absorbs the remaining yolk, moves into the air cell, and begins “pipping” the shell.

On day 21, the chick to which I was assigned was getting ready to break out of its shell. As the day came to a close, I decided to take it home with me and oversee its emergence from its no longer useful container. My problem was that I did not have a car and my home was 30 miles away. Luckily a car stopped for me and provided my soon to be visible chick with the requisite temperature from his car heater. When I arrived home I placed the shell under a heat lamp and measured the temperature. Soon the chick broke out of its confinement and stumbled forward. I felt like a mother hen. The little chicken survived, to my awe and the amazement of family members. Unfortunately, absent the presence of a member of its own species, the lab chicks did not live very long. But it was life! And, though its life was all too brief, it felt astonishing that I had helped to bring it into the world.

My choice was for life, though it would have been far easier for me to leave the egg in the lab and let it perish on its own. We speak of the miracle of life. I was fortunate to witness the struggle for life and its momentary victory.

The False Promise of “Choice”

The paradigm of “choose life” has, in recent years, been significantly supplanted by the new paradigm: “choose choice.” This is not a step forward but a regress of catastrophic proportions. When we choose life we prepare ourselves to do many things to support it. Choosing the life of a fetus in the womb sets a long trail of things we must do. It opens the door to responsibility, care, and numerous difficulties yet unknown. Life is the most precious thing we have. To serve life, then, is to choose that which is most important to us.

In our culture today, too often we fear this choice for life might clash with what we think we really want. Choosing life is to step into the dark unknown. Would it not be better to choose choice? Then, we would be clear-eyed about what we are choosing. It’s a line of reasoning that has been endorsed by many. It has given a certain acceptability to sex apart from marriage, abortion, and euthanasia. If this is what people choose, then it will be given to them. But what will also be given to them that they did not bargain for? Nearly every choice brings about unintended ripple effects, as choice is rarely an isolated act with singular consequences.

Accepting life means accepting a journey into the unknown. Death awaits us all; we cannot choose to not die. Choice has severe limitations that are generally ignored by those who buy into the “choose choice” philosophy. In addition, the power to choose is not our highest faculty. It falls far short of the power to love.

What’s more, to love is believed by many to be divinely ordained. God commands us to love, not to choose. We do not need any encouragement from God in order to choose. Our choosing is inevitable. The reason that love is higher than choice is because love directs us to choose well, that is, to choose what is good. Choice itself is indifferent to good and evil. And so, as the historical record plainly shows, human beings have often and disastrously chosen evil. To choose choice is to grant permission to choose anything. To choose anything, however, is a failure to include our capacity to reason. And since we are rational creatures by nature, to abandon reason and choose just anything, is to choose not to be human.

This limitation of choice becomes even clearer when we view it through a theological lens. The “choose choice” paradigm is essentially atheistic. God commands us to love. He also commands us not to kill. Therefore, one might say He commands us to love life. Our fundamental choice is between choosing God or choosing ourselves without God in mind. The late author and columnist William Murchison remarked that “The abortion culture is of course the clearest instance of the new mode of choosing. To choose abortion is to choose ‘me’. . . to choose ‘me’ over thee.”

Choosing choice may give the appearance of freedom, but we should not want choice to be unfettered. We should not want the choice to be free to choose death or to war against love, or to choose the self over the creator. Life is not of our own making; it is a gift from God. We should be sufficiently grateful for that gift not to disparage it by turning against it. We are not sufficiently wise or prescient to be the sovereign directors of our lives; often, we see what is immediately before us and choose what is convenient. In choosing choice, however, we fail to see the negative consequences of our choices or our true future destiny. In the final analysis, to choose choice, no matter how appealing it may be, is to choose death. To choose life, then, is our only viable option.

The post Choosing Choice appeared first on The Human Life Review.

Pro-lifers are well aware that the defense of innocent human life is a never-ending struggle. We are grateful to God for victories over the culture of death, yet there are also many defeats along the way. The self-evident truth that it is wrong to kill unborn children, sick people and the elderly is recognized by too few people.

We are witnessing the rapid spread of chemical abortions and physician assisted suicide. We now have the paradox that in certain states government funded suicide prevention efforts, such as telephone hotlines and warning signs on high bridges that encourage people not to kill themselves by jumping off, are now paired with a legal mandate to tell some suicidal people that they can now legally go ahead and kill themselves with the help of a willing doctor. “Please don’t kill yourself” and “Go ahead and kill yourself” are now the contradictory official policies of a growing number of states. How much longer will government funding be continued for long-standing efforts affirming human life in moments of emotional crisis? Those efforts expose the laws allowing doctors to kill suicide-minded people to be cruel and unjust.

Despair over this further descent into barbarism is always a temptation for pro-lifers who cannot understand how some people think killing innocent people is just fine, if not the best possible “solution” to the “problem” of unwanted children or suffering people. But despair is simply a cowardly surrender to the mystery of evil. Despair leading to passivity in the face of evil is a selfish avoidance of our duty to love our neighbor. Loving our neighbor includes advocating for laws that protect that neighbor from evil actions such as abortion and suicide.

The Gospel according to St. Matthew recounts the time when the apostles travelled by boat and a great storm arose. Jesus came to them walking on the water and said, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” (Mt 14:27) They were terrified first by the storm and then by seeing Jesus walking on the water. That fear led them to mistake Jesus for a ghost. Peter then asked Jesus to let him also walk on water, and Jesus said, “Come.” Peter did that, but then he became afraid of sinking, and, sure enough, he began to sink. Jesus reached out and saved him, but also rebuked him for his lack of faith.

This Gospel scene is a lesson in how fear produces spiritual blindness. God is always with us, especially in the midst of great storms. To doubt his presence leads to mistaking him for a scary ghost who has surely come to torment us. God will calm the storm at a time and in a manner of his choosing.  We have to trust in Him and in his plan for us and for the world. The details of that plan are largely unknown to us. But we do know that he is all powerful and that he hears our prayers and is pleased with our efforts to love our neighbor.

God’s hand is always with us. It is up to us to turn to him in prayer and put into action his commandment of love.

The post Seeing God’s Hand in All Things appeared first on The Human Life Review.

I had just turned 14 when Roe v. Wade came down. I reacted positively—it would get rid of back-alley butchers. Soon I realized it actually put a back-alley butcher back in business. The problem wasn’t the legal nature of abortion, but the nature of abortion, period.

There were arguments before Dobbs that abortion bans wouldn’t have dire back-alley impacts that we didn’t already have before. But now we don’t have to speculate about what would happen. We can observe what did happen.

I commented right after Dobbs that we were about to have a “natural experiment”—unlike a lab experiment, it’s not set up on purpose, but it’s still set up, so we can collect data. My post’s first section made predictions on women’s deaths. I document below that my predictions were just about right.

ProPublica has been chomping at the bit to show abortion bans have deadly consequences for women. It won a 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage. If abortion bans are deadly for women, that would be alarming to those of us advocating for them. So—is it true?

ProPublica List (to date, April 2026; in chronological order by death date)

Josselli Barnica

• ProPublica: “A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital.”

• Secular Pro-Life Video: Does Texas require doctors to wait until there’s no heartbeat to intervene in emergencies? (Josseli Barnica)

Before Dobbs, with a Texas abortion ban, Jossselli had a wanted pregnancy but suffered a miscarriage at 17 weeks. They delayed intervention until there was no heartbeat, citing the Texas heartbeat law. Unlike the following cases, ProPublica had the word of the medical team. They misinterpreted the law; the remedy is to educate doctors on this.

After the D&C was finally done, doctors didn’t confirm the fetal parts were all removed and sent her home with them still inside her. She got an infection. It caused her death. The doctors should have taken her concern seriously when she reported symptoms. There’s certainly no abortion ban that keeps doctors from properly monitoring and treating an infection.

Amber Nicole Thurman

• ProPublica: Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care

• Secular Pro-Life: Georgia Woman Dies After Delayed Treatment of Abortion Pill Complications (Amber Thurman)

• LifeNews.com: Leading OBGYN Believes Woman Died From Abortion Pill, Not Pro-Life Law

Amber was a Georgia resident, past the state’s gestational limit. She went to North Carolina to get the abortion pill regimen. Returning to Georgia, five days later, she had complications. The doctors discussed but didn’t do a clearly-indicated D&C to remove fetal remains. Since the twins were already dead, there was no legal issue. ProPublica attributed this delay to doctors’ fears of the Georgia heartbeat law, with-out asking them what the reason for delay was.

Candi Miller

• ProPublica: Candi Miller Died Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban

• LifeNews.com: Candi Miller Died From the Abortion Pill, Not From an Abortion Ban

This involved an online order of abortion pills. Of course, that’s dangerous. No check for ectopic pregnancy, which the pill wouldn’t treat? No check for negative blood type to see if she needs a Rho-gam shot? Those who argue it shouldn’t be banned should at least insist on better regulation and monitoring.

Porsha Ngumezi

• ProPublica: A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban

• Secular Pro-Life: ProPublica tries again: responding to claims about Porsha Ngumezi’s death

Porsha Ngumezi bled heavily from a miscarriage and went to the emergency room. She wasn’t seen for seven hours and then was given misoprostol instead of a proper D&C. After she died, the doctor’s notes claim her bleeding was minimal, contradicting nurses’ notes. Delaying the D&C for fear of the abortion ban? Administering misoprostol would also be against that ban.

Nevaeh Craine

• ProPublica: A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Vis-its to Texas Emergency Rooms

• Secular Pro-Life: Nevaeh Craine’s family says her death is being used for politics

• and ProPublica can’t see malpractice, only abortion bans (Nevaeh Craine)

LifeNews.com: Nevaeh Craine Died Because of Poor Medical Care, Not From an Abortion Ban and Nevaeah Craine’s Family Blame Hospitals for Her Death, Not Texas Abortion Ban

Nevaeh was happily 6 months pregnant. With symptoms of infection, she made three different visits to two different emergency rooms and couldn’t get them to take her reports of symptoms seriously.

Tierra Walker

• ProPublica: In Texas, Tierra Walker Wasn’t Offered an Abortion Before a High-risk Pregnancy Killed Her

• Secular Pro-Life: Interview with Dr. Christina Francis regarding the case of Tierra Walker

• LifeNews.com: Abortion Activists Exploit Pregnant Woman’s Tragic Death to Lie About Abortion Bans

Tierra had a high-risk pregnancy and so should have received better coordinated care than she did. ProPublica claims that at 20 weeks, she asked about terminating and was turned down.

But at 20 weeks, terminating a high-risk pregnancy has its own medical risks. It’s not like getting rid of the pregnancy gets rid of the risk. So doctors’ judgment on the medical issue alone may have been correct. What we do know suggests that the medical risk management could have been better coordinated.

Not on the List Because There Was No Ban to Blame

Alexis Aguellos died February 6, 2025, from an amniotic fluid embolism as a complication of a 22-week abortion at Fort Collins Planned Parenthood. State leg-islature testimony, heard in the video clip below,* shows the ambulance was called much later than it should have been.

This fits the pattern of the Roe era. Abortion-related deaths were only kept track of by pro-life groups (see lists from Feminists for Life, Students for Life, and Oper-ation Rescue). Women’s deaths from abortions when there’s no ban don’t count in “pro-choice” eyes. Literally—they don’t count them.

Baseline

Here are the most recent numbers on abortion-related women’s deaths from the Centers for Disease Control when Roe was reigning:

To reasonably conclude that abortion bans, introduced in 2022 or soon thereafter, caused a spike in abortion-related maternal deaths, there would have to be more such deaths than in preceding years. ProPublica mentions six cases in three years. Only the two from 2022 would count as abortion-related, and no previous year had fewer deaths than that.

The concept of making a before-and-after comparison, basic to science, hasn’t been done. These are journalists, not scientists, and it shows. But even journalists should take into account a comparison to what happened previously before declaring a change, for fear of discovering that they’re only finding the situation is about the same after Dobbs as it was before.

Dobbs didn’t stop malpractice. Separate from abortion, it’s been a longstanding problem in the medical field to dismiss women’s reports of pain or symptoms.

Conclusion

We now have well over three years of experience of a post-Dobbs world in which 13 U.S. states have banned abortion, and 28 more have gestational limits. We have a publication that’s pouring resources into trying to find these bans hurting women. They find cases that fit the narrative, find pro-abortion doctors to bolster their case, ignore what the actual doctors involved in the cases have to say, and assert what they know to be true because it’s supposed to be true.

ProPublica and others of similar advocacy claim women wouldn’t get proper treatment for natural miscarriages as doctors delayed needed treatment for fear of abortion bans.

There are thousands upon thousands of women suffering natural miscarriages every year. They get the needed treatment. If this were actually a widespread problem, ProPublica reporters should be able to come up with many more cases.

I’m grieved for the loss of the lives of all the women they named and the one they didn’t. I also grieve for the amount of harm that’s been done to women by abortion businesses.

I personally have found a flood of problems just at Planned Parenthood since the year 2000 that dwarfs the evidence they give:

• Well over a hundred malpractice lawsuits, an average of over four a year.

• Hundreds of ambulance calls.

• Some of the health inspection reports detail horrifying clinic conditions.

• Many of the patient and employee online reviews indicate medical dangers, including emergency room visits.

Those mainly don’t involve deaths, though there are 11 cases of patient deaths. They include a lot of complaints that don’t have to do with abortion. So these findings aren’t comparable.

But the point is that finding risky practices among abortion providers is easy to do. ProPublica weakens its case by being unaware of how meager their cases are in comparison.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLT0iqsC3FM

The post APPENDIX D: The Record on Women’s Post-Dobbs Abortion-Related Deaths appeared first on The Human Life Review.

[Re-printed from blog The Biggar Picture, https://www.nigelbiggar.co.uk/ Nigel Biggar is the Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at Oxford University. He is also an Anglican priest and Conservative peer in the House of Lords in Great Britain.]

As the hands of the clock passed 11pm on Wednesday 18 March, I was still in the chamber of the House of Lords listening to a debate about decriminalising abortion by the mother up until the eve of birth. This was the import of Clause 208, which a Labour MP had tacked onto a vast Crime and Policing Bill and had received just 46 minutes of consideration in the House of Commons. The rationale for the clause is that women who commit late abortions do so under duress and therefore deserve support and counseling, not police investigation and the threat of punishment.

Since the debate took place at the Report stage of the bill, there was no formal list of speakers. I was advised that convention has it that every peer who had laid an amendment or put their names to one should be allowed to speak first. Since I had done neither, I should wait before rising. So, I waited. And waited.

Because Clause 208 is part of a huge bill, there were four hours devoted to other clauses—not least on terrorism—before we arrived at it at 8.40pm. Then, following two hours of debate, the Chief Government Whip, who controls the process and interprets the mood of the House, decided it was time to move to the closing speeches given from the Government and Opposition front benches.

So, the noble Lord Biggar never got to deliver his speech and the six hours he’d spent crafting it came to naught. Well, not quite. For, that speech comprises this week’s episode of The Biggar Picture.

___________________

MY LORDS, I rise to speak in favour of amendment 424, tabled by my noble friend, Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest. I have two comments to make.

First, in recent weeks I’ve read lots of speeches, statements, and letters urging support of Clause 208, which would decriminalise abortion up to birth in the case of the mother. Without exception, every one of them told only half the truth.

Each talked as if the only consideration is whether a mother should have the right to “end her own pregnancy” up to the eve of birth, without having to suffer the distress of a police investigation. Without exception, it failed to mention that what’s involved in “ending a pregnancy” is the deliberate killing of a well-developed fetal human being.

Now, my lords, I’m not against killing human beings as such. Whether it’s right or wrong depends on the circumstances. Sometimes, tragically, it can be morally right. Indeed, some of your lordships may think it morally right for a mother to kill her human fetus on the eve of birth and escape criminal liability. So be it.

But can we at least be frank that that is what we are talking about? Can we not avert our eyes from the moral question, Does the mental wellbeing of the mother justify the killing of her fetal child?

Yes, my lords, it is true that Clause 208 would leave unmoved the legal limit of abortion at 24 weeks, still making abortion a crime when conducted by anyone other than the mother. Nevertheless, to make such maternal killing no longer a crime would be to imply that it’s an act of no consequence. And that, in turn, implies that the life of the human fetus is a thing of no consequence. But if that’s the case, why should there remain any limit on the killing of the unborn at all?

Secondly, my lords, there’s not a noble person in this chamber who wasn’t a well-developed fetal human being. All that separates us from our fetal selves are time, good fortune, and being supported rather than killed. With a fair wind, the human being’s development—from about a fortnight after fertilisation—is a continuous process.

That’s why some people take the very conservative view that we should treat the human being from the very beginning exactly as we treat adult humans, possessing the same rights against deliberate harm.

I don’t myself take that position. But those of us who don’t take it have to face the fact that, shortly after fertilisation, it becomes impossible to draw a thick black line before which we can say with confidence that there doesn’t exist a person with rights, but after it, suddenly, there does.

There is, for example, no significant difference between a human fetus on the eve of birth, and its infant self the day after. Yes, the fetus is physically attached to the mother by an umbilical cord. But the detached infant remains no less radically, physically dependent upon the mother. If she doesn’t feed and protect it, it’ll die.

So, my lords, if we approve Clause 208, decriminalising abortion by the mother up to birth, we will breathe down the neck of decriminalising maternal infanticide. If the law permits a mother to kill her late-term fetus, there’s no strong reason why it shouldn’t also permit her to kill her infant.

Now, your lordships might protest that legalising infanticide is unthinkable. You might even be tempted to consider the noble lord Biggar provocatively alarmist. If so, I imagine the noble lord Biggar might be tempted to consider his colleagues recklessly complacent.

And that, for three reasons.

1. First, plenty of societies have found, and do find, infanticide—especially of females—not just thinkable, but perfectly doable.

2. Second, what’s unthinkable now can easily become thinkable later. After all, to our predecessors on these red benches a few decades ago it would have seemed unthinkable to contemplate decriminalising late-term abortions. And yet here we are.

3. And third, it’s now fourteen years since arguments advocating the morality of infanticide first gained admission to the respectable pages of the Journal of Medical Ethics.

My lords, humane society corrodes by increments. To permit the killing of human beings up to the eve of birth by anyone would be one more increment, and not the last.

So, that’s why I support amendment 424, to exclude Clause 208.

Throughout the debate, not one of those speaking in support of Clause 208 mentioned the inconvenient truth that late-term abortion involves the killing of a well-developed fetal human being. And speeches against the clause were subjected to aggressive interventions. When it came to a division, amendment 424, which would have removed Clause 208, was defeated by 185 votes to 148.

On the Saturday following the House of Lords debate, the Times newspaper published an article by Janice Turner, entitled, “Left has a moral blindspot on human life” (20 March 2026). Although she describes herself as a “lifelong pro-choice advocate,” Turner’s viewpoint echoes my own:

The body of an almost full-term newborn baby is found in a skip, and the mother is traced. After the Crime and Policing Bill gets royal assent later this year, an investigation would take two courses. If she is believed to have, say, smothered the child after birth, she may be charged with infanticide, an offence which, taking into account postpartum mental illness and distress, is tried (if at all) as manslaughter not murder.

But if the mother claims the child died in utero, because she took abortifacient drugs, the case will close. Whatever her reasons for doing this, the baby’s death is not a crime. Indeed, thanks to Clause 208 of the bill, which removed women who end their own pregnancies from the criminal code, it isn’t even a baby. It is nothing at all.

I’m a lifelong pro-choice advocate, have defended abortion rights many times on these pages, yet I find this decision—whose passage in the Lords this week was hailed a feminist triumph—viscerally upsetting. It is one thing to argue that police protocols should change or prosecution guidance appreciate that women who abort late and alone often do so in extremis. It is a huge leap to decriminalise the taking of a fully viable human life.

The post APPENDIX C: Britain Decriminalises Killing Babies Up to Birth: We Must Not Avert Our Eyes from What Just Happened appeared first on The Human Life Review.

In the early 1980s, over 500 letters from women (and some men) on the subject of abortion came into my possession. A 35-year-old woman, Lynn, wrote a personal article in the Daily Mail asking “should I have an abortion?” She was unsure, and her boyfriend was reluctant to be a father. Most letters in response urged Lynn to have the baby and very many also wrote about their own feelings and attitudes. One of the consistent themes was the way men can react to an unexpected pregnancy; other pressures too were often brought to bear.

“My husband never wanted children and refused to discuss the matter although our relationship was of eleven years’ standing,” wrote a woman from Lancashire. “So you can imagine his reaction when I discovered I was pregnant. Quite honestly, it was hellish and in fact he didn’t speak to me for the first three months of pregnancy. However, since our child was born, my husband is a changed man. He is totally besotted with our son . . . yet he wants no more children and throws up the same old arguments against.” “Even at seven months [pregnancy] my boyfriend was still screaming at me to go to a clinic in Roehampton, in west London. “They’ll still do it for you there if you plead insanity,” wrote Anon. “But I have my lovely baby boy now”, although her boyfriend “has neither spoken to me nor seen me since.”

A woman from Staplehurst in Kent wrote that “enormous pressure was put on me” to have an abortion by her boyfriend and a family friend. She resisted and wrote of “the great relief I experienced when it was too late to have an abortion.” There was a complex family situation involving a parent’s death and a dispute over family property. She felt very alone and “my unborn child was all I had.”

An older woman from North Yorkshire wrote of her unmarried daughter’s pregnancy. “Neither my daughter nor I wanted the abortion but went along with it for the sake of my husband, who was quite convinced it was the right thing to do. I bitterly regret allowing it to happen—the heartache and trauma of that time remains with me . . . No man is worth the sacrifice of a child.”

The urging of some husbands and boyfriends to choose abortion might be considered “coercive” or “controlling” today. A woman from Ramsgate in Kent said her husband “insisted” on an abortion, threatening to leave her. She complied with his wishes, but he left her anyway. Many correspondents underlined that husbands and boyfriends could be “horrified” at the announcement of a pregnancy, particularly if contraception had been used. A single mother from Kent wrote that her husband couldn’t accept that her affection might be focused away from him. A woman from Rochdale in Lancashire wrote that “most men feel threatened by an unseen baby.” A man writing from Twickenham, in Greater London, wrote that he “found the idea of a small child repulsive” and loathed his wife cooing over babies. A woman from Lincolnshire wrote that her husband “brooded and sulked” when a pregnancy occurred and finally she had an abortion to appease him and save the marriage; but she cried “tears by the ocean” because “I grew to love the child I was carrying.”

“Many men, my dear husband included,” wrote a woman from Surrey, “feel fairly detached about babies. Some think babies are dreadful. But then when that tiny tot starts walking and talking dads usually feel oddly drawn by him/her.” A woman from Bristol wrote that “men can be difficult and demanding, especially if they are an only child, and baby takes away the love due to them.” Several instances were cited where the man became attached to the child once born and developing.

Men also expressed their grief at an abortion (which they’d reluctantly paid for, in one case by installments). A man from Plaistow, East London wrote “Abortion broke me up or broke my heart.” A man confessed he was “responsible for two abortions”, but when his partner “came back from the procedure producing milk” he had “this awful feeling that it was my baby’s milk and I felt sorry for the dead baby.”

* * * * *

“Choice” and “autonomy” are concepts often applied to abortion but it’s striking, in real experience, how much context matters when choices are made. A theme that also emerged was the impact on a marriage or a relationship that a pregnancy can have. The Lincolnshire woman who went through with an abortion although she herself had come to love her unborn child, did so for the sake of her marriage. As a Christian she felt she could “never be forgiven” and stayed away from church for two years, yet in the end she felt she had “made the right decision” to keep the family together.

Motherhood, reflected a correspondent from Norfolk, “can break up a marriage.” The notion that marriage itself, once embedded in all Christian values, was itself a natural condition for procreation had become weaker. (Princess Anne once briskly called motherhood “a professional hazard of being a wife.”) That each pregnancy was a choice was now the norm. “Don’t lose your boyfriend,” wrote a woman from Malvern, “have the abortion.”

The role of family and friends in considering personal choice could be crucial. A young woman in Chatham, Kent lost her fiancé to a drowning tragedy, while finding she was pregnant. “Everyone” advised her to have an abortion, and start afresh. But she was supported by her family, and some good friends and continued the pregnancy: she subsequently married, was successful in her work and had two more children.

A woman from Newport Pagnall, Buckinghamshire, who “bitterly regrets an abortion” wrote that “’choice is often something more limited in reality than it seems in the abstract . . . Freedom of choice, in the abstract, is presuming a limitless range of possibilities: many women simple ‘choose’ abortion because it is a practical solution—and practical it certainly is. But if their choice were limitless . . . perhaps it would be different.”

Attitudes to marriage and single motherhood were changing during the 1980s, and many correspondents underlined the fading of stigma attached to being an unwed mother. Nevertheless, some correspondents said that a child needs two committed parents, and if that is lacking, abortion may be preferable. The hardship in bringing up a child alone was also noted. One woman from London S.E.19 suggested that children of single parents would have no model for marriage.

Family planning and contraception had also changed attitudes. Women who became pregnant on the mini-Pill expressed anger and resentment: their expectations were that “taking precautions” would protect them from an unexpected pregnancy. Yet there was a strong, perhaps almost instinctive “pro-baby” majority. Many of the letters started with the phrase “I am not anti-abortion—but . . .” while urging the 35-year-old Lynn to take her chance of motherhood now. “It’s such a final decision,” wrote a woman from Margate on the Kent coast. “Life can be taken but never given back.” The ambivalence that can accompany the subject was often expressed. One woman, writing from Paddington in London, recalled having an illegal “back-street” abortion “to save my family from shame” and nearly died in the process, nevertheless wrote “please think of it as a life”. Some correspondents could refer to an earlier abortion as a practical measure that was justified, and yet, at the same time, mourn for an aborted child. “I am now remarried with two lovely girls,” wrote a woman from Port Talbot, Wales “but I have never forgotten my unwanted child and feel the burden of guilt every day of my life.”

I had also solicited other correspondence through advertising (in the Daily Telegraph, the alternative magazine Private Eye and in Nursing Mirror) and sent out questionnaires to doctors and nurses. There was general support among medics for respecting a patient’s choice, but also a strong emphasis urging better contraceptive services—except from one doctor, who suggested that contraception actually in-creased demand for abortion. (Incidentally, all doctors accepted a cut-off point for legal abortion, variously suggesting 12, 14, 18, and 20 weeks—one at 24.)

A radical obstetrician who campaigned for free abortion, the late Professor Peter Huntingford, told me that abortion had one great benefit over contraception: it allowed a woman to decide whether she wanted a pregnancy after she became pregnant, rather than before. “Accidental” pregnancy also allowed a woman to test for fertility, he said. As abortion has risen very markedly in the last four decades (162,454 in 1981 for England and Wales: 251,377 for 2022—the highest ever recorded), it would seem that Peter Huntingford’s assessment was bleakly correct: abortion can be preferred, as retrospective contraception, and used to test fertility.

People seldom respond with hand-written letters now, so this collection is a snap-shot in time, and, though anecdotal, an insightful archive into personal witness.

The post APPENDIX B: The Abortion Papers: an archive appeared first on The Human Life Review.

Once again, for anyone in the back who couldn’t hear: The Republican Party is not pro-life.

It was notable—maybe even once again instructive—that the president’s only mention of so-called reproductive health-care issues during Tuesday’s State of the Union address was about his promise to make in vitro fertilization more affordable. His administration is not oblivious to people’s moral concerns. (I know this for a fact.) It also is not ignorant of the scientific reality (this, too, I know): IVF is not as successful as it’s made out to be in his seemingly endless hyping of it (the rollout of the policy press conference in the White House was embarrassingly naïve and obnoxious).

It’s not just expensive; it can be a heartbreaker more often than not and lead to the death of human life in the process of creating—or trying to create—new life.

The president, of course, doesn’t have much to show on the pro-life front in his second term. He once needed pro-life groups and voters to get through primaries and be nominated and elected. But many, probably most, have been lobbying the administration to review the safety of the abortion-pill cocktail that is ever-more available—these drugs cause the majority of abortions in the United States now—and to roll back the Biden administration policy to allow mail-order abortion pills. JD Vance could have made an announcement at the March for Life in January. The president could have issued one last night. There clearly is not interest.

It’s up to the states now. Yes, how did that work out for us with slavery?

On Tuesday night, Donald Trump didn’t even try to self-congratulate, as the vice president did at the March for Life, with what little they had to offer.

And it’s hard to continue to give yourself credit for supposedly overturning Roe v. Wade when you were taking the time to attack some of the justices you appointed who were basically your pro-life credibility.

Because tariffs are more important to Donald J. Trump than ending abortion in America.

That’s fine. But let’s all be honest about what we are dealing with here.

Some voted for him because they believed they had to vote for one of the two major party choices. And as a matter of moral prudence, they voted for Trump because Kamala Harris was actually on-site visiting an abortion clinic, promising to do what she could to make abortion as accessible as humanly possible. You think women and girls are pressured and coerced now into abortions? We ain’t seen nothing like a Kamala Harris administration.

And that’s the thing: Some of us believe we are going to have to answer for what happened on our watch, in our lifetimes. We all have a role to play—right in our own homes, backyards, churches, temples, religious congregations, schools . . . and, yes, nationally. It’s not enough to just say “Leave it to the states.” I’m a broken record, but this is the human-rights issue of our lifetime. We need to act like it is. It means constantly challenging ourselves to do more, be more creative, reach the people who don’t have the resources they need to choose life when faced with an unplanned pregnancy.

And we need to not pretend about the Republicans. The Democrats are a disaster, and have been for a long time, and getting worse. But the GOP has abandoned ending abortion in America. And by their inaction and miseducation they are adding to abortions in America.

The post When Trump Mentioned IVF at the State of the Union, He Said More Than He Intended appeared first on The Human Life Review.

In the past several weeks, researchers have published papers that claim to show dire economic consequences when states restrict abortion. Abortion supporters are hoping that pro-lifers can be swayed by focusing on economics and the financial consequences of prohibiting abortion.

Pro-life states reportedly saw a slight increase in rental vacancies and a corresponding decrease in monthly rents, according to a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The researchers “found that between July 2022 — the first month after the fall of Roe v. Wade — and June 2025, housing markets with abortion bans experienced a 2.2 percent decline in rental prices, compared to similarly trending markets in states without bans,” as reported by the 19th News. “Rental vacancies went up by an average of 1.1 percent in housing markets with abortion bans compared to similar markets in states without bans.”

The authors argue this shows people are moving due to laws against abortion. The underlying message is states should not restrict abortion because they will lose citizens.

The results show abortion prohibitions “move the needle significantly when it comes to the real estate market,” economist Jason Lindo told the 19th News. The news outlet does not mention Lindo and co-author Daniel Dench wrote the paper after receiving financial assistance from the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights. It is noted in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s full publication, however.

Lindo suggested different reasons might play a role in why people move, but argued abortion bans “signal” to women that state leaders do not value them.

“It could be about the social message or about the broader policy climate or concerns regarding bodily autonomy or concerns around how issues concerning women are treated in the state,” Lindo said. “Abortion bans affect abortion access, but also it’s possible the effects we find could be a result of what the abortion bans signal more broadly.”

This is not the only recent paper to use an economic argument to attempt to sway pro-lifers. Another paper from a University of Kentucky graduate student suggests welfare usage and birth rates increased in pro-life states.

“The increase in monthly WIC participation translates to a total additional $6.9 million in food costs for the states that implemented a total abortion ban by the beginning of 2023,” Lilly Springer wrote. She credited Dench, the co-author of the rental market paper, for helping her on this study. Springer did not disclose Dench’s connection to a pro-abortion organization.

Springer said the increase in welfare use means some people may not be able to receive food assistance because of a wait list driven by increased births.

The researcher wants her study to “help public officials and policymakers address and mitigate potential spillover effects from policies such as abortion bans that were previously assumed to be unrelated.”

While put in the academic language of an economist, this paper and the rental market study obscure the real, underlying issue about abortion: the humanity of preborn babies and their worthiness for protection. Abortion supporters want to turn a heartbeat and a face on an ultrasound into a faceless cost on a state budget.

But pro-life activists know all human beings have inherent value and dignity by virtue of being conceived and this cannot be taken away by punching numbers into a calculator. Society has seen via slavery what happens when human beings are turned into products with their own calculated costs and values.

We should not be fooled into reducing humans into mere objects again, no matter how smart the so-called experts seem.

 

The post Abortion Supporters Focus On Economics, Not Morality appeared first on The Human Life Review.

Gosnell came to notoriety in the period between 2010 to 2013, when a grand jury described what went on in what District Attorney Seth Williams dubbed the “house of horrors” Gosnell ran at 3801 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia. The report detailed a catalog of abuses, from unsanitary conditions such as blood-stained floors and recliners to a cat wandering the premises to Gosnell’s extensive collection of aborted babies preserved in jars in the cellar.

The paradox was that Gosnell was raided not for his abortuary but because Pennsylvania authorities and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency suspected him of running a “pill mill,” dispensing illegal prescriptions of drugs. Only when they arrived for a drug investigation did they discover the scope of Gosnell’s filthy abortion business.

That’s not to say the Keystone State should have been surprised. Gosnell had been in the abortion business since 1979. In addition to working in Philadelphia, Gosnell was also a typical carpetbagger, an abortionist who traveled from clinic to clinic which, in his career, included Delaware, Louisiana, and New York. Numerous reports were filed about Gosnell’s lax “standards” but, under pro-abortion governors Republican Tom Ridge and Democrat Ed Rendell, state regulators turned a blind eye to Gosnell’s “clinic.”

It should be noted that Gosnell was not an obstetrician or gynecologist.  He was a family practitioner who developed his own “specialty” in abortion.

And it was a unique Gosnell specialty.  He specialized in late-term abortions which, in theory, were regulated in Pennsylvania but for which, nevertheless, Kermit Gosnell developed a lucrative business. He also perfected his own unique “abortion procedure” : delivery of late-term babies followed by “snipping” with scissors of their spinal cords. There was testimony of more than 100 such killings, but three were sufficiently documented to convict the abortionist.

Sloppy medical care of the mothers was also a Gosnell clinical “standard.”  Perforated uteri and hemorrhages occurred.  One refugee woman from Bhutan died in 2009 from an anesthesia and painkiller overdose administered during her abortion (which was the grounds for Gosnell’s third-degree murder conviction).  Another woman had died in 2000 from a perforated uterus and sepsis following a Gosnell abortion, but that case was settled by a civil court judgment.

No doubt through most of his life Gosnell trafficked in his “care” for “poor women” in a poor Philadelphia neighborhood. It’s a favorite abortion trope: concern for the poor and minorities.  Only when the scope of Gosnell’s “house of horrors” became evident, however, did the abortion establishment disavow him.  The window that the Pennsylvania grand jury report opened into the abuses of unregulated abortion resulted in prompt efforts to turn Gosnell into a “non-person” in the abortion world.  His case was simply ignored and unreported; when forced to confront Gosnell’s abuses, Big Abortion simply declared that he was an “aberration” who did not represent their “mainstream.” The truth is he rendered their practices all too evident.

Pennsylvania still nominally had protective pro-life legislation in place, but, post-Bob Casey Sr., a combination of 15 years of “moderate Republican” Ridge and mainstream Democrat Rendell rendered those laws nugatory. Those horrors, however, were hardly confined to the Quaker State.

In the roughly 13 years since Gosnell’s final sentencing and imprisonment, the scandal of Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in fetal body parts broke — and the organization remained protected.  Indeed, Democratic officials in California, including Kamala Harris, rose in defense not of the whistleblowers but of the abortionists, alleging that evidence of the actions was somehow “doctored” and untrustworthy. Kermit Gosnell keeping pickled baby feet in his Philadelphia basement was repugnant; Deborah Nucatola bargaining about the price of organs over cabernet was suddenly “protected.”

Gosnell was convicted for bringing late-term babies (whose abortions were prohibited under Pennsylvania law) to birth and then cutting their spinal cords, i.e. murder.  Ex-Virginia Governor Ralph Northam calmly described making a disabled newborn “comfortable” while conversing with parents about how to eliminate him, and Northam was defended.  On January 22, 2025, every Democrat then in the U.S. Senate – 47 of them – voted against legislation to declare that a baby born alive after abortion must be afforded medical care and be protected from infanticide.

Gosnell was no OB-GYN but a general practitioner. No problem: Off-label use of doctors and drugs (digoxin is a cardiac drug now used to stop fetal hearts in late-term abortions to prevent that pesky “born alive” problem) is no barrier to “abortion rights.” Consider the number of states willing to farm the performing of abortions out to nurses, midwives, and other “medical personnel,” telehealth medical exams for abortions, or remote dispensing of abortion drugs.

In those states where abortionists have rammed through state constitutional amendments to “protect” abortion post-Dobbs, the scope of those amendments, if they do not practically forbid effective regulation of abortionists, nevertheless chills and deters states from getting involved. Such amendments replicate the climate in 1995-2010 Pennsylvania: See no evil.  And, likewise post-Dobbs, in the spirit of protecting abortionists from accountability in pro-life states, there’s been a proliferation of “shield laws” in various states that (unconstitutionally I would argue) immunize doctors from legal liability in other states (even if they practice their trade there, by television or mail). Let’s admit what it is: immunity against answering for malpractice.

The abortion establishment would like to ignore Kermit Gosnell. Until the evening of March 24, America’s paper of record, the New York Times, source of “all the news that’s fit to print,” felt no need to record Gosnell’s demise.  When at last it did, it still crowned him as “imprisoned abortion doctor convicted of murders,” as if his homicides were but the “rallying cry of anti-abortion activists.” Does that mean the “abortion doctor” has been rehabilitated?  The truth is even if the abortion establishment won’t admit it, it acts a lot like Kermit Gosnell (with sometimes slightly better hygienic standards).

Speaking of a man’s passing, Jewish and Christian practice long counseled not to speak ill of the dead.  I hope that in his nearly decade and a half in jail, Kermit Gosnell may have repented his “career,” but I certainly have not heard that in any public forum. Thirty-one years ago, on March 25, 1995, Pope St. John Paul II spoke of the epic contemporary struggle between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death.” If one wants to see the ugly side of the latter, consider the life, times, and patrimony of the late Kermit Gosnell of 3801 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia.

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