A dark night for our nation: we must not give up

Andrea Williams responds to Wednesday’s vote in the House of Lords on the decriminalisation of abortion

Last night, I watched with a heavy heart as I felt like the prophet Habakkuk:

How long, Lord, must I call for help,

but you do not listen?

Or cry out to you, “Violence!”

but you do not save?

Why do you make me look at injustice?

Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?

Destruction and violence are before me;

there is strife, and conflict abounds.

Therefore the law is paralysed,

and justice never prevails.

The wicked hem in the righteous,

so that justice is perverted.

The House of Lords rejected Baroness Monckton’s amendment. The law was paralysed. Justice did not prevail. Wickedness hems in the innocent and justice is perverted.

By 185 votes to 158, peers chose not to protect unborn children from abortion up to birth.

And by 191 to 119, they also rejected the call to reinstate in-person medical consultations, meaning women can still access abortion pills by post without ever seeing a doctor.

I cannot pretend this is anything less than heartbreaking.

Last night felt dark. I find myself grieving not only for the lives lost, but for what this says about who we are as a society. The boundaries that once protected life are gone.

And yet, even in this, we hold on to hope. We know that the Lord hears every prayer.

We serve a God who is active

I am so deeply grateful to each of you who has stood with us, who has written to parliamentarians, who has prayed, spoken out, and refused to stay silent. Your faithfulness matters more than you know.

We will never give up.

At Christian Concern, we have been contending on this issue from our inception.

Our Christian Legal Centre ran a Judicial Review to resist the introduction of pills-by-post, sneaked in by a political and campaign trick during Covid with no parliamentary scrutiny.

We were lied to. We were told it would be temporary for the Covid period.

For over fifteen years we have been calling for proper in-person medical consultations to protect women. To see those safeguards continually pushed aside is catastrophic.

Since their introduction, statistics show that around 1 in every 17 women end up in hospital following complications from taking abortion pills without any in-person consultation.

And since the 1967 Abortion Act, 12 million unborn lives have been lost in our nation.

That’s barbaric; inhumane; uncivilised.

But we serve a God who is active, who is just, and who is not finished with our nation.

Let’s continue to pray and to believe for a day when the truth about abortion is fully seen, and when every life, made in the image of God, is truly cherished.

I cannot accept that a civilised society should legislate in this way with such disregard for both the sanctity of life and the safety of women.

How do we respond?

In response to this we, the Church, must build what’s better and offer real alternatives where mums and dads choose life for their children.

I am also incensed that we now have abortion “buffer zones” where people are not allowed to speak, pray, or offer help to women.

I think of Christian Hacking, Claire Brennan, Stephen Green, and Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, who all faced arrest and criminal sanction for expressing their faith or offering support outside abortion clinics.

This should concern each one of us.

At Christian Concern we stand for life, boldly, consistently, prayerfully, and without apology.

We have challenged abortion up to birth, resisted censorship zones, and continued to expose the reality of what is happening.

The reality is this: our nation has legislated for death, not life.

But I am believing for something greater.

I am praying for a move of God for truth to break through, for hearts to change, and for a national turning back.

We cannot ignore the weight of what has been done, but I believe redemption is still possible.

Thank you, truly, for standing with me. For praying. For persevering.

Our labour is not in vain.