A mother’s womb: more dangerous than Mosul

More than 100,000,000 women in the world are estimated to be ‘missing’ because of the practice of gendercide, including sex-selective abortion, according to the UCLA Women’s Law Journal. 

A 2007 study from two Oxford University academics determined that the practice of aborting one’s child based on her being female was a statistical reality in the United Kingdom. The numbers show that the most dangerous place for a young girl in the UK is in her mother’s womb.

50 years after the passing of the Abortion Act 1967, most pretences for safeguarding against unlawful abortions have been abandoned. The practice of pre-signing consent forms without even seeing the mother is now normal. 

This separates the United Kingdom from several other EU countries, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the United States which have all taken steps in recent years to decrease the number of abortions and to protect medical staff who do not wish to perform abortions because of their conscience. 

For example, only one week into the new US administration, the US government has reinstated a policy to stop using taxpayer money to fund overseas abortions, while the House of Representatives has voted to prohibit the use of tax-payer funds to be used for domestic abortions.

But the United Kingdom is different. 

Even when presented with video evidence showing two physicians agreeing to perform abortions based on the sex of the child, breaching the Abortion Act 1967, the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) refused to act. 

Aisling Hubert felt it her duty to take up the cause of unborn girls. She feared that the DPP’s failure to enforce the criminal laws prohibiting gender based abortions would make those laws dead letter, especially when presented with such overwhelming evidence.

One of the essential rights enjoyed by all citizens of the United Kingdom is the right to initiate a private prosecution. Aisling, who has dedicated her life thus far to campaigning on behalf of the unborn, knew that failing to act could make the protections for the unborn in the Abortion Act 1967 meaningless if the DPP refused to prosecute cases as clear as the two incidences recorded by the Daily Telegraph journalist.

Perhaps symbolic of the state of this nation 50 years on from the legalisation of abortion, not only was Aisling’s private prosecution not pursued, but despite the DPP acknowledging that a case existed, she was punished with a draconian costs order which will for years place a chilling effect on other concerned citizens wishing to exercise their democratic right of private prosecution.

Aisling’s case presents two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, 50 years of legal abortions in the United Kingdom has created a culture of death, devoid of proper regulation, with a DPP which does not wish to enforce the laws in place to protect the unborn child. 

On the other hand, in Aisling we can see that we have not run so far away that we cannot find our way home. 

Let’s pray for Aisling. Let’s pray for the millions of unborn girls who were never given a chance to live their lives.