It has been three weeks since the Heartbeat bill petition was first published.
Thank you to everyone who has signed it, shared it and supported this vital campaign. It is our view that the petition is by far the best and boldest cross party strategy currently available for changing UK abortion law. A matter that, if successful, would save the lives of hundreds of thousands of babies in Britain per year.
Not only do we want the British public to get behind it but we wish to remove any obstacle that may prevent whole-hearted support, particularly as the petition continues its journey through different political and religious communities. One key community we wish to have onboard at this primary stage is God-fearing Christians. Over the last fortnight I have been made aware of a number of brothers and sisters in Christ whose consciences have felt conflicted in the process of giving their support due to the presence of exceptions. Others have felt that they simply cannot support it at all because it would seem to mean that, in supporting the bill, they would be implicitly supporting some form of abortion against their conscience and convictions.
This is an entirely understandable reservation for anyone with an active conscience and who wants to obey Jesus’ high calling in all spheres of their lives. After all, if we are true to our stated intention on the petition, then the law that results will not afford protection to babies conceived in rape or with fatal fetal abnormalities. The fact that this group constitutes a statistically small number should, for the Christian be by-the-by, because each baby is of innate value in the eyes of God and the good samaritan response should therefore be to look after all of them.
This said, if you will allow me to share some of our story, address the difference between a moral principle and a voting decision, and also delve into one or two historical examples of social reform, then I hope you will come to appreciate, along with us, that supporting this campaign is not just a good idea, but the right thing to do.
The Story Behind the Petition
In starting it may be beneficial to lay out a brief history of this campaign. After all, where did the idea come from? What research has been done? And why has it been launched in its current form?
The truth is that this campaign was born first and foremost out of conversation with ordinary British people. In the last eight years, while working as the public engagement officer CBR UK, I had the privilege of speaking with thousands of citizens in cities across the country. I spoke with people from all walks of life, all religions, all classes and creeds. I have heard every extreme opinion, and been exposed to every kind of calloused and bleeding heart. I’d go as far as to say that I have had more conversations with the common man about abortion than anyone else in the country. This is not to mention all the conversations I have had with clergy, politicians and prayerful pro-life activists who have helped craft and inform my opinion.
The combined impression I have developed over this time is that the majority of the public do not support our current abortion law. Most are horrified to see what abortion looks like, startled by just how many we perform yearly and are genuinely surprised by the permissiveness of our current law, particularly concerning disability. When, in 2023, with my former employer, we sought to capture opinion in a more statistical form by conducting 874 surveys across 23 UK cities, we found 58% of respondents, when given facts, thought UK abortion law should be restricted in some way. When a similar survey was repeated on a macro level at political conferences last year, specifically asking about a heartbeat bill, we found that 60% of Reform members we surveyed supported the bill as did 55% of Conservatives.
Of course there are exceptions. In this time I came across people of certain belief systems and political persuasions who seemed particularly nonchalant and hard-hearted on the point. On balance however the feeling is for restricting our law, but not totally. This is because most people I have encountered do believe abortion should be available in certain cases, most commonly in rape, to save the life of the mother and in the event the baby has a severe disability. For anyone who has engaged the public on the matter they will know that these extreme cases (which account for around 2% of all abortions per year) tend to take up 98% of the conversation, more often than not entirely distracting from any tangible progress for change. The inclusion of these exceptions in our petition is a concession, but not an arbitrary one. Rather, it ensures the conversation remains strategically focussed on non-extreme cases, such as the hundreds of thousands of babies killed by our million pound tax-funded abortion industry each year, with absolutely nothing “wrong” with them other than being in the “wrong” place at the “wrong” time.
This particular reform is intended not to be where the conversation finishes but where it starts. And as far as a starting point goes, we believe this to be an ambitious but achievable one.
The Job of a Social Reformer in Setting the Right Target
The job of a social reformer can be boiled down to two objectives. Firstly they must expose the injustice in question to the voting population and secondly they must provide a legislative target to aim for. Often it is assumed that one must change culture before they can change law. However this is not true. The legislative goal provides a key focal point for the cultural fight by which to judge your progress. It acts like a Key Performance Indicator and it focuses the national conversation on a singular decision. To use a separate illustration, the job of a social reformer is to show society what poison they are consuming and offer them something more edible to eat.
On this point, and being the father of 4 children, I appreciate the term edible is something of a subjective term. In the same way the function of a parent is to persuade one’s child to consume edible things that are resolutely interpreted as being inedible, the function of a good reformer is to persuade the population at large, Christian and non-Christian, to get behind something that will benefit the health of the nation, whether they now realise it or not. As far as this is true, our petition, while not perfect, is a much larger and healthier serving than any I have witnessed in the last decade.
In the last 8 years, particularly in the political arena, diligent conscientious minds from multiple pro-life groups have been working on all kinds of strategies, amendments and injunctions to improve the plight of unborn babies. Specific attempts over this period that made it as far as draft law include attempts to lower disability abortion limits for babies with down syndrome to 24 weeks, attempts to introduce a mandatory waiting period, and most recently an attempt to lower the abortion limit from 24 weeks to 22. Around this there has been much more hard work attempting to raise awareness on sex-selective abortion, fetal sentience, and parental consent, although little of this has materialised into law.
Compare all of this to our proposed bill, which, by hyper-focusing on the heart of the little human being in the womb, aims to reduce abortion from 24 weeks to 6 weeks in a single step for all healthy babies. There is simply no legislative comparison in the history of the pro-life movement! Our proposal not only goes far beyond any other but will complement and complete many of these former campaigns in the process. Combined with the aforementioned national appetite for reform on this issue, this can and will work if people get behind it. The potential impact will be immense.
It is hard to predict the numerical impact of such a law because, as hinted above, not only will the law protect lives, but the national debate around it will expose and affect attitudes and behaviours. At a conservative estimate, we predict it will reduce abortion figures by between 60-80% per year, which would be far higher than all the previous amendments combined. True, it would not yet be a total ban; it would not yet protect every baby; but if we have in our power the ability to save 175,000 babies a year, do we not have a moral imperative to do so? While this may seem to be a “utilitarian” choice, it is in fact, a moral one.
For those concerned about the stockpiling of DIY abortion drugs. I cannot say exactly how this law may affect this. What I do know is that ideologically through a national debate centering on the humanity of the child, and practically through the introduction of a mandatory ultrasound scan to establish the existence of a fetal heartbeat, lives will be saved and medical safeguards heightened.
This brings me onto the second main point. By supporting such a bill, with the aforementioned exceptions, are we guilty of forsaking the lives of babies who are no less valuable in God’s eyes simply because they have been conceived in extreme circumstances?
Morality and Politics
My answer to this question is a resounding “No” .
Firstly, because morality and democracy don’t operate along the same lines. Yes, there is a relationship between them, but there is also a vital distinction which, if not made clear, leads to no end of confusion. Please forgive the elongated reasoning here but I think it will be helpful.
What is Morality?
Assuming I am speaking with Christians at this stage of the petition’s lifespan, then it would not suffice to define morality as “a particular system of values and principles of conduct” but must more clearly be defined as the law of God, given to Moses, fulfilled in Christ, and now written on the heart of any regenerated believer by the Holy Spirit. Most crucially, morality is now found not in the Mosaic law, much of which has been fulfilled by Christ, but in Christ’s Word, the Word divinely breathed and humanly inscribed, into which angels long to look.
Obedience to Jesus’ word in this sense is non-negotiable. In all of our conduct and affairs it should permeate deeply into every aspect of our being. God’s law still has utility as a simple plumbline for judging action (1 Tim 1:8-11) and showing good conduct, but his Word goes much deeper still, to divide and expose every thought attitude of our hearts (Hebrews 4:12). God’s Word is scrupulous. It means abstaining from all unrighteousness, including foul language, coarse joking, hypocrisy, envy, slander and the like. It is not simply, say, to avoid adultery, but to not have a hint of sexual immorality of any kind. It is to throw off everything that hinders and entangles and and taking up virtue (2 Peter 5:2) . We are commanded to be filled with the fruit of the spirit and to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness(1 Timothy 6:11), to practice hospitality and to honor one another above ourselves. It is to “have nothing to do with the shameless deeds of darkness but rather [to] expose them” (Eph. 5:11). Yes, there is grace, sweet grace for the repeat offender, of which I am one, but this takes nothing away from Christ’s expectation of us all to be holy because I am holy (1 Peter 1:16,) and “Be perfect…as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48).
What does the Bible say about Abortion?
When applied to a moral question like abortion, it is clear from the scriptures that there is no justification to take the life of an innocent unborn baby. To do so is not just the breaching of the sixth commandment (“thou shall not murder”) but also an act of idolatry, the shedding of innocent blood, and child sacrifice. This was a matter so heinous in God’s eyes that it never even entered into his head that we would do such a thing (Jeremiah 7) and the continual practice of which according to Psalm 106 made God abhor his inheritance, Israel. Scripture doesn’t allow human value to fluctuate according to the context or century- sometimes called situational ethics- so nor should we. If there was to be one exception to the case, it would be to save the life of a mother when both mother and child will certainly die. Yet even such an extreme case is hard to justify clearly from scripture, and even harder from when one thinks of those many mothers down the ages (including the mothers of people like Francis Chan, or Anne Frank) that would rather give up their life for their child than sacrifice the child to save their own.
Exceptions for rape or the administration of a lethal injection to a baby’s heart to alleviate the pain and angst of an in-utero disability are certainly prohibited by God’s Holy word, especially when God has repeatedly used children who were conceived in extreme circumstances or with life-limiting conditions for glorious purposes in this world. Indeed some such people even find themselves in the genealogy of Christ! If anything speaks of the otherworldly nature of God’s kingdom, it is the way he has repeatedly uses the “weak” things to shame the strong, and the “foolish” things to shame the wise. (1Cor 1:27).
Politics and Morality, Voting and Belief
Faced with such deeply transcendent spiritual priorities for God’s people, it is no surprise that many believers down the centuries have been nervous and reluctant to enter the seemingly worldly fray of political action.
Why, after all, would the perfect bride of Christ enter into, as Tim Farron’s podcast called it: A Mucky business. The great reformer of manners, slavery and the prosperity of India, William Wilberforce wrestled with this question following his “great change” of 1785, and was moments away from handing in his political status to join the church. If it wasn’t for the counsel of John Newton and Charles Wesley, the 19th century may have turned out rather differently for our wet island.
Yet the same dilemma is before us all the time. Whether we realise it or not,in a small way we enter into the shadow of this decision every month, whenever we pay our taxes, whenever we vote in a national election, and now, when a petition of this kind of magnitude arrives on our phone screens.
Are we willing to enter into this “mucky business” of political compromise for the greater good, and if so, on what terms do we enter: perfect but unobtainable, or imperfect but possible?
In some senses the answer is simple. We can do both.
In a democracy, technically speaking, laws are not changed by belief and morality but by persuasion and voting. Therefore, the task of the Christian campaign is not simply to change belief but also to provide a common ground voting target. In theory, at no point in this process is the reformer required to abandon his own foundational beliefs, though in the course of the national debate, beliefs can and should change.
Take the abolition of the slave trade, for example. For twenty straight years, from 1787 to 1807, Wilberforce presented the same bill before parliament, each year, with the help of Clarkson, Elando Equiano, Stephenson, Granville, Ottobah Cugoano, Hannah More and others, building on the evidence of the year before. The stated aim of the bill in each instance was not the abolition of slavery. This would have to wait until 1833. In each case, the goal was simply the abolition of the hellish and appalling practice of the transatlantic crossing.
Around this time, in 1788 an MP named Dolbon, who was a friend of Wilberforce and who had accompanied him on one of his official examinations of a slave ship being fitted out, proposed an amendment to regulate the slave trade for the first time. The Dolbon Amendment sought to standardise the space each slave had on the ship, ensured a ship’s doctor accompanied every voyage, and that a ledger was kept of the slaves’ names and condition. Understandably, there was uproar among the abolitionists at the time. After all, how could they regulate such an evil? To this, one lobby group had this to say. The Sons of Africa, a group made up exclusively of former slaves and included the likes of Elaundah Equiano, Ottobah Cugoano and four others praised this “benevolent law by which the miseries of our unhappy brethren on the coast of Africa may be alleviated”. But they didn’t end there, continuing that the act may pave the way for “future and for greater mercies”. If the victims of slavery could praise an incremental amendment, why can’t we on behalf of the victims of our cause?
Central to the point I am attempting to make is that throughout this whole process this group of methodist evangelicals believed that the slave was a human of equal value in God’s eyes, worthy of rights, opportunities and protections under law and at some point self government- though they disagreed vehemently on the time frame on this point (see Elizabeth Heyricks pamphlet of 1824). Yet the legal goal they set for a full 20 years was not emancipation but just the eradication of the trade. When put into writing it seems a pitifully low target, and a poor reflection of their core values, yet it remains the go-to example of evangelical activism to this day. Why is this so? When one understands their historic context, the insurmountable forces against them, and how their core beliefs saw them through the initial campaign against the trade (1787-1807) and onto the latter for total emancipation (1823-33) their achievements were and are truly inspiring. Key to this article is understanding that while the beliefs of the abolitionists remained constant the voting target repeatedly changed, as the campaign helped change the beliefs of the nation.
What does this mean for the Heartbeat campaign?
For anyone who feels like we are forsaking precious unborn babies conceived in rape or developing with a nasty disability simply because we are lending support to this petition, I say the onus is on you, on us.
When questioned on the Bill will you state that the babies conceived in rape or with severe disabilities are not valuable in God’s eyes. I certainly won’t.
And this is the crux of the matter. In public discourse around this bill we need to clearly differentiate between what one believes and how one votes. Whilst we may believe that there are no exceptions for abortion other than to save the life of a mother, this bill is not a reflection of our belief, but a common sense legislative step for everybody, irrespective of whether they share our beliefs or not. This is how politics works and it’s how social reform works. Ask Wilberforce! Laws like the heartbeat bill are inspired by faith, but are not themselves declarations of faith. They are not silver bullets but stepping stones (or, “baby steps”, if you will), in reforming the course of justice in our nation. But none of this is to say that in the event you get invited onto BBC Radio 4 to talk about the bill, you neglect to proclaim your own beliefs in the process.
Think if we were to do this the other way round, and to present a 100% Abolition Bill. Yes some people could sign it happily but there would be such a convergence of politics and belief that a significant majority would need to be Christian or supremely Christian-adjacent, in order to get the bill passed. I desire, as Paul did, for all to be converted to the Christian faith, but would it be wise, knowing that narrow is the gate that leads to life (Matt 7:14), to set an unachievable voting target, all the while allowing for hundreds of thousands of healthy babies to be destroyed as we await for this day?
Or how is this for a reflection: Is it possible that until Christians actively pull together to stem the shedding of the innocent, and litigate against child sacrifice we may not see any major revival anyway? As stated, belief and politics are different. Belief is about Christ, his cross, his resurrection and radical obedience to his name. Politics is about voting and finding achievable voting targets. And as for this campaign, it sets the biggest and most faith-filled target there has ever been. It is not a baby step, but an adolescent lunge, and we encourage everyone to get behind it.
For a country recovering from an intoxicating and blood-filled half-century of self-worship, we need to be wise. Sobriety will come, but not immediately.
Concluding thoughts
There is a reason why the campaign has been framed around “one heart, one life, one opportunity and one decision”. It’s because we all have one opportunity to take and one decision to make.
Abortion remains the greatest moral evil of our generation and lowering the scale of this injustice should be an absolute priority for all Bible-believing Christians. Yes, different individuals will have different theories on how to go about this, but we are not presenting you a theory today. We are presenting you with a real opportunity and a real decision that will only work if enough of us get behind it.
To not sign our petition will deny justice to the majority of babies; to sign it is to concede, politically at least, that protecting babies conceived in extreme circumstances is not a voting objective for this initial phase. Either way, to sign or to await a morally perfect option, each of us will already be forced to enter into the “mucky business” of politics and to live in a state of broken-hearted waiting. In the course of writing this I have reached the regrettable conclusion that I will not be able to placate everyone’s reservations on the point. But I also won’t be rendered inactive or found to be without hope.
The heartbeat bill is an achievable goal, pitched carefully for this moment in history, which will, if successful, vastly improve protections for 98% of babies and their mothers. The remaining 2% will only be betrayed if we allow them to be so. They will only be forgotten if we allow our beliefs to change. With the Lord’s help, we are not planning on letting that happen. Are you?
And therefore with all this in mind, I urge you, whoever you are, wherever you are to get behind this campaign.
