A new law will allow women to abort babies for ANY reason - including their sex - right up to full term. Now ROSA MONCKTON, who has vowed to fight it all the way, reveals the barbaric truth...

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In one week last June, the House of Commons passed two measures which would radically change the nature of our society.

The first, which I think everyone now knows, was to enable the state to facilitate and even encourage suicide for those diagnosed as having six months left to live.

But the other measure, which is far less well known, decriminalises abortion up to full term, for any reason, if it is performed alone by the mother. I promised readers of this paper that I would fight these in the House of Lords – where both are now being considered – and thus on Monday I put forward an amendment to strike out this radical reshaping of our abortion laws.

The Crime and Policing Bill now being debated in the House of Lords is a lengthy and important piece of legislation, which has been detaining peers, in our capacity as a revising chamber, for the past two and half months.

Most of the country, however, will be unaware that a clause, unrelated to this bill, had been sneaked in via an amendment in the name of the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, after just 46 minutes of backbench debate in the House of Commons.

This is Clause 191, entitled 'Removal of Women from the criminal law related to abortion'. It removes all remaining legal invigilation of women regarding abortion, allowing a mother-to-be to abort her baby, up to full term, for any reason at all, including its sex.

This clause passed the Commons without any evidence, scrutiny or public consultation. It is a reckless and radical proposal, with implications both for the mental and physical health of the mother, and disastrous consequences for the child.

This law change would, in effect, re-introduce the backstreet abortion, as women beyond the current 24-week legal limit are in effect to be encouraged to abort at home

I do not want it said that I acquiesced in the abandonment of the final defences for these blameless, unborn, viable children, writes Rosa Monckton

This is a terrifying proposition, which could increase the likelihood of women suffering coercive third-trimester terminations – since an abusive partner could point out there was no longer any legal penalty – and the unspeakable trauma of a late-term abortion without any medical supervision.

This law change would, in effect, re-introduce the backstreet abortion, as women beyond the current 24-week legal limit are in effect to be encouraged to abort at home, on their own, using pills ordered through the post, which are not designed for use outside of a clinical context beyond ten weeks.

As I said in the debate on Monday, there is a supreme irony that those who always claimed to support legal termination on the basis that the alternative would be unsafe – backstreet terminations – are now proposing that women can perform illegal terminations (outside the terms of the Abortion Act) in an unsafe and unsupervised environment.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists lobbied for the 'abortion pills by post' scheme, introduced during the lockdowns of the Covid 19 pandemic, which was never supposed to be permanent, though it now seems to be. They are among several Royal Colleges and abortion providers who are lobbying for Clause 191 to become law.

But I received a letter from a deeply concerned healthcare professional pointing out grim medical facts that most MPs seemed unwilling to contemplate in their perfunctory deliberations.

She pointed out that babies over the age of 22 weeks being legally aborted in a medical setting are clinically euthanised prior to surgery by a lethal injection directly into the heart. This procedure is recommended by the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology to prevent larger sentient babies from being delivered badly injured, but still alive. But babies aborted in a domestic setting, by the mother, alone, cannot be clinically euthanised.

Abortion medication only removes the lining of the womb and starts labour; therefore, late gestation babies aborted at home could be born alive. What happens then? Would the mother have to kill her 'aborted' but living baby? How would she legally dispose of her baby's body if she left it to die? Would she then face a murder charge?

Along with – I assume – all members of the House of Lords, I received a letter from the public affairs manager of The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists urging me to 'Speak in favour of Clause 191'. It quoted the President of the Royal College criticising the existing law for 'affecting women at the most vulnerable times' and said that 'women should not face the prospect of a criminal sanction for making decisions about their own health'.

I find it extraordinary and chilling that there is not a single mention of the unborn child in the statement. It was as if no such person exists.

Under Clause 191, it is illegal for any other person – including a medical practitioner – to be present if the pills are taken after the 24-week limit set out in the existing law on abortion.

Babies over the age of 22 weeks being legally aborted in a medical setting are clinically euthanised prior to surgery by a lethal injection- unlike babies aborted in a domestic setting

There is a reason the legal limit for abortion is 24 weeks: that is, more or less, the stage at which the baby is considered fully viable when born

So, at a time when a mother would be in most need of medical supervision, she is alone.

Analysis of official statistics published by NHS England shows that one in 17 of all women self-managing their abortion at home will subsequently be admitted for hospital treatment. The enactment of this clause will scarcely improve that, as government reports have confirmed how much abortion complications increase later in pregnancy.

Clause 191 is a radical measure, not a moderate one, as its proponents claim. There is a reason the legal limit for abortion is 24 weeks: that is, more or less, the stage at which the baby is considered fully viable when born.

Clause 191 seeks to disapply the Infant Life Preservation Act 1929, which protects viable unborn babies. Its advocates call this progressive; I call it barbaric.

Nor has been there any public demand for such a change in the law. On the contrary, a Whitestone Insight Poll, in December 2023, found that only two per cent of the population supported the abortion time limit being 'extended to birth'.

Yet I have received numerous letters urging me not to oppose this clause – with varying degrees of hostility – and there is intense opposition towards those of us subjecting this measure to detailed consideration in the House of Lords (just as there is to our scrutiny of the Assisted Dying Bill).

I was rebuked for pointing out that Clause 191 would make the moral status of the viable unborn child similar to that of a slave in the American deep South of the 18th century – merely property, whose destruction was no crime by the owner.

In the preamble to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is stated that the child 'needs special safeguards and care including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth'.

Removing the offence of a woman self-aborting up to birth would, at a stroke, remove the few remaining legal protections for unborn children, one in three of whom are already aborted in this country.

Is this what we really want, as a nation? That we descend into this moral darkness, protecting neither the mother nor the child?

This is one of the reasons I am fighting to have Clause 191 removed: I do not want it said that I acquiesced in the abandonment of the final defences for these blameless, unborn, viable children.

Baroness Monckton is founder of the charity Team Domenica