The whole pro-life movement is standing together to say "No to abortion up to birth” this Wednesday on 15 May. This is why you need to join us.
It’s anyone’s guess how many more petitions we must sign, letters to our MPs we must write, emails we must send, and campaigns and rallies we need to support before abortion will end. For now, the end of abortion is certainly not (from our limited, human vantage point) in sight as yet.
In fact, at the moment the <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/mps-to-vote-on-abortion-amendments-on-may-15-parliament-told/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">pressure on our Parliament</mark></a> is instead to further liberalise, to “decriminalise”, or really, totally deregulate abortion when MPs have the opportunity to change the UK’s abortion law on 15 May with a potential vote.
This would mean a woman could abort a baby at home at any stage of pregnancy and face no penalties for doing so. Her doctors would face no penalties for providing her with abortion pills. And there would be no consequences for those who put women in the risky situation of having late term abortions, alone, anywhere and for any reason.
This is why this Wednesday will see a rally involving representatives from the whole pro-life movement and their supporters in London’s Parliament Square, bearing witness against the moves to make abortion available up to birth. It's not possible to know for sure if MPs will vote on 15 May; if not, it's likely a decision will culminate at some point during the next couple of weeks.
There’s a moment in the film <em>Moses Prince of Egypt</em> where Moses dreams of Hebrew babies being pulled out of their cradles and thrown into the sea by Egyptian soldiers. Waking, he notices for the first time the murals on the walls of the palace showing a slaughter of his people's babies that occurred around the time of Moses' birth.
Moses, whose name in Hebrew means “to draw out” from the water, was drawn out of the water himself, but was also called by God to draw the Hebrews out of the murky pagan waters of Egypt, which they were becoming contaminated by.
In their position as slaves, the Hebrews had to tolerate the paganism around them, but God saw that they were abandoning their own faith and getting drawn into pagan practices. Hence God instructed Moses to ask Pharaoh to permit the Hebrews going into the desert for what amounted to a three-day “retreat”, and which would involve making a sacrifice of animals that were worshipped by the Egyptians as gods. But Pharaoh refused to let the Hebrews go.
There is so much in Moses’ story that resonates with the abortion issue. The State lining up their representatives to kill the innocent, babies being targeted because there are “too many” Hebrews, trying to sign up the Hebrew midwives to kill their own people, and most of all the dehumanisation of the Hebrew babies: “They were only slaves” Pharaoh explains blithely to Moses in the film.
And similar to the hardness of heart in our opponents on abortion, there is the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart that was not just permitted but <em>caused</em> by God – "so that He might show these sign before him" (Exodus 10: 1) – in response to his refusal to let the Israelites worship God in the desert.
But there is something else that we need to recognise in the story of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. The Israelites had fallen into pagan practices. God wanted them to come away from their ordinary life for a few days and witness to the fact that these practices were evil.
This is one of the reasons we need to go out on the street to peacefully state that abortion is wrong. It’s not just for the sake of our society, but for our own sakes and the sake of our children.
If we never witness publicly against abortion, we become part of the problem. While we may not actually agree with abortion, if we never protest it, we begin to tolerate it and eventually it becomes normalised to us. By the time our children grow up, having also never witnessed against abortion, it becomes not just normalised but accepted in their lives.
How many emails, letters, phone calls and rallies can we be expected to participate in before the fight to end abortion is successful? I don’t know. This particular witness on 15. May isn’t even trying to get us to an abortion-free point, but is only fighting for the (already awful) status quo not to get any worse.
Abortion up to 6 months or up to birth for some pregnancies is not what we want or should be having to fight for! However, the duty to prevent <em>even more</em> children dying is lying heavily upon us right now, as is the <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/abortion-vote-on-15-may-is-a-time-to-raise-our-voices-and-not-lose-heart/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">duty to witness to our society and ourselves</mark></a> that abortion is wrong and that further liberalisation of it is unacceptable.
Join us, witnesses from across the pro-life movement who – leaving our differences of opinion and strategy aside – will stand together as one, all supporting the one message: Say no to abortion up to birth. <br><br><em>Photo: Pope John Paul II blesses a baby in Ars during the third day of his visit to the area of Lyon, France, 6 October 1986. His papal encyclical Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life) remains a famous exposition on the value and inviolability of every human life, including the unborn. (Photo credit DANIEL JANIN/AFP via Getty Images.)</em>
<em>Clare McCullough is director of The Good Counsel Network.</em><br><br><strong><em>The “Say no to abortion up to birth” Rally will meet in Parliament Square on Wednesday, 15 May at 11 a.m. Banners and signs will be provided. Just turn up and join</em>, <em>urges</em> <em>The Good Counsel Network</em>.</strong>
