By Alithea Williams

It has long been a staple of political discourse on pro-life matters that abortion is not really an election issue in the UK, in the way that it is in, say, America.

While the landscape here may still be very different from America, a number of factors have combined to make abortion a bigger issue in this election than it has been for decades. Many of these factors were current before the election campaign even started; the imposition of abortion on Northern Ireland, the push to decriminalise abortion in the rest of the UK and the debate over buffer zones.

An unprecendented situation

However, since the campaign began, it is the political parties themselves that have put abortion firmly on the agenda. It’s an issue on which  they have generally shied away from taking official positions, leaving it to backbench MPs to introduce legislation, and giving their members free votes. Now, for the first time, two major parties have made further liberalising abortion laws party policy. Labour and the Liberal Democrat parties have pledged, in their manifestos, to decriminalise abortion.

The Liberal Democrat manifesto says that it will "decriminalise abortion across the UK while retaining the existing 24-week limit." The Labour manifesto simply says the party will "uphold women’s reproductive rights and decriminalise abortions" - with no guarantee to retain the existing time limit. (Labour have since hedged this by saying that there will be "wide public consultation on the detail of new laws and regulations".)

For those asking whether the usual convention of MPs being allowed to vote according to conscience will still apply, now a certain  position on abortion is party policy, the answer is that we don’t know; the situation is  unprecedented. It is certainly not inconceivable that MPs could lose the whip for voting the "wrong" way on abortion. -It has happened just over the water in Ireland.

Attacks on pro-life candidates

This possibility seems all the more likely when people are being prevented from even standing for Parliament because of their pro-life beliefs. The Liberal Democrats dropped former Labour MP Rob Flello as their candidate for Stoke-on-Trent South within 36 hours of his candidacy being announced because of his pro-life voting record.

Other candidates are also being attacked for upholding the right to life. Chris Green, who is hoping to regain his Bolton West seat, was denounced in his local paper for sharing the views of "anti-abortion fanatics" because he said at a hustings that he believes that human life begins at conception and he would do all that he can to protect that.

"radical assault upon the sanctity of human life"

Abortion being made an election issue in this way has provided the opportunity for voices to be raised on the pro-life side. The Bishops of England and Wales put life issues at the core of their election guidance, calling on Catholics to ask candidates how they will uphold the "innate dignity of every human being; defending both the child in the womb, the good of the mother and an understanding of the immeasurable good of a child not yet born".

Today, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury went further, telling Catholics in his diocese that: "As Christians, we must express the gravest concern that a number of political parties have dispensed with considerations of individual conscience making unequivocal manifesto commitments to deny the unborn child the right to life.

"I cannot fail to draw your attention to this further radical assault upon the sanctity of human life, presented as a programme for government and the danger of discarding the rights of individual conscience in determining the right to life of the unborn child.

"Individual candidates may dissent from their party platforms. However, we could never give support to any policy which denies the most fundamental right to life itself - without which all other rights are without foundation."

Catholic Bishops in Northern Ireland have also said that voters have a duty to inform themselves of the position of election candidates in respect of their willingness to "support and cherish equally the lives of mothers and their unborn children".

A lot at stake

And it’s not just Catholics that are speaking out. The extreme proposals in the Labour and Liberal Democrat manifestoes led  nearly 400 Church of England clergy and laypeople to write a letter to the Times expressing their "sincere concerns about these proposals", and  calling "on the bishops of the church to do all they can to speak out against them."

A lot is at stake in the next Parliament. Regulations for Northern Ireland’s new abortion regime will have to be voted on. There are almost certainly going to be more attempts to decriminalise abortion in England Wales and Scotland. The push to normalise abortion more and more (to the extent of women self-managing them at home) will continue.

For those of us that mourn the 598 babies who are killed every day in the UK, abortion has always been an election issue. Despite the horrific ideas being proposed by some parties, perhaps it is no bad thing that more people are seeing it as an issue this election.

Note: With regard to the Church of England’s teaching that "the foetus is a human life with the potential to develop relationships, think, pray, choose and love", we must make it clear that the foetus is an unborn human baby who always has a right to life.  Human beings may vary in their current abilities, but are equal in their human nature and dignity:  we must never discriminate against disabled babies. Every unborn child must have the same legal protection as everyone else.