The first point to make here is that an unborn baby is not part of his or her mother’s body. The unborn baby is a unique human being, who needs the environment of the womb, as we all did, for the first nine months of life.

Even if the law permits abortion, a woman does not have the right to decide to end her baby’s life. Nor does she have the right to deprive her baby deliberately of the very basic bodily support that the baby is receiving.

The second point is that a woman does not have a complete “right” to do what she wants even with her body. We rightly condemn other decisions people make regarding their bodies; for example, drug abuse or self-mutilation. Society aims to protect people from self-harm, not to enable self-harm.

The idea that abortion is a woman’s “right to choose” is deeply embedded in society. The pro-abortion lobby has hi-jacked the word “choice” to hide the reality that abortion kills an unborn baby.

Yet many women suffer emotionally after an abortion precisely because it involves the death of their baby.

The factual evidence shows us that an unborn baby is a very young human being. So abortion involves two human beings – the woman and her baby. The future of both the mother and the baby matters. Both lives must be respected.