British MP and former Cabinet Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has told the House of Commons that legal abortion is an “absolute tragedy” which should sadden us all.
Rees-Mogg, a practising Catholic, was speaking on Monday, as MPs debated a petition relating to legal rights to access abortion. The petition, which has more than 166,000 signatures, called for abortion to be included as a right in the government’s new UK Bill of Rights.
In its response to the petition, provided on 12 August 2022 in the wake of the US Supreme Court overturning ‘Roe vs. Wade’, the Government said: “The Government is now looking again at the Bill of Rights to ensure it will deliver the Government’s objectives as effectively as possible”.
Rees-Mogg argued that this was not necessary – because there was no majority in Parliament to alter the law as it currently stands.
Rees-Mogg highlighted the UK’s alarming abortion statistics – which have been on an upward increase – adding that abortion is an “absolute tragedy” which has become normalised.
He said the push for abortion to be included in the British Bill of Rights is about “trying to impose an American construction on the British constitution”, adding that doing so does not work in sense.
He added that British abortion law is “as solid as it can be” from the point of view of those in favour of abortion legislation, adding that the petition therefore misfires.
“It would make no sense to introduce this matter into the Bill of Rights that the Government are bringing forward. The Bill actually deals with the relationship between the Executive, the legislature and the courts, rather than trying to move to a codified constitution which, as far as I am aware, is not the policy of His Majesty’s Government. If it were, I am not sure I would support it,” Rees-Mogg said.
Aside from voicing the view that the Bill was not suitable for the particular proposition brought forward, Rees-Mogg went on to highlight the issue of abortion itself – which he said “obviously underlines the whole debate”.
“To me, it is the greatest sadness that the number of abortions that take place each year take place,” he said.
“The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) pointed out that there were 214,869 last year. I think all sides would agree that this is a matter of the deepest sadness. There is nobody who welcomes abortion or wants there to be this very high level of abortion. Think of it over the period since the Abortion Act came in: more than 10 million babies have been aborted”.
‘100,000 ALIVE TODAY IN NORTHERN IRELAND’
Rees-Mogg pointed to a 2017 ad campaign which ran in Northern Ireland, and put a spotlight on the impact of not extending the British abortion act there. The billboard campaign by Both Lives Matter claimed pro-life laws in the province had saved 100,000 lives. While abortion campaigners complained and claimed the figure was inaccurate, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) backed the ad – upholding that the assertion was not in fact misleading after an investigation into the complaints. The ASA further said there was a “reasonable probability” it was largely accurate based on abortion statistics from Britain.
All 14 complaints against the campaign were dismissed. An ASA statement said: “On balance, we concluded that the evidence indicated that there was a reasonable probability that around 100,000 people were alive in Northern Ireland today who would have otherwise been aborted had it been legal to do so.
“We know that there are more than 100,000 people alive today in Northern Ireland who would not otherwise be alive had Northern Ireland had the Abortion Act like the rest of the United Kingdom,” Rees-Mogg told colleagues.
“We know this to be true because pro-abortionists complained about this claim to the Advertising Standards Authority. As I understand it, the Advertising Standards Authority said that the number being claimed was actually lower than the reality, instead of being overstated.
“My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) said that we cannot look at it in terms of numbers of cities and people like that, but we can. There are more than 100,000 people in Northern Ireland who are alive today who would not be alive had Northern Ireland had the abortion rules that we have in England, Wales and Scotland.
“That seems to be a modern tragedy: this number of people had no opportunity for a life because they were ripped untimely from their mother’s womb. Think of that number: 214,869. In a four-year period, the destruction of life is as a great as it was in the four-year period of the first world war. Those are the numbers we are dealing with. That is the tragedy of abortion”.
Welsh MP Alex Davey-Jones challenged Rees-Mogg on the issue of ectopic pregnancies and ‘fatal foetal abnormalities’, to which he responded:
“The job of doctors is to save life. It is quite clear that an ectopic pregnancy that may threaten the life of the woman carrying the baby is a case where an intervention may be made to save the life of the woman. That is a perfectly traditional and acceptable understanding of how to maximise the saving of life, while not pretending that there is not life, because there is. There are two lives”.
Rees-Mogg doubled down, adding that the heart of the argument “is actually that this new life started at the point of conception. The tragedy is the 214,869 lives lost last year”.
When asked by MP Stella Creasy, who was the architect of the Bill which legalised abortion in Northern Ireland in 2019, if he would support abortion in the instance of rape or incest, Rees-Mogg responded by saying that it is always wrong to “destroy human life”.
“I think the destruction of life is wrong,” he responded. “I do not believe that we should say that a new life should be destroyed. I do not believe that that is the right of the state.
“This is about destroying life. This is the cult of death. It is the great tragedy of abortion, and it is considered normal.
“The extraordinarily high number of babies that are destroyed is something that should sadden us all to the depths of our souls.”
While Rees-Mogg said the petition’s argument was “wrong constitutionally,” it was “much more wrong morally” because it “prefers death to life”.
A full transcript of Monday’s debate can be read here.