Abortion Act 1967 - 25th year reflection

Then - David Steel MP

As the 45th anniversary approaches of the day on which Lord Steel of Aikwood's (formerly David Steel) Abortion Act passed into law, we publish below an article which appeared in the ALDU Winter 1992/1993 Newsletter number 56.   For many people today, certainly for those under the age of 50, the existence of the Act is simply a fact of modern life.  They have only ever known a country in which killing innocent unborn children is taken for granted and is both carried out and paid for by the State.  

Now - The Lord Steel of
Aikwood KT KBE PC

David Steel was, at the time, the youngest Member of Parliament and had been an MP for a matter of only a few months.  With all that vast experience behind him, he decided, when given the opportunity, to promote in his name a law which would result directly in the deaths of millions of  unborn children (over 7 million to date and increasing at the rate of almost 600 every day).  This tragic legacy did not prevent Mr Steel from hanging around in the political world to this day and being rewarded with elevation to the House of Lords and various other honours.  How sad that a long political career should have begun with this measure, which has resulted in such a tragic toll of death.  In fairness to Lord Steel, he has not repudiated his views on abortion nor his actions in 1966/67 but, in the circumstances, how could he do so?

If one relied only on the Press, TV, radio and statements from abortionists and successive Governments (of all parties and of all varieties), one would believe that this Act had liberated women and given them unlimited choices.  In reality, the slogan "A woman's right to choose" has lead to the situation in which, when asked why she had an abortion, a woman will almost invariably reply, "I had no choice - I would have lost my home/job/husband/mind....".   For children of course, the Act has been deadly. "Every child a wanted child" is another abortion mantra, revealing the eugenic background to abortion.  Woe betide any child who is not wanted, for you will be killed.  

It is useful to reflect on the reality of the Abortion Act, what it means and what it does not mean. The article below provides a short reflection, written 'only' 25 years after the Abortion Act was born - at which time approximately 3 million children had been killed under its auspices.  If this helps us, in 2012 to understand more clearly, so much the better.

Winter 1992/93

Number 56

The Abortion Act 1967

Coronation Oath

This last ALDU Newsletter of 1992 should not, perhaps, fail to contain a commemorative mention of the fact that it was 25 years ago, in October 1967, that Her Majesty the Queen granted her Royal Assent to the Abortion Bill and thus made it the Abortion Act 1967.  Some people, 25 years ago, remembering the Coronation ceremony in June 1953 in Westminster Abbey, hoped that Her Majesty might, when the Bill came before her for the Royal Assent, greet it with the words "La Reine s'avisera" rather than with the usual "La Reine Ie veult".  In the event such a hope proved to be a false one.  The Bill became law, having in the course of its passage through Parliament had its title changed from the "Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill" to the more straightforward and less ambiguous "Abortion Act".  In the world of abortion euphemisms abound, and it is perhaps refreshing that the Act was given its proper, accurate, unedifying description denoting deliberate, intentional, unjust killing.

ALDU's Committee is conscious of, and is heartened by, the fact that a remarkably large proportion of the Association's membership is made up of students and of those who have only recently been called to the Bar or admitted as Solicitors.  It is as much the existence of hundreds of clear-thinking young lawyers in our ranks as the certainty that our arguments and stance are sound and watertight which convinces the Committee that the Association needs only to persevere calmly and steadily in its efforts for its Aims to be achieved.  But this fact of our having so many determined young lawyers as members necessarily means that hundreds of our members were not even born when at least one older member of ALDU was sitting in the Strangers' Gallery of the House of Commons in 1966 and 1967, observing the passage of Sir David Steel's Bill through Parliament.  For this and other reasons, therefore, our younger members, upon whom so many hopes rest, may be particularly helped by a few general observations on the Act which for 25 long years has been disfiguring the Statute Book.  The details, intricacies and complications of the Act can be looked up in any good textbook on Criminal Law.

1. The main thing to remember about the Abortion Act 1967, - the key to understanding its importance, - is what it did with the protection which the law affords to people.  The 1967 Act picked up the protection of the law, removed it almost entirely from unborn children whom everybody knows to be the smallest and weakest of us, and placed it carefully around the very people who are bent on attacking and destroying those children, namely, the abortionists. This removing and repositioning of the protection of the law was the whole essence and purpose of the Abortion Act 1967.  This is why that Act should be opposed and denounced by every clear-thinking person in the land, - with lawyers, it is to be hoped, leading the opposition and denunciation, because we are members of a noble profession with a special concern for justice and with a duty to resist fearlessly what is wrong.
2. Secondly, it cannot be right that a father's wishes with regard to his unborn son or daughter should be of no consequence whatever in the eyes of statute law.  But in the Abortion Act 1967 there is no recognition of the father's views and wishes.  So far as that Act is concerned, the father might just as well not exist.
3. Thirdly, the Abortion Act not merely degrades women but also puts them much more under the domination of men than ever they were before. Abortionism is a massive confidence trick perpetrated by unscrupulous people (mostly men) upon the rest of the population but mainly of course upon babies and women. No attack on a woman's dignity or upon her essential femininity can possibly match the attack of the abortionist.
4. Fourthly, let us nail the untruth that the Abortion Act gave women a "right to choose".  On the contrary, in so far as the law gives any right to choose, that choice is in practice given to the doctor.  It should never be forgotten that the 1967 Act did not repeal the earlier law prohibiting abortion but only provides that in the event of a doctor performing an abortion in certain defined circumstances, then henceforth that unjust activity would not be an offence.  On this rickety basis there has been built up a whole edifice of nonsense about "rights" to an abortion.  There was much that we in ALDU disliked about the decision of Sir George Baker P. in the case of Paton v. British Pregnancy Advisory Service Trustees & Anor., [1978] 3 W.L.R. 687, but the learned President was undoubtedly correct when he stated at 691G that "the Abortion Act . . . gives no right to a father . . . it gives no right to the mother either".

The reality is that this Act, hailed by many who should know better as a great piece of liberating social legislation, is in fact so loosely worded that the severe restrictions that it contains are, in practice, almost unenforceable, with the result that successful prosecutions are most unlikely.  Abortions are carried out or refused entirely at the whim of the medical profession whose members, if it suited them so to do, could as easily restrict the number of abortions to 180 or 18 per year as they now raise the number to 180,000.