The child in the womb is not a policy question

“For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all my days were written in Your book and ordained for me before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:16). That is not a metaphor about how we feel about the unborn. It is God’s own account of how He deals with a person who has not yet been born — and it is written in the same psalm that says He knows “my frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth” (Psalm 139:15). A God who sees the unformed body and writes its days in His book is not a God who regards what is in the womb as a lesser kind of human being.

The Bible is remarkable here. It legislates. When men fighting struck a pregnant woman and the child was born prematurely, the Torah did not treat what had happened as regrettable collateral; it assigned a penalty. And then: “But if a serious injury results, then you must require a life for a life” (Exodus 21:23). A civilisation that wrote that law understood something our public debate has been careful not to say for three decades: the life of the unborn is a life, and the law has a duty to it.

The rest of Scripture agrees. “Rescue those being led away to death, and restrain those stumbling toward the slaughter” (Proverbs 24:11) is not a meditation; it is an instruction with verbs in it, and it is the verse this platform has set as the standard beside Psalm 139:13 because it makes the duty concrete. Rescue. Restrain. Stop it. “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15). “Children are indeed a heritage from the LORD, and the fruit of the womb is His reward” (Psalm 127:3). The Lord of the universe has a claim on the fruit of the womb, and He has not delegated that claim to the state.

This matters for Christians because it removes the false comfort of calling it a political preference. You may legitimately think the question of when a human being becomes a human being is arguable; Scripture settles it. And once it is settled, a Christian is not free to treat the argument as optional or to shrug at the law. “If anyone is unwilling to work, he shall not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10) is the principle: the answer to your neighbour’s situation is your own conduct, not a policy that leaves them to manage it alone. “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; uphold the rights of the afflicted and oppressed” (Psalm 82:3). The Bible puts the burden of protection on those with the power to give it.

Which is why the standard here is a commitment in writing rather than a feeling. A party may privately hold a pro-life view, may have a sympathetic leader, may have a good heart — and may still put nothing in the platform, and still send a delegation to the floor to vote against a life-saving bill, and still let the law stand as it is by parties that never promised to change it. That is what a party that says nothing actually does: it hands the decision to whoever bothered to make it. Silence in a manifesto is not neutrality. It is a vote that has already been cast, and it was cast by someone else.

And here is the fact that ought to stop a Christian who has been comfortable on this issue. The law in this country is not the product of some recent liberalising moment that can be dated and undone. It is the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1996, and it has been substantially unchanged since the day it commenced. It permits a termination on a woman’s request alone, with no reason required, up to twelve weeks. From the thirteenth week up to and including the twentieth, it permits a termination where the pregnancy would injure the woman’s physical or mental health, where there is a substantial risk of severe abnormality, where the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or where the pregnancy would significantly affect the woman’s social or economic circumstances. After the twentieth week it permits one where the mother’s life is in danger or the foetus is severely malformed. Those thresholds were in the Act as it was enacted, in 1996. The only substantive amendments since have been in 2004 and 2008, and the last of them touched the definitions, the registration of facilities and the regulation-making powers — not the weeks, and not the consent. The law has sat on the statute book for three decades precisely because no party in this country with the power to change it has ever wanted to. That is what thirty years of silence looks like when it is measured in a woman’s body.

So the test is a test of writing. Read the manifestos of the parties contesting your municipality on 4 November and look for the specific thing: does the party commit to the protection of the life of the unborn, and does it specify what protection means? A blanket promise to “respect the sanctity of life” that also protects the death penalty, or that cannot say whether a twelve-week-old or a twenty-two-week-old is a human being, is not a commitment. A commitment names the week at which the state will stop killing its own citizens, and it protects the conscience rights of doctors and nurses who will not do it. Those are the words to look for.

And if the party you were going to vote for does not have them, then you have a decision that is genuinely yours, made in a polling booth, about something you believe with your whole heart. “The LORD is on my side; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (Psalm 118:6). Not because the outcome is guaranteed, but because the person casting the vote is not.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. On 4 November, you can break the cycle. Read the manifesto. Look for the words. And vote for the party that protects the life of the child in the womb.

Mark the tick if this analysis holds. And in the comments: at what week do you think the law ought to say a human being becomes a human being — and does the party on your ballot agree with you in writing?