It’s a tradition in our house to tune into the King’s (formerly Queen’s) speech on Christmas Day. I can’t say I normally listen to the Pope’s New Year message, but on this occasion it contained something very interesting.
The Catholic Church has a clear pro-life stance
Pope Francis greeted 2025 with a New Year’s Day Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, by appealing to Catholics to reject abortion. He called for a “firm commitment” to protect and respect life from conception to natural death.
The Pope prayed that everyone learns to care for “every child born of a woman” and to protect “the precious gift of life: life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the dying”.
“I ask for a firm commitment to respect the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, so that each person may cherish his or her own life and all may look with hope to the future” he said, using the terminology of the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion and assisted suicide.
Pope Francis has not been shy about speaking into this controversial issue in recent years, having previously compared it to “hiring a hitman to solve a problem” and calling it “homicidal”.
He has also condemned decisions to abort based on prenatal testing, saying a human being is “never incompatible with life.” He has stated that even those babies destined to die at birth or soon thereafter, deserve to receive medical care in the womb, and that their parents need to be supported so they don’t feel isolated and afraid.
Well that’s pretty clear isn’t it. You don’t get more clean cut than comparing the killing of innocent babies in the womb to the hire of a hitman and homicide!
The Roman Catholic Church is crystal clear then in its official teachings, and the Pope consistently backs it up with his own words. Whether he follows through in disciplining defectors such as the current Catholic and pro-abortion US President, Biden, is another question. But the theory at least is clear!
The Church of England is cloudy at best
So what about the Church of England? Where does Justin Welby (who officially stepped down last week) stand on the issue? Well…that is less clear.
For example, When asked whether he supported buffer zones outside of abortion clinics 5 years ago, he answered in the affirmative. His reasoning at the time was not unusual and is still reflective of a lot of thinking in Christian circles.
He claimed it was “part of loving each person individually, even those we disagree with”. His exact response was: “yes I do because people going to abortion clinics, whatever you think of abortion, they’re human beings. You could say they’re doing the wrong thing, you could say they’re doing the right thing, you could say it’s their right, you could say the baby has rights - the Church of England’s very clear on that I won’t get into the detail of that as we’re running out of time, but the Church of England has a very clear view on that and has since the 80’s. But how do we love the people who are going there? Treat them as human beings and value and respect them”.
Right…let’s break this down!
It would seem I’m not the only one unclear on the C of E's position. A few years ago, we asked members of the General Synod of the Church of England, if they knew where Justin Welby stood on abortion (and where they stood themselves). The answers were anything but “very clear” as the former Archbishop seems to think. See them for yourselves in this video.
So I thought I’d do some research on my own, cue the Church of England’s website.
There is nothing about abortion or the sanctity of human life in the “what we believe” section. Nothing under the “faith and life” section, or the “about” section and nothing under “resources” either, although interestingly, “racial justice” is covered multiple times.
Time for the good old search function. If you type in “abortion” you get 122 results. Wonderful, I was beginning to think the Church of England had nothing to say on the subject.
Ah, actually…122 may be an overstatement. Upon closer examination, most of them barely refer to abortion or life in the womb at all - a lot of CofE school curriculum documents,
General Synod questions and a number of ethics papers related to embryonic research and assisted suicide, that don’t draw any firm conclusions.
However, there are at at least a few documents detailing the Church’s position on abortion and they all seem to say the following:
“The Church of England’s stated position combines principled opposition with a recognition that there can be strictly limited conditions under which abortion may be morally preferable to any available alternative. This is based on our view that the foetus is a human life with the potential to develop relationships, think, pray, choose and love. Those facing unwanted pregnancies realise the gravity of the decision they face: all abortions are tragedies, since they entail judging one individual’s welfare against that of another (even if one is, as yet, unborn). Every possible support, especially by church members, needs to be given to those who are pregnant in difficult circumstances and care, support and compassion must be shown to all, whether or not they continue with their pregnancy.”
In fact, a letter from Lambeth Palace sent on behalf of Mr Welby in response to our ‘Where’s Welby’ campaign - an independent initiative drawing attention to the Church of England's lack of clarity on abortion- (see video linked above), stated pretty much the same thing.
However, I am still a bit confused.
If the Church’s view is that an unborn baby is valuable because it is a human life and that all abortions are tragedies, why would acting to end that life by suffocation, poisoning, inducing a heart attack or dismemberment, be “morally preferable to any available alternative”? What sort of alternatives is the church referring to here that would be worse than deliberately (and often painfully), killing that child through direct and deliberate action?
No doubt many would cite the often called ‘hard cases’ here. The roughly 3% of all abortions that occur because of fatal fetal disability perhaps or a risk to the mothers life or rape. But the truth is that abortion is hardly ever necessary to save the mother’s life and when it is, it’s not really an abortion as the death of the child is an unavoidable and unintended consequence of another necessary medical procedure (and not a single pro-lifer would advocate for allowing two to die when you can save one).
With regards to rape and fatal fetal disability (as tragic and deserving of the upmost compassion as these rare cases are), I wonder if we would still advocate for deliberately killing the child once it was born…I suspect not as we don’t kill disabled children because they are disabled and we don’t kill children whose fathers have committed terrible crimes against their mothers.
So how then can the Church of England justify killing them only months of weeks earlier for the same reasons? How is that recognising that the fetus is a human life? Does the Church of England value human life differently based on the age, location, level of development or degree of dependency of the human life in question? If so, where in scripture does this come from?
Also, why would Mr Welby be opposed to Christian brothers and sisters offering help to mothers and their unborn babies and praying outside of abortion clinics? Does his call to “treat them as human beings and value and respect them ”, only extend to the mother (and her immediate interpretation of what respect means) and not the baby about to be killed? How does staying away and not offering these (often vulnerable and coerced) women practical help, compassion and prayer equate to “value and respect”? Is it respectful to stand by and do nothing as a child is killed and a woman potentially irreparably harmed?
Not to mention the pro-lifers who have been arrested, charged and even convicted for silently praying, alone in these buffer zones when the clinics aren’t even open and there are no women coming or going at all!
Would Mr Welby feel the same way if it were legal to kill newborns or toddlers in this country, for any of the same reasons a mother might choose to kill her unborn child? Would he approve of buffer zones around baby euthanasia clinics that saw 800 newborns killed every day, if by standing outside and offering help and prayer, even one child a day could be saved, even one mother spared the pain and regret that many come to feel?
I doubt very much if he would still say “you could say they’re doing the wrong thing, you could say they’re doing the right thing.”
So why does he say it about the intentional killing of unborn babies? Why do so many Christians - even those who say they are pro-life - act as though the unborn are somehow different? Even when they deny that they do. If you believe that abortion is sometimes permissible, or sometimes a necessary evil, can I ask you to take part in a simple thought experiment?
Replace that unborn baby with a 1 year old…can we still kill it? If the answer is no, then why is it different when the baby is still within its mother’s womb? It’s the same child, it’s just younger!
The Bible is crystal clear
Ultimately though, our position and actions on this issue must be determined not by our own feelings on this issue, but by the Word of God. Fortunately, scripture is crystal clear. The Bible tells us not only that all human life is valuable but it (very helpfully) includes life in the womb when talking about individuals…just so there is no mistaking them for anything other than people.
We are all familiar with Psalm 139. In v13-14 David says “You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Notice that David says you knit ME together - David was David right from the beginning.
In Psalm 51 v5-6 David goes even further. “For I was born a Sinner, yes from the moment my mother conceived me. But you desire honesty from the womb teaching me wisdom even there.” How could David have been a sinner from conception if he was not also fully human and alive at that time? Why would God desire honesty from the womb and teach wisdom to something that was not yet one of His children, made in His image?
Jeremiah was told in chapter 1 v5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah was known to God for who he was, before he was formed in the womb and set apart before he was born. Clearly Jeremiah was a person with value before birth.
As we enter the new year, the Christmas story is still fresh in our memories. That story began very powerfully as told in Luke Chapter 1. Just after Mary had been visited by the angel and told she would bear a son though still a virgin - she hurried to visit her cousin Elizabeth (then 6 months pregnant with John the Baptist). When Mary greets Elizabeth, John leaps for joy in his mother’s womb and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, says “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
John the Baptist (the fetus) recognised that Mary was carrying his Saviour. Our Lord could have come to this world in any way He chose but He came through the womb!
The unborn are living human beings, image bearers of God and so they are our neighbours. We have a clear biblical mandate to love our neighbours and not to kill. We cannot say that our unborn neighbours are disposable because they are smaller than us or less developed or more dependent - God has not left that interpretation open to us. Embryo, fetus, infant, toddler, teenager, adult; these are all terms that tell us how old the entity is, not what it is. What is human was human from the beginning.
How Clear will you be?
The Catholic Church and the Church of England may differ on this issue, but they have in common a structure and a hierarchy that must be adhered to when matters of church policy or doctrine are to be debated or changed. The critical question for each one of us is: 'Where do I stand?' And for us as Christians: will we take our cue from the authoritative word of God and be a voice for the voiceless? Will I speak up for those being crushed?
Will you join us and be clear on this issue? Abortion takes the life of an innocent human being and killing innocent human beings is always wrong.