Looking at the timeline of legalised abortion in the western world, it is interesting to note that, with the exception of Sweden and Iceland, before the end of World War II, the only nations to legalise abortion, the Soviet Union and Nazi-controlled Germany, did so as part of overt ideological/political programmes in which individual human beings had no inherent worth or rights. Control of population was ackowledged as a key factor in the exercise of absolute power in both of the 20th century’s major totalitarian ideologies.

In the Soviet Union, communism – a philosophy that fully accepted the principles of utilitarianism with regard human rights – allowed abortion or outlawed it strictly according to the rules of political or economic expediency. Under communism, human beings were valued exclusively for their productive economic output. There is no notion in communist ideology of “inherent” human rights. Communists did and still do regard abortion strictly as ethically neutral, banning or allowing it as it furthered the communist economic or political goals.

Although at odds in many ways, communism and the Nazi philosophies were based on the same foundational utilitarian principles: a human being as an individual has no inherent worth or rights and is valued only for what he can contribute to the party’s goals.

It was not until after World War II, and the defeat of the Nazis and the revelations to the outside world of the horrors of the death camps and human experimentation, that the utilitarian principles, still widely accepted in academia, were driven underground.

Since then a new set of terms, a new vocabulary of ‘human rights’has been used to promote and justify abortion, and as a logical consequence embryonic research. Under this guise, and driven by judicial precedents, legalised abortion spread from the United Kingdom to Europe and throughout the Commonwealth. Britain, having been before the War the world’s most powerful, wealthy and influential country, has always led the way with regards to life issues.