The campaign for abortion ignores the fact that there are two lives, not one, writes Jacob Rees-Mogg

The campaign for abortion has always ignored the fact that there are two lives, not one.

It’s not just the mother’s life and the mother’s right to choose. It is this new life, this new created life that now survives outside the womb at a gestation period that was unimaginable in the late 1960s.

But babies at 24 weeks are pulled limb from limb to be aborted, to be killed. Disabled babies, particularly, are at risk. Disability in the modern age is thought of as something that you should help people with.You should make provision for. You should look after them, but not whilst they’re in the womb.

That’s an excuse for aborting them right up to full term. That’s what the ancient Romans did. They put babies out on the dung heap to die. They left them exposed. They thought their lives were worthless.

We are more civilised than that. We recognise that life is valuable. Life is precious. Life should be treasured. And if we did that, we would actually be maintaining our population level.

Currently, we are not having enough natural births in this country to maintain our population. And so that is one of the reasons we have had mass migration.

Abortion is a fundamental evil. It has been a great blot on our island story, a murderous tale over the last 59 years. It has damaged our hope for the future.

It has shown disrespect for life, and I think in ages to come, when people look back in 100-200 years, they will think that abortion was as wrong as the slave trade, this mass massacre of the innocents. It makes Herod look as if he was providing child care.