Decriminalising Abortion Shifts the Right to Life from God to the State

Trading Rights for Permissions

Central to the freedoms historically enjoyed in the Western world was the recognition that rights are God-given. They are not inventions of the state, nor privileges granted by political authority. They are bestowed by God and therefore stand above government.

As the American Declaration of Independence famously affirms, “all men are created equal” and are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” As such, if rights come from the Creator, they cannot be legitimately revoked by a legislature. Government does not create rights; it recognises and protects them.

In recent decades, however, this foundation has shifted. Rights are increasingly treated not as inherent endowments, but as social constructs—permissions granted by the state and subject to revision. Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the debate over abortion. Framed as a matter of “women’s rights,” the discussion subtly relocates the source of the right to life. Instead of being a gift from God, life becomes something whose legal protection depends upon parliamentary approval.

This represents more than a policy disagreement. It reflects a deeper move toward moral relativism, where moral judgments once grounded in Scripture are placed in the hands of political majorities. Under the banner of pluralism and freedom from religious restraint, Western societies have redefined fundamental rights as flexible and negotiable. What was once considered inalienable is now conditional.

The consequence is profound. If rights are granted by the state, they may also be withdrawn by the state. A parliamentary vote can determine who counts as fully protected and who does not. While some celebrate this as liberation from religious influence, it in fact consolidates enormous power in government hands. When the state assumes authority to decide which human lives are worthy of protection, it claims a role that historically belonged to God alone.

Legalising abortion, therefore, does more than alter criminal law. It redefines the nature of rights themselves. The right to life—once understood as the foundational right from which all others flow—becomes contingent. And once the right to life is contingent, every other right rests on equally unstable ground.

Those who champion “bodily autonomy” often view their position as a defence against government intrusion. Yet if rights depend on state recognition, then bodily autonomy itself survives only by state permission. The same authority that withholds legal protection from one class of human beings may, in principle, do so for another. If some lives fall outside the circle of protection, the boundary of that circle can always be redrawn.

In the end, for a government to decriminalise abortion, it must first recast the right to life from an inherent, God-given reality into a state-defined privilege. Once that shift is accepted, society no longer lives under rights secured by divine authority, but under permissions extended by political power. And permissions, unlike rights, endure only as long as those in power allow them.