Podcast: Abortion’s Scale and Christians’ Silence with Dave Brennan

In this third episode of the new series of the Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast, hosts Graham Nicholls and Lizzie Harewood sit down with Brephos Director to talk about:

• the scale of abortion in England and Wales;
• the church’s and individual Christians’ relative quiet on the issue;
• the timeline behind the legalisation and increasing demand for abortion;
• the approach taken by Dave and the team at Brephos into raising awareness about abortion (including reflecting on the events in Keswick last summer) as well as engaging with women who have had one;
• the importance of the gospel of grace in talking about abortion;
• the importance for men to own their responsibility in caring for the unborn and for women.

https://youtu.be/DtKn_KZ-Oek

Graham Nicholls (0:15)

My name is Graham Nicholls from Affinity.

Lizzie Harewood (0:18)

And my name is Lizzie Harewood, and this is the Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast, and we’re joined today by Dave Brennan from Brephos. So Dave, give us a bit of information about yourself and about Brephos. Tell us all about it.

Dave Brennan (0:35)

Thank you. Well, my name is Dave Brennan. I live in Norwich. I’ve got one wife, two daughters. They’re a great blessing. And we are now living on land. We recently were living on a boat on the broads, on the River Waveney. But we’ve sadly left that life behind us, and I’m just getting used to life on land, which is harder than it sounds. But we’re here in Norwich, worship at a church called New Hope Christian Centre. I used to be part of a church called New Life. So yes, very confusing. New Hope Christian Centre. And yeah, for some eight years now, I’ve been working in the ministry called Brephos, a ministry we started together with CBR UK, the Centre for Bioethical Reform UK, some eight years ago. So the heart of the ministry really is helping churches to respond to abortion, particularly through teaching, biblical teaching on abortion.

Graham Nicholls (1:43) 

Was there a reason you got into that particular ministry?

Dave Brennan (1:48) 

Yes. I mean, if you’d asked me even 10 years ago, I think probably it would have seemed very foreign, the idea of getting involved in anything like this. I think what changed for me, well, I mean, prior to that, I would always say I was pro-life. I grew up in a Christian home and a good Bible teaching church. Abortion wasn’t talked about much. But I think it was obvious what the position was, the pro-life position as a sort of passive, quiet, default position. I remember seeing just a little bit of literature around at home, I think from Life Charity or something similar. But I didn’t give the issue probably more than two minutes thought in 20 years. But when I came to university, I began to think a bit more about it together with some friends of mine.

Dave Brennan (2:37) 

And I think, for me, what really pushed me over into taking it very seriously was coming to learn of the scale of the issue. I think I assumed growing up, it’s just one of those things that happens very rarely, only in extreme circumstances. But when I came to learn that it was at that time about 200,000 babies killed every year in the womb, it’s now up to 250,000, so a quarter of a million babies every year in England and Wales, not even counting Scotland. It just absolutely rocks me. And I thought, goodness, no one’s talking about this, it’s all behind closed doors, we’re not seeing it. And yet this is a genocide of proportions that actually dwarfs every other genocide in history. And so just for me, that gap, that chasm between how weighty this issue is in its essence, but also in its scale, and then how little anyone is talking about it, particularly the church, that for me, that gap was something that really gripped me and concerned me and started the journey that led to where we are now.

Lizzie Harewood (3:55) 

So am I right in thinking that it’s about one in three pregnancies or babies that are aborted?

Dave Brennan (4:04) 

That’s right, it’s getting close to one in three. I think it’s slightly closer to one in four still. But yes, so for every three babies or so born alive in Great Britain, one baby is deliberately killed. So this is not just safe, legal and rare. As the saying goes, this is a real – well, it’s the default recourse for any unwanted pregnancy. People are not thinking about adoption. They’re not thinking about, ‘Well, we don’t want this, but it’s the right thing to persevere and we’ll find a way.’ It is the go-to so-called ‘solution’ in an unwanted pregnancy.

Graham Nicholls (4:43)

Why do you think the church is relatively quiet on it? I mean, I just, I’m not trying to defend our own church, but I think in our church, we talk about it quite often, actually. But having said that, we talk about it in terms of sort of re-establishing the principle of why it’s wrong and talking about how sad it is and what an indomitable society is. But I guess probably like lots of churches, we do feel a bit useless. And I suppose that might be a reason it doesn’t get talked about very often in the sense that it feels a very fixed, immovable thing that we hate, but can’t do anything about. So it feels almost too painful to keep bringing it up in a funny sort of way. I’m just making this up as I go along, so I’m not sure I’m making sense. But why do you think churches don’t talk about it as much as perhaps you would like them to?

Dave Brennan (5:40) 

Yeah, I think that is certainly one kind of church that’s out there. I remember when I was perceiving the calling, really, into this work, I shared it with an older, really wonderful, mature man of God. And his response, I think, echoed that kind of thinking. He sort of said, well, look, Dave, you’re right, but what can we do? It’s just too far gone. And perhaps that would have been my thinking at one point. Perhaps we can come back to this later. But I think for me, having come upon a strategy that really does work for changing hearts and minds and saving lives, to me, that’s a game changer because there really are things we can do to change the tide. Perhaps we can come back to that.

Dave Brennan (6:30)

But I think that’s one kind of church. People who know it’s wrong, would like to see it gone, but are essentially ill-equipped. They feel, or they are, poorly equipped to handle the issue in a way that does any good. And I think the flip side of that is they fear also that if they do address the issue, they’ll get it wrong. They’ll put their foot in it. They’ll hurt people. They’ll offend people, whether that’s people within the congregation who’ve had abortions, that there’s a concern that we might hurt those people and sort of rub salt in the wound. Or for people even outside the church, there can be a concern as well, the sort of seeker-sensitive issue, the concern that will put people off of coming to church and of the gospel. So there is this kind of – and perhaps we can come back to that, it’s presented in evangelistic terms even –we don’t want to talk about this because of the gospel. And I think that’s very upside down, but I do get it. I understand intuitively where that’s coming from. So I think there are some of those fears. 

Dave Brennan (7:38) 

But I’m afraid in many cases, even within the conservative evangelical church, I’m afraid I think it’s rather optimistic to assume that people are all ready at that point of saying, well, we know it’s wrong. We hate it. We’d love to see it gone. But what can we do? I think actually many Christians are either unclear on the issue morally or they are totally ignorant of the scale, as I was. So you might say, well, yeah, of course it’s wrong. But save a few rare cases, it’s probably not being accessed. So I think there’s a whole raft of issues, actually. There’s this confusion, moral confusion, there’s ignorance. And then I think there’s a whole package of different fears that if we do address it, we’ll actually do more harm than good. 

Graham Nicholls (8:28) 

Yeah. What do you think, Lizzie?

Lizzie Harewood (8:30)

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, knowing that this discussion is coming up. And I’ve been thinking about exactly what Dave’s saying. There are sort of different camps. There are those that perhaps are concerned about the perception of their teaching. And I think particularly they’re concerned that there’ll be the demonisation of women within the congregations who may have had abortions or even just women per se who perceive this to be a right because a baby exists within their own body. And they’re just too scared. They need gloves and they don’t know how to. And I’d say, although our church would certainly hold to that kind of biblical understanding of the value of life and the moment of conception, 100%, it probably hasn’t spoken as much as it could have about this topic. 

Lizzie Harewood (9:33)

I think the other thing is, and this is what I was pondering last night, actually. I think the the complexity of the moral and theological argument just isn’t picked over in people’s internal wranglings as much as it should be. So I was thinking if I knew that 250,000 people were being murdered in a concentration camp, then I cannot believe that the church would do nothing about that. But because it’s within a woman’s womb, it got me thinking, why is that? Is that because they… And I came to the conclusion that I just don’t think that people view the unborn child as human in the same way because they cannot see. They cannot see this being. And I think it’s because, you know, you see human suffering through pictures of the Holocaust survivors or you hear those numbers. But yet we don’t see the unborn child that is then killed. And I think that that’s really tough to know what conclusion to come to and how we deal with it. But I don’t know. It’s hard. 

Lizzie Harewood (10:55) 

And I do know of women as well that have had abortions. Who I think, gosh, how do I approach this with her knowing that she may think that I’m coming across as judgemental? I don’t want to put her off. You know, the welcoming embrace of the church family. But at the same time, we want to have good teaching on this in our churches. 

Lizzie Harewood (11:22)

The other thing I’m really interested in is a bit of the timeline, the history of abortion in our country, because, as you say, a lot of people seem naive or ignorant as to the scale of this. And I was probably quite ignorant as well up until a couple of years ago when I started to look into this for my own work purposes for teaching on abortion in relationships and sex education in schools. When did abortion become legal? When did it seem to liberalise so much now that we have almost one in or one in three or one in four babies being aborted before they are born?

Dave Brennan (12:00)

Yeah, great stuff. I’d love to come back to what you said perhaps later on. I think you’re absolutely right about the dehumanisation of the unborn child. We just don’t see them as human. I think that’s absolutely critical. As you say, if it was toddlers, if it was adults, if it was a concentration camp, we would be up in arms. I genuinely think we would be. I think we’d put our fears aside. I think it’s a mixture. It’s a mixture of moral confusion and personal fear and so on. But I do think, as you say, if it was adults, it would be different. And that just proves we don’t take them seriously. We don’t take the babies in the womb seriously. And I think that is critical. And again, seeing them makes a big difference in that. So, yeah, perhaps we can come back to that. 

Dave Brennan (12:43)

But in terms of the timeline, in this country, England and Wales, the Abortion Act was 1967. And we don’t know exactly how many abortions were taking place prior to that. But the estimates were wild at the time, vastly exaggerated. And it was hard at the time to know. But looking back now, we can have a more reasonable estimate because we have something to compare it with. And a reasonable estimate, I would say, was maybe 10,000 to 20,000 abortions per year prior to 1967. Now, a small number of those did result in serious harm to women. A very, very small number of women died. But the danger of backstreet abortions was vastly exaggerated by those who are trying to pass the law. And indeed, the very same thing, essentially, the same argument was used recently in the Republic of Ireland during the referendum there to legalise abortion. Again, they essentially wheeled out a kind of backstreet abortion sort of argument with a woman who tragically died. Actually, nothing to do with abortion. It was miscarriage and sepsis. But they pulled on the heartstrings with a similar kind of argument just very recently. So it’s one of the most successful ways to pass abortion laws. 

Dave Brennan (14:04)

But prior to 1967, there was actually a small bit of legal provision for abortion in extreme circumstances, essentially rape. That was under a case called Rex v. Bourne from a few years prior to 1967. But prior to that, the unborn child was protected in the same way that every other human being was protected under the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861. And so for a long time, it was simply assumed, and then it was clarified in the Offences Against the Person Act. So they’ve received protection under law up until relatively recently. And I think this is something we need to understand. We’re the anomaly since 1967 in this country.

Dave Brennan (14:50)

And also I’d say the church’s moral confusion on abortion is a remarkably recent phenomenon in the grand scheme of things. The church has always been clear on abortion right throughout history from the very beginning. But in the 20th century, we became very confused about abortion. And some of that’s connected as well. I think something that paved the way, and we also need to talk more about as the church, something that paved the way was the Church of England’s acceptance of contraception in 1930, which even if we don’t disagree in absolutist terms, at a moral level, it is undeniable that the popularisation of contraceptives led to a culture of promiscuity and a culture which therefore demanded abortion. So a common misconception, even amongst Christians, is the way to reduce abortion is to roll out more contraceptives. The reality is, the more you roll out contraceptives, the more abortions also take place. Might seem counterintuitive, but that’s the culture it generates.

Graham Nicholls (16:00)

That’s really interesting. Just sticking with the timeline for a sec. What happened if you were to graph it crudely from ’67? Did it suddenly go up in ’67 and stay up? Or is there sort of a trend up or down?

Dave Brennan (16:16)

It rapidly climbed over the first six or so years. So in very rough terms, I mean, it’s easy to find these stats online, but in very rough terms, I think it was something like by 1973, I think it was up to about 120,000 a year. Pretty quickly, it got to around 150,000. And then it stayed relatively stable. But in recent years, it’s been going up again quite rapidly, you know, by climbs, yearly climbs of 10%, 15%. Big, big leaps.

Graham Nicholls (16:46)

Why do you think that is?

Dave Brennan (16:49)

I can only speculate. I think it’s a number of things. I think whilst abortion does cut across all socioeconomic divides, there is something of a correlation between abortion and other issues, particularly poverty. So in a culture where people are poorer, or they think they’re poorer, they feel poorer, or where there’s more uncertainty, these things, I think, can feed into how they respond to an unplanned pregnancy. That’s probably my best guess, is to do with recent economic changes. But again, there’s also just the culture of promiscuity, I imagine, continues to grow. I haven’t got data for that. But also, there’s marital breakdown, and all sorts of things continue at that level.

Graham Nicholls (17:41) 

Yeah, anecdotally, I would have thought that. Because although contraception is well known, the climate of lots of change means people are not always prepared. There’s a lot more, there’s a hookup culture, sadly, which is not always as prepared contraceptually for it. And I think there’s probably a public perception that abortion now, with the morning after pill and everything is a sort of form of contraception. I think that might be going on as well. 

Dave Brennan (18:09)

Yeah.

Lizzie Harewood (18:11) 

One of the things that surprised me was that the number of women who’ve had multiple abortions, which implies – and of course, I’m not trying to say in every case – but implies that there’s a bit of a pattern there. Maybe, you know, contraception fails every time, not that that should be a reason anyway to have an abortion. And I do remember reading about a lady – I know she’s local to me – but also a social media influencer who spoke quite openly about her three abortions. And seemed to be, although I wouldn’t say proud, she had no qualms in sharing this experience as a way to empower other women. Is that quite common then to have multiple abortions or women to have multiple abortions?

Dave Brennan (19:10)

It is extremely common. So at least 40% of abortions last year were in women who had already had an abortion or at least one abortion. So there’s a huge amount of repeat abortions. And I think that shows us a few things. It does show us that abortion is being used essentially as a form of retroactive contraception. And the abortion industry itself says that and is proud of that and says that so it should be. But it also tells us something about the way individual women respond to abortion. Now, abortion is itself, can be a form of trauma and can deeply damage women at every level, spiritually, morally, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, physically. And one of the paradoxical sort of responses that some women have to abortion is because there’s a mixture, you see, of guilt, because it’s a moral decision, but also grief. You’ve lost a child or a child has gone. So what can happen is to fill that gap, women quickly want to get pregnant again. But then the circumstances haven’t changed. And so they have another abortion. And so it’s a vicious cycle. And I’ve heard testimony of exactly that: ‘I was grieving, I was empty, I got pregnant again, but I still couldn’t have that baby. So I had another abortion.’ And sometimes that cycle goes on and on.

Lizzie Harewood (20:49)

Almost a subconscious longing.

Dave Brennan (20:51) 

Yeah.

Lizzie Harewood (20:52) 

Okay. Yeah, that’s really interesting.

Graham Nicholls (20:56)

Yeah, I would concur with that from some of my pastoral experiences. But sometimes the converse is true that they they do feel so guilty, grieving over the abortion that they have a child, they actually have a child that lives. So there is the flip side of that. But it still demonstrates that it’s not a trivial decision. It’s made out to be. Just so you get to talk about Brephos a bit. What – in sort of summary – are your main messages and methods? And that’s a big question. But just to allow you to say all the things you said, I want to get back to your main messages and your methods of trying to get your messages out there.

Dave Brennan (21:39)

Yeah, thank you. So the sort of heart of the work of breathless is biblical teaching on abortion. And so my great concern is that in the vast majority of churches, in fact, we know this from the amount of from the little data we’ve been able to find or kind of get ourselves. We know that, whilst some churches will mention abortion, and not many, but some – very few actually deliver what we would call thorough head on teaching on abortion. And there are different ways of doing that – but where it’s not just mentioned as an aside, but there is some thorough teaching: very, very few. And in fact, what I what I often do is I ask people anecdotally, have you ever heard of me teaching on abortion in your church? And the answer is almost always no. There are very few exceptions. So so really, we we focus on trying to get biblical teaching on abortion into churches. 

Dave Brennan (22:32) 

And there are, I suppose, two main – well, at least two main – ways we do that. We come in and do that ourselves. We’ve got a team of speakers right across the country. And we’ve got – well, we’re coming up to about 20 soon – speakers. So the idea is hopefully wherever you are in the country, you shouldn’t be more than an hour or two away from one of our speakers. That’s the hope. And so we come in and do teaching in churches, be that Sunday morning, Sunday evening or midweek. Or we help pastors to do it themselves. And we can do that in a number of ways. We’ve got resources – happy to spend time talking through how we do it. And if anything of that is helpful. People are very welcome to use all our resources.

Dave Brennan (23:17) 

And then we’ve also got a few other things, you know, like we’ve got this Bible study that we just produced – Bible studies on abortion, which can be used in a sort of small group setting. So we’ve got a weekly podcast, we’ve got a website full of videos and blogs and so on. So we’re just trying to find any which way to get the teaching to the people of God, because I think that’s the great gap. People just don’t know – as I was saying, Lizzie, you know, they don’t see the unborn child as God sees the unborn child. That’s one of the great issues. We don’t see abortion, how God sees abortion, because we don’t see the unborn child as God sees the unborn child. Not really. Even if we think we do – even, I mean, I’ve had conversations with conservative evangelical Christians, even leaders who’ve said stuff like, “well, I’m pro-life. But at the end of the day, I think it’s got to be the woman’s choice.” Now, what that shows is they think they are pro-life. And yet they’ve also been so heavily conditioned by the thinking of the world. And so there’s a real need for mind renewal under God’s word on this issue.

Dave Brennan (24:20)

So the essence of our teaching is we we try to show who the unborn child is biblically. We try to show what abortion is biblically and open people’s eyes to the facts and the reality and the stats. And we also want to explore what is a biblical response to abortion. You know, it’s not enough just to be pro-life to have that position, but actually we’re called to make an active response. And we see that right throughout the pages of Scripture, Old Testament and New. We’re not just commanded to abstain from acts of evil. We’re commanded to proactively take up the cause of the fatherless, the widow, the oppressed and so on. And that’s a real litmus test, actually, for our Christianity and for the spiritual health of the church in this age. A big question is how do we deal with the great moral scandal of our day, the great injustice of our day? We look back you know, that the 19th century and 18th century evangelicals, we see how they responded to the great evils of their day and it brings glory to God. But in our day, what are we doing? And so I’m very much concerned that churches shouldn’t just be pro-life, but we should actually respond actively in the way that that God would have us do so.

Lizzie Harewood (25:39)

So before we get on to the ways of responding, give us just a brief kind of lowdown of what the Bible says about abortion. I mean, I know it wouldn’t use that term abortion, but what does the Bible say? Where do we hang our conviction?

Dave Brennan (25:56)

Yeah, thank you. Well, as I say, it starts really what is the unborn child? OK, that’s the critical question. And when does life begin? Now, Scripture is clear that life begins at conception. We see, for example, Psalm 51:5, David refers to himself as a sinner from conception. So we can see that if we want to use the language of personhood, we see personhood there. He’s a me: “my mother conceived me”. And he was a morally responsible person at that stage.” And so what we see there is life begins at conception. And it’s actually remarkable how often conception is mentioned throughout Scripture, you know, for what we might look back on now as a pre-scientific age or at least an age where they didn’t have anything like the medical insights we have today and the physical ability to see inside the womb and so on. Scripture is repeatedly saying, so and so lay with his wife, the Lord opened her womb, she conceived and bore a son. So the moment of conception is so often highlighted as the beginning of life. And of course, the doctrine of the incarnation, the Lord Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. So his birth was natural, not miraculous. It was his conception that was miraculous. And that’s when his earthly life began. So actually, right at the heart of the Christian faith, one of the central doctrines we have, the incarnation, states that human life begins at conception. So I think that’s the first thing we really need to see.

Graham Nicholls (27:29)

That’s really helpful. Obviously, John the Baptist, by the way, leaping in the womb. Another interesting one to mention at Christmas. And Christmas story is interesting because you’ve got that and you’ve also got the killing of the babies by Herod, which I often used to talk about abortion, to be fair. Just as ‘a by the way,’ you mentioned about the human personhood. There’s a book which I really should have got ready for this, but there’s a – I think it’s a Christian Focus Publications book [If I Could Speak by Mark Jones] where someone is voicing the voice of the baby writing to their parents, sort of leading up to the abortion. Have you come across that book?

Dave Brennan (28:10)

It rings a bell. I haven’t read that, but I think I remember someone else mentioning [it].

Graham Nicholls (28:12)

Yeah, it’s not – so I mean, it is helpful biblically, but it’s more helpful with the emotional side, basically voices that the baby speaking to their parents through the process right up to abortion. It describes abortion in very graphic detail as well. So I think it’s definitely worth recommending. It’s a Christian book. I will I’ll find the title to put in the show notes. But yeah, I had a question, which was I think Lizzie’s really, which was getting onto the method – or not the methods, but what are we supposed to do that we’re not doing? [What] would be your conviction?

Dave Brennan (28:56)

So, yeah, first off, we’ve got to teach until the people of God know what this is. We’ve no hope of responding rightly. So we’ve got to teach. And I think one mistake people make, if I may say so, when it comes to abortion is they talk around it, but they don’t say what it is.

Lizzie Harewood (29:14)

Yeah.

Dave Brennan (29:15) 

They don’t expose the reality of abortions. The problem is abortion itself is a euphemism. It’s a sugar coating. You know, you abort a mission. You terminate a contract. We’re talking about human beings here. You don’t just cancel them and they disappear. You know, it is a gruesome thing. There’s no clean way to kill an unborn child. And whether that’s medical abortion or surgical abortion, you’re killing a baby and then you have to get that baby out one way or another. And then you have to dispose of that body one way or another. So we understand, of course. It’s understandable that we don’t. No one wants to talk about nasty things. No one wants to look nasty things. But my concern is people can go into some teaching on abortion and come out again and they still don’t really know what it is. So we’ve got to expose what abortion is. 

Dave Brennan (30:12) 

And for my money – and as well, it’s not just my money. It’s the history of social reform. And I would also say Scripture shows us that there is no substitute for people seeing the reality of an injustice so that they understand it and that they respond appropriately. Injustice that is unseen is tolerable. We can handle it. We can carry on with an injustice that’s unseen. But once it’s exposed, it protests itself. And what I find is when I go to churches and I teach on abortion, I get feedback wherever I can, whether that’s written feedback or just talking to people. And there are two things that stand out the most almost always. The first is people appreciate how we have a gospel-centred approach. So we come with the gospel. This is not the unforgivable sin. There is grace. And we’re explicit about that: that there is healing in Christ for those who’ve committed this sin. But the second thing that people always mention is how powerful and impactful and necessary it was to see the reality of abortion. And so this is what I do. I show people the reality of abortion visually. And that changes people’s thinking instantly. 

Dave Brennan (31:30) 

Scripture tells us why abortion is wrong, but Scripture doesn’t tell us what abortion is. Actually, we have to use our eyes and our brains and look around and see what’s going on in our nation to see what abortion is. And so biblical moral truth combined with having our eyes open at what’s actually going on in our nation – that’s what can generate, with God’s help, a meaningful and appropriate response. And so what works in the church, showing people the reality of abortion, also works outside the church. And so that’s one of the things we need to be doing. We need to be the people to stand up in our nation and not just say, we’re protesting, this is wrong. We actually have a saying in our organisation: we don’t protest abortion. We don’t need to. We just need to expose abortion, because abortion, when seen, protests itself. 

Dave Brennan (32:24) 

So that’s what we do. That’s one of the things we do out on the streets. We do public education displays. We show people the two things that are being covered up. We show the humanity of the unborn child in all its glory. And we also, not always, but often, usually, we show also visually the reality of the violence of what we call abortion. And those two things exposed can change people’s thinking instantly on abortion. And I’ve seen that time and again. So that’s one of the things that we need to be doing to actually shift the heart and mind of our nation and be those voices for the voiceless that Proverbs 31:8 calls us to be.

Graham Nicholls (33:05)

Go on, Lizzie.

Lizzie Harewood (33:08) 

I’m just thinking at a large scale, how did our society get to the point where this kind of violence is socially acceptable? I mean, is this just another sign of a progressive society that has forgotten God, has forgotten that humans are made in the image of God?

Dave Brennan (33:39)

Of course, that’s a major fundamental thing that’s been going on throughout the 20th century. We’ve seen the erosion of godly laws and so on across the board, but not in the same way at every level. So you can see people’s attitude towards the elderly is much softer than it is towards the unborn child. Why? Well, I suppose, chiefly, we know they’re human beings and we can imagine ourselves being in that situation.

Lizzie Harewood (34:04) 

Yeah, I was thinking of that the other day.

Dave Brennan (34:06)

Yeah. So we’ve seen a big discrepancy there. People have been a lot more alive to the issue of assisted suicide than they have to abortion. So I think there is something specifically about the dehumanisation of the unborn child rather than just apathy towards human life in general. There is some specific discrimination against the unborn child. Now, I think one reason for that, again, going back to the issue of contraception, the introduction of the contraceptive pill – I think it was 1961 – in our nation was really significant, and in the States at a similar time.Because the thing about the pill is it acts in a number of different ways, and people aren’t aware of this, but all hormonal contraceptives, implants, coils and so on, they act in one of three ways. Initially, they’ll try and stop fertilisation ever taking place, so stop the sperm, spermicide will stop the egg, so prevent ovulation. But if those things fail, there is a kind of backup, as it were, method, which is thin the lining of the womb so as to make it hostile to any newly formed life. So fertilisation does take place, there’s a new human embryo, but the lining of the womb has been deliberately thinned so that the unborn child is essentially expelled deliberately. Effectively, it’s an early abortion. 

Dave Brennan (35:31)

And so that was happening from 1961. Now, of course, you don’t know how often that’s happening. But it was a problem for the early marketers of the pill in the States and elsewhere. And so what they did was a really significant sleight of hand, they shifted the definition of conception from being synonymous with fertilisation, so when life begins, they shifted it from that to implantation, when the baby implants on the lining of the womb. And so with this sleight of hand, with this play on words, they convinced a whole generation, or allowed a generation to lie to itself, that this is not abortifacient, it’s just preventing pregnancy, it’s just preventing conception. And I think, actually, that lie was really significant, because that eroded clarity on the beginning of life, which persists to this day, even today. 

Dave Brennan (36:29)

There are some people that I’m trying to get at a public level to affirm that life begins at fertilisation – Christians – and they won’t do it. They won’t do it because there are people within their organisation who are unsure about it. And they’ve got different views on IVF and embryo research and so on. And of course – I mean, I didn’t know, going into marriage, about – I didn’t know this about contraceptives, I didn’t know that they could be abortifacient. So our clarity on the beginning of life was eroded. And then of course, what happened was our complicity in the shedding of innocent blood increased, whether we realised it or not. And so the road was paved for abortion in many ways by contraceptives. And so I think that’s one reason why the unborn child specifically has been so dehumanised. 

Dave Brennan (37:25) 

But then of course, there is a very close connection, isn’t there, between promiscuity, well, sex in general, but of course, there’s a problem. The promiscuity problem is, how are you going to have as much sex as you want, but without the babies that you don’t want? And so there is an added incentive to dehumanise the unborn child and say, ‘Oh, no, it’s not life yet.’ Just because, well, we don’t want it to be a life yet. And the sexual revolution, so called, and together with that, we’ve got the breakdown of the family, we’ve got feminism and so on. But so many things are conspiring against the unborn child. So many things are demanding that the unborn child does not get the same rights that we get.

Graham Nicholls (38:12)

You do have this slightly strange anomaly in – many of us picked it up – that there was recently the certificates for miscarriages, wasn’t there? That whole process. And it was strange how people couldn’t make the connection that they were grieving over a child that had miscarried, through natural causes, as it were, and having a certificate and being able to grieve it was a good thing. And the government, everyone was affirming it’s a good thing. With the fact that, at a similar stage of development, a child could be aborted. And that was considered a good thing as well. I don’t really understand that. So I think there is a degree of spiritual blindness. It’s not entirely logical.

Lizzie Harewood (38:57)

And it’s not logical, because that’s – my husband and I were talking about this – there’s a complete cognitive dissonance there in that the value is only given to the child by the person that perceives it. There is no intrinsic value within that being, unless you designate it. And that just really, I don’t know, I just feel like there’s no logical thinking through what this means in that if it is a wanted baby, then value is imputed. But if it’s not, then it’s merely a clump of cells.

Dave Brennan (39:46)

It’s moral relativism, isn’t it? You’re a baby if I want you to be. And I think that is something somewhat unique to our age, the sort of outright worship of self and the sort of subjectivism that comes with that. And it means that people, particularly babies, unborn babies, become commodities, you know, something you can purchase, something you can order, something you can cancel. I mean, it’s just atrocious, the things you read. Someone orders a baby through IVF surrogacy, but they find out halfway through it’s not the one they wanted. So we’ll abort that. We’ll start again. And it is just seeing babies as things. So if you happen to want a person, OK, it’s a person. But if you if you don’t want it at all, then it’s just it’s like having an organ removed or even simpler. So it is – yeah, you’re right, it is that complete cognitive dissonance. Because it doesn’t start with ‘what is the truth?’ It starts with ‘what do I want?’

Graham Nicholls (40:59)

Yeah, I think there probably are lots of other parallels, but I think the Greco-Roman world at the time of Christ, actually, and a bit beyond what was very similar in all kinds of sexual practises, but also abortion. I’m sure you would know from your research about babies blocking up drains – as in aborted babies – and people living on hillsides if they were girls and all that sort of thing, which was common. I haven’t read of other eras in history when it was quite as bad as that, but maybe there have been other areas, but it seems more more parallel with ours.

Graham Nicholls (41:36) 

Talk to me about Keswick and what you did there, because obviously people have different views. I can share my view if you’re interested, but people have different views on what you did there and whether it was good or not.

Dave Brennan (41:51) 

Yeah, so what we did there, for those who aren’t aware, we – well, it started a while back. I got in touch. Well, it must be two or three years ago now. First got in touch offering our services – a seminar, a bookstall or any whatever, you know, a way of getting our teaching in one way or the other. And that year it was it was a no. The following year I wrote in again. And again, it was a no. So I wrote back saying, well, can we just have a table, then a stool or whatever in the kind of marketplace? And I never heard back to that. So I thought, OK, well, that’s fine. That’s their remit. They obviously don’t have to offer me anything. But what we decided to do was we would nevertheless go and do a public education display, not right outside the convention, but a few hundred yards away on the high street. And the purpose really of this display on this occasion, we use actually just the living image. So just one banner. 

Dave Brennan (42:51)

We actually did it two years in a row. So no one really heard much about it the first time. But last summer we did it and it caused a bit of a stir. But we showed the living image and we were serving Christians who were going to the convention – to try and find out a bit more about people’s thinking on abortion, but also in particular what teaching, if any, they were getting on abortion. And that was quite interesting, actually, that the results of that were quite interesting. Again, I think as I mentioned earlier on, but it resonated with other bits of data we’ve managed to get hold of. There isn’t much out there in the UK, which is an issue. And it’s hard to get people to do it. I’ve spoken with pollsters and so on, and they said that no one wants to carry this question. So it’s hard to get information about what people think about abortion.

Dave Brennan (43:45)

But we were asking people things like, is abortion ever permissible? And how often have you heard it taught, for example, in the last five years in your church and that sort of thing? And that was really interesting. So we’re there really to educate and to find out what Christians believe about abortion and what kind of teaching they got. Now, I think what caused the stir this year was that was that the Keswick Convention themselves worked very hard to to distance themselves from us. I forget the exact wording now, but in the local papers, anyhow, they were approached for for a quote, as were we. And I think that the sum total of their quote was along the lines of ‘we’re aware of these guys, they’re nothing to do with us. We’re talking to the police about this.’ I can’t remember the exact detail, but it was something along those lines of nothing to do with us. And they didn’t mention anything about the issue, which I think was a shame. I was disappointed they didn’t take the opportunity to explain the Christian position on abortion. And, you know, if they disagree with our methods, that’s that’s up to them. That’s that’s one thing. But I was saddened that they didn’t take that opportunity to to highlight the plight of the unborn child and to explain what’s going on in the newspaper. 

Dave Brennan (45:19) 

They were actually very good, the newspaper, they printed almost the entirety of what I gave them. So I was able to draw attention to the genocide somewhat. But yeah, that was I think what a lot of people were disturbed by, I think, was that Keswick Convention seemed only concerned to distance themselves from us and didn’t seem concerned to to highlight the plight of the unborn. And also it was a shame as well that that they also circulated some quite bizarre allegations about us pretending to be from the convention and wearing jumpers as if we were from the convention, which is completely false. These are rumours started by some pro-abortion shopkeepers who clearly didn’t like what we were doing. So it was it was sad to see, you know, rumours circulated and and correction not received. But for me, the biggest sadness was, yeah, come on, there’s an opportunity here to highlight the greatest injustice of our day. And it seems the only concern here is to distance oneself from from a pro-life organisation.

Graham Nicholls (46:33)

That’s a good explanation. I was equally disappointed. I think it’s completely legitimate to say I don’t think this method is very good, which is quite different than saying I think the principle is not important. And I agree with you that they could have said, ‘Well, they’re nothing to do with us. But in essence, we agree with the premise of what they’re what they’re teaching about, which is the importance of life in the womb.’ So they could have couched it in that way, which [was why] I was very surprised – [but then] I don’t know them well enough to know. I know a couple of people there but I was surprised, disappointed. 

Graham Nicholls (47:10) 

I guess that the the difficulty of a topic like this is a bit like exclusion zones and buffer zones around abortion clinics. Some Christians would say this is terrible. I mean, I’ve done a number of media interviews about it where I talk about the topic of abortion. I don’t particularly say I want to be a person who’s trying to flout the law and be inside the buffer zone waving around posters because I think there’s a there’s a kind of respect thing for authority and the people involved. But I think there’s also a legitimate argument to say, well, maybe this is the only place where they will hear about how disturbing it is. But I suppose some Christians would would distance themselves from you guys for similar sort of reason to say, well, these guys are a bit too brutal for us because we’re all quite nice somewhere as Christians and sort of polite.

Dave Brennan (48:09)

Yeah, and I think that is actually a huge issue in the British church. I think we’re more concerned about being nice and being seen to be nice than we are about, you know, some 550, 600 babies per day being dismantled or poisoned. So, you know, tone matters and reputation has its place. But I think we are really far from a Christian response when our first go-to is ‘What are people going to think about this?’ or ‘What’s this going to do to our organisation’s reputation?’ There’s a genocide going on. So I think it’s perhaps it’s an especially British issue. I think maybe it is. I think that there’s a combination of of fear of man, which is universal, of course, but a kind of Britishness. We’re much more comfortable with polite genocide perpetrators than we are with brash genocide opponents. And that’s a real problem. 

Dave Brennan (49:24) 

And I think it’s very interesting when you look at the life and ministry and the words of Jesus: he was quite happy to offend where necessary. And people were taken aback by this. And his disciples took him aside at one point: ‘Don’t you realise the Pharisees were offended when he said this?’ He never backs down. You know, the Lord Jesus knew when to ignore people. He knew when to offend people. He knew when to comfort people. And yet, I think we today only emulate sort of one track of that most of the time. We’re all about kindness and gentleness and so on. But when it comes to a genocide, we’re more concerned what people are going to think about us than actually preventing it.

Lizzie Harewood (50:14) 

There’s a lot of fear that we’ll be moving towards the kind of style of the right wing in America. And obviously, there’s probably quite a wealth of anti-abortion campaigners that are associated with the evangelical right in America. And for some reason that makes people quite squeamish. And then you also get accusations, which I think are actually quite unfounded – and this usually comes from outside the church – that Christians are more concerned with baby and human lives before they’re born. And then once they’re born, they’re abandoned to live a life of poverty and discomfort. And I don’t know whether you can speak into that at all. What does or what can the church do to support babies that otherwise would not have had life if they’d been aborted, whose mothers perhaps were really worried and concerned about about how they’re going to bring up a child?

Dave Brennan (51:18)

Yeah, well, I think firstly, it shows how much the overwhelmingly left leaning progressive liberal media – certainly in this country, but also globally – it just shows how much they’re living in our heads, that we have been trained to hate right wingers more than we hate child sacrifice. And we really do. You just just look at Christians’ responses, listen to their responses. When you talk about Donald Trump, or you talk about the Christian right or Christian nationalists, watch their response to that. And then watch how they respond when you talk about abortion. They just don’t care about abortion nearly as much as they care about being dissociated from the likes of Trump and the Christian right and Christian nationalists. They’re more horrified by being associated with the right wing than they are by child sacrifice. And that just shows how much our moral world has been created by the liberal media. Because I have absolutely no doubt from the Word of God, that child sacrifice is a greater wickedness than supporting Donald Trump. No doubt – no doubt whatsoever. And yet for Christians, most Christians, they’re more horrified by the prospect of supporting Donald Trump than they are by abortion.

Dave Brennan (52:43) 

So I think we really need to see that we need to come back to a scriptural priority of issues and affection. You know, our affections should be directed by Scripture. And we need to be careful that we’re not answering the wrong questions. So the question of ‘Okay, what are you going to do with all these babies and so on?’ It’s a valid question. It’s an important question. But in no way does our answer to that dictate whether or not we should stop the genocide. You know, there’s a very – I can’t remember, unfortunately, word for word, but there’s a moving quote from Abraham Lincoln. I believe it comes up in the film, I believe it’s authentic. But you know, don’t quote me on that! But it the question is, what are we going to do with all these slaves? And yeah – if we free them – when we free them – and his answer is pretty much, ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do with these slaves, but we’ve got to free them.’ 

Dave Brennan (53:38)

You know, the right thing is always the right thing. And so, whether or not I personally adopt children – that’s the way that trope is often used by those who want to support the killing of unborn children – they make out like we’re the bad guys. We shouldn’t let them get away with that. The one saying ‘Let’s not kill babies’ is not the bad guy just because he hasn’t personally adopted 200 babies. Yeah, adoption is also really good. And we should do more and we can do more. That famous quote, you know, if every church – apparently if every church in the UK adopted one child on average, there’d be none left in foster care, in the care system. So certainly it’s a good thing to do. But we mustn’t allow the connection to be made in the way that pro-aborts are always making.

Graham Nicholls (54:28) 

I think we’re almost out of time. But I think it’s just worth naming just so people can think about it as well – that men’s responsibility in this is undervalued. In fact, the whole process is has actually allowed men to abdicate their responsibility for an unborn child or for a born child as well. And so it’s not patronistic in a bad sense for men to get involved with this issue. It’s about owning our responsibility. But abortion has allowed us to actually step away from that responsibility. So I think it’s worth just naming that just because we’re gonna have to wrap in a minute because we’ve done about an hour. 

Graham Nicholls (55:11) 

I’d love to hear what you say to somebody – Lizzie mentioned it earlier and I think you mentioned in passing, but someone who’s in one of your meetings or comes up to you afterwards maybe and says that they’re a Christian now, but they’ve had an abortion in the past. Maybe they had it before they were a believer. Maybe they had it as a believer, but they didn’t really understand. What do you say to people in that situation?

Dave Brennan (55:34) 

I had this situation very, very recently. What I find is that, when I speak in churches, it’s pretty common for at least one lady to come up at the end and say, I’m one of those who’s had an abortion. Interestingly, frequently it’s the first time they’ve told anyone. That’s not uncommon for them to say and you’re the first person I’ve told or they’ll go to their leadership after the service. A couple of months ago I was in a church, a lady had had an abortion, I think some 30 years ago, never told a soul, not even her own husband knew, but she confessed it that day. So it’s not uncommon for ladies in particular, but it affects men as well, to be carrying this around all on their own.

Dave Brennan (56:24) 

And again, come back to biblical teaching. The gospel is big enough for this. What I find is that when you’re explicit about the gospel and the fact this is not the unforgivable sin – this just isn’t, it’s not the unforgivable sin. You both would know better than I, but I think a majority of Scripture was written by people who shed innocent blood. You’ve got Moses, David, Paul, certainly a lot. A lot of Scripture was written by those who had shed innocent blood and Psalm 51, of course, is a wonderful example of someone who engaged in sexual sin and took innocent life and yet was washed whiter than snow. So we have all the resources we need in Scripture, in the gospel. By the power of the Holy Spirit, there is grace for this. And I find that when you are explicit about the gospel and when you just lay out the issue very objectively, you don’t need to add any volume to that. You don’t need to ham it up. You don’t need to be aggressive in your tone. You just let the facts speak for themselves and the biblical text speak for itself. And when people hear that the gospel is big enough and when they see the reality, it helps women. 

Dave Brennan (57:49) 

Now, people often fear, oh, it’s the women who’ve had abortions. They’re the ones we need to protect by not talking about this. The opposite is true. So often those who’ve had abortions come to me and say, thank you so much. Thank you for the way you did it. Thank you for being gracious and sensitive and so on. But thank you for showing the reality of abortion. One lady came to me and said, I had an abortion and she was like in her 80s or 90s or something. She said, I had an abortion, whatever it was, 60 years ago. She said every 16 year old girl in the country needs to see that video, the abortion video. So often they’re the ones thanking me for showing the reality and for raising the issue. And that begins the journey of processing and healing. And it can be a long journey. As I mentioned, I think earlier, there is such a thing as post-abortion syndrome. Many women will descend into addictions, alcoholism, depression, anxiety. Some become suicidal after an abortion. It can be quite a journey [to] healing. 

Dave Brennan (58:50)

We’ve got a ministry connected with us called Post-Abortion Support for Everyone, PASE. You can find them on Facebook or the website. You can speak with Pauline who directs that. She had an abortion just a few years after it became legal, actually. And then she came to know Christ. We’ve got gospel-centred recovery courses through that ministry. People can talk one-to-one. They can do a online course. Churches can run these courses. So there is a way. There’s a way to help those who’ve had abortions. The gospel is big enough. 

Dave Brennan (59:24) 

But there are many layers. As I mentioned earlier, there’s the sin issue, but there’s also the victim issue. Many women are also themselves victims actually of the husband or the partner, the parents, the doctors. They’re misinformed. They’re coerced often. So it’s a real mix of ‘I’ve done wrong, but I’ve been wronged. I miss my baby. And I’ve had all these responses, and I don’t know where they’ve come from.’ And they often haven’t made the connection. I remember one lady we were talking to once said she had an abortion. We said, ‘oh, how have you been since then?’ She said, ‘oh, yeah, fine.’ And then it came up late in the conversation that very soon after that, she became addicted to drugs. She hadn’t seen the connection. But this is so often what’s happening. So it’s a long journey, but there are people who can help. And talking about it biblically from the front is the place to start, because without that, these ladies aren’t going to come forward and that they will get the impression this is because it’s unspeakable, because we can’t talk about it is therefore unforgivable. And I’ve just got to carry on carrying it myself. So it all begins with exposing it from the front.

Graham Nicholls (1:00:33) 

That’s really, really helpful. We’ve spent quite a while on this because it’s a really important topic, but we could have spent another hour or more on it.

Lizzie Harewood (1:00:41) 

Yeah.

Graham Nicholls (1:00:41)

No, but we’re going to pause now just as we close. Where can people find more information about Brephos?

Dave Brennan (1:00:49)

Thank you. Brephos.org. So B-R-E-P-H-O-S dot O-R-G. Brephos is the Greek word for baby. So that’s that’s our website. And there you can find our weekly podcast as well. Contact details. Invite a speaker. Get in touch if we can help in any way.

Graham Nicholls (1:01:05)

Yeah. And if anyone’s listening who wants to confidentially talk about any issues in their own lives, they can contact us at Affinity, but I’m sure they can contact you as well. And that will be dealt with sensitively. So, yeah. Thank you very much, Dave. And thanks, Lizzie.

Dave Brennan (1:01:22)

Thank you. Thanks for having me on.