The Labour party still want to push assisted suicide into law, but they're facing an uphill battle. In a major blow to Kim Leadbeater’s plans to revive her assisted suicide Bill, cross-party MPs from the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties who previously voted for the Bill, including former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Conservative MP Sir Jeremy Hunt, have told constituents they now oppose it being forced into law using the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords. 

Assisted suicide campaigners are going to attempt to resurrect Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill in the new parliamentary session.

Their plan involves persuading an MP successful in the Private Members’ Bill ballot on 21 May 2026 to bring back the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill – and then use the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords to force it into law.

Ahead of the House of Commons Private Members’ Bill ballot taking place at 9am tomorrow, four MPs who voted for the assisted suicide Bill last year in the House of Commons have written to their constituents to tell them they oppose any plans to revive the Bill via the Private Members’ Bill ballot and then use the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords to force it into law. 

Given that only 12 MPs would need to change their minds should a new Bill be introduced, and any new vote would likely become a referendum on the use of the Parliament Acts as well as on the flawed Bill itself, this strongly suggests any MP picking up the Bill would be defeated.

Retired pastor Clive Johnston is to appeal his conviction for preaching the Gospel within one of Northern Ireland’s controversial abortion censorship zones.

The former President of the Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland was convicted of two charges under the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act for holding an open-air service on the fringes of a buffer zone opposite Coleraine’s Causeway Hospital last year.

His sermon made no reference to abortion, nor were there any abortion placards or banners – a fact accepted by both sides and the judge in court. Yet, Mr Johnston was found guilty of being “reckless” as to whether his actions of preaching and standing near a large cross might ‘influence’ someone accessing the hospital’s abortion services.

This is the first UK buffer zone case in which a person has been criminalised for preaching a sermon that did not mention abortion.

Speaking after confirming his intention to appeal, Mr Johnston said: “This ruling sets a deeply troubling precedent. I was not protesting abortion. I was peacefully preaching the Gospel, reading from the Bible, and pointing people to the hope found in Jesus Christ.

“If this conviction is allowed to stand, it will signal that basic Christian witness and public expressions of faith can be criminalised simply because they take place in the wrong location.

“That should concern every person who values freedom of religion and freedom of expression, regardless of their views on abortion.”

Mr Johnston’s legal team will argue that the conviction represents a disproportionate interference with fundamental rights protected under the European Convention on Human Rights and codified into UK law under the Human Rights Act, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of peaceful assembly.

There were 18,783 abortions in Scotland in 2025, the highest on record, according to statistics released earlier today.

Released earlier today by Public Health Scotland, the figures reveal a stark increase in the number of abortions over the last ten years. 2025 saw an increase in the total number of abortions of 6,648 or 54.78% compared to 12,135 in 2016.

The abortion rate per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 increased from 11.9 in 2016 to 17.6 in 2025. 

There was also a rise in repeat abortions from 7,672 in 2024 to 7,927 in 2025. In 2025, 42.2% of abortions were repeat abortions.

Lanarkshire has had the greatest increase in abortions of any region in Scotland in the last ten years, from 1,426 in 2016 up to 2,650 in 2025, representing an 85.83% increase in abortions.

The figures also show there were 277 disability-selective abortions in 2025. This is a 61.05% increase compared to 2018, when there were 172.

The number of abortions at between 18 and 20 weeks gestation was 138 in 2025, a 50% increase from 2018, when there were 92 abortions at between 18 and 20 weeks gestation.

But bad as things are at preent, they could well get even worse. A review of abortion law in Scotland, commissioned by Humza Yousaf when he was Scottish First Minister, has recommended that Scotland scrap the 24-week abortion time limit and allow abortions on social grounds, including for sex-selective purposes, right up to birth. 

Unborn babies could legally have their lives ended by an abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy – right up to when they are about to be born.

This would leave Scotland with one of the most extreme abortion laws in the world.

While the King’s Speech made no mention that the Government would take up the failed assisted suicide Bill, the Government’s legislative agenda could be hijacked to introduce further extreme changes to our abortion law.

In his speech at the start of the latest parliamentary session, the King outlined the Government’s intention to introduce legislation to modernise the NHS and the Criminal Justice system. However, given past attempts to change the abortion law, there is a risk that, if abortion amendments are allowed, some MPs will attempt to hijack these Bills by adding extreme abortion amendments.

This is precisely what happened in the last parliament. On 17 June 2025, Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi hijacked the Crime and Policing Bill (a Government Bill not related to abortion). This changed the law so that it is no longer illegal for women to perform their own abortions for any reason, including sex-selective purposes, and at any point up to and during birth. This will likely lead to a significant increase in the number of women performing dangerous late-term abortions at home. 

This drastic change to the law was passed in the Commons after just 46 minutes of backbench debate – there was no prior consultation with the public, no Committee Stage scrutiny and no evidence sessions.

Consistent with previous statements, the Government did not indicate that it would take forward a Government Bill on assisted suicide. 

During a House of Lords Committee Stage session on Friday 30 January, the Government Chief Whip in the House of Lords, Lord Kennedy, made it clear that the assisted suicide Bill would absolutely not become a Government Bill if the Parliament Acts were used to attempt to force the Bill through, as some supporters of the Bill have argued it should. 

“The Government have no intention of bringing back this Private Member’s Bill”, Lord Kennedy said. “It will remain a [Private Members’ Bill], and the Government have no intention of bringing it back in the next Session”.

The lack of mention of the assisted suicide Bill follows a media campaign instigated by the sponsor of the Bill in the House of Lords, Lord Falconer, in which he seemed to threaten the use of the Parliament Acts to attempt to push through the assisted suicide Bill without the consent of the Lords.

However, polling has suggested that more MPs would oppose the assisted suicide Bill than could be relied upon to back it if the Bill were revived.

The polling, which was carried out by Whitestone Insight, found that only 41% of MPs surveyed can now definitely be relied upon to vote “Aye” again, while 45% said they would continue to vote no, suggesting that if the legislation were to be put to a vote today, it would likely be rejected by the House of Commons.

Only 12 MPs need to change from supporting the previous Bill to opposing the new Bill for the new Bill to fail, so the poll suggests that any MP considering bringing back the assisted suicide Bill after the King’s Speech would likely be destined to fail.

In the borough containing Kim Leadbeater’s Spen Valley constituency, Labour lost every single council seat it held in England's local election, only weeks after the historic collapse of the Labour MP’s assisted suicide Bill.

Across the elections on 7 May for Kirklees District Council, which entirely contains Kim Leadbeater’s Spen Valley parliamentary constituency, the Labour Party did not win a single seat. The Party went from being the largest party on the council before the election, with 23 seats, to now not having a single seat on the entire council. 

Electoral Calculus, which predicts outcomes for elections, now predicts that Kim Leadbeater MP will lose her seat at the next general election, with Reform UK having a 46% chance of winning, at the time of writing.

The loss of all Labour seats within Kirklees District Council and the losses experienced by the Labour Party following the elections that took place on 7 May 2026, come only weeks after the failure of the assisted suicide Bill in the House of Lords. 

Assisted Suicide could be back on the parliamentary agenda. Four MPs who were drawn in the top seven at the House of Commons Private Members’ Bill ballot this morning voted in favour of the assisted suicide Bill in the last parliamentary session.

Private Members’ Bills are bills that can be introduced by MPs who are not Government Ministers. Early in each parliamentary session, a ballot is drawn to decide the names of 20 MPs who can then bring forward a Private Members’ Bill in that session. However, only the first seven ballot bills typically receive sufficient parliamentary time to have the chance to become law. 

The top seven MPs in this parliamentary session’s ballot are, in order, Sir Desmond Swayne; Lauren Edwards; Mike Wood; Andrew George; Dr Luke Evans; Sir John Whittingdale; and Jessica Toale.

Of these, Lauren Edwards, Andrew George, Luke Evans and Jessica Toale voted in favour of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill at its Third Reading in the House of Commons, with the remaining MPs voting against it.

Lauren Edwards, commenting after voting in favour of the Bill at Third Reading, said “I believe this Bill is one of the most important, compassionate, and empowering changes to healthcare we’ve seen in a generation”.

Andrew George, writing after the Bill fell in the House of Lords, claimed it showed that “a minority of unelected Peers can deliberately frustrate the will of the democratically elected chamber”, arguing that the entire House of Lords should be converted into “a Citizens’ Assembly, …or a museum”. 

According to Lucy McDaid, political correspondent at Sky News, George has said that the assisted suicide Bill is “definitely definitely” on his list of Private Members’ Bills to consider bringing forward. 

Assisted suicide campaigners have made it clear that they are going to attempt to resurrect Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill in the new parliamentary session.

Their plan involves persuading an MP successful in the Private Members’ Bill ballot on 21 May 2026 to bring back the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill – and then use the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords to force it into law.

Taking the unprecedented route of using the Parliament Acts to bypass House of Lords’ scrutiny of a Private Members’ Bill would be politically explosive and divisive, setting a precedent that may worry many MPs. It would be the first time ever that the Parliament Acts would be used for a Private Members’ Bill.

Assisted suicide campaigners are now likely to focus their efforts on convincing those in favour of assisted suicide who placed highly in the ballot to bring forward an identical version of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill as their Private Members’ Bill of choice. 

This all comes despite the fact that public opinion has shifted substantially against such legislation. New polling from More in Common has revealed that fewer than one in three (29%) of the general public think that a new assisted suicide bill should be introduced as soon as possible in the same form as the assisted suicide Bill that has failed to become law – as would have to happen should an MP want to use the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords to force the Bill into law.

In contrast, a majority of the public (53%) thought the Bill should either not return or, if it returns, should be introduced with stronger safeguards, which would mean introducing a different Bill, therefore ruling out the use of the Parliament Acts to bypass the Lords.

A former BBC Director of News and Current Affairs has revealed how the trans agenda played a significant part in driving her from the corporation.

Fran Unsworth, who stepped down from the top job in 2022, told UnHerd that it was relentlessly difficult dealing with “progressive editorial issues and the bullying around them”.

She pointed to a pervasive “social phenomenon” at the BBC, which prioritised being “kind to transitioning people” to such an extent that “maintaining impartiality became quite difficult”.

In an interview with ex-BBC editor Rob Burley, Unsworth said: “It was bullying. But it wasn’t just the trans issue. There was lots and lots of bullying going on about all sorts of things: people didn’t want to hear from certain points of view; they’d ‘no platform’ them”.

“The world went mad, and the BBC, because it is part of the world, went a bit mad with it. This was going on in every institution in society; there was a kind of national bullying going on.”

Regarding the transgender issue, she explained to Burley: “As you well know, editorial decision-making in the BBC isn’t top-down. It’s about editors deciding what they want to put on their programmes. And one of the big factors in it is because they took so much heat whenever they went near this subject.”

A 25-year-old nursing student is condemning the Trump-Vance administration for allowing abortion pills to remain accessible by mail, saying that taking the pills put her in a coma and almost killed her.

The fight over whether abortion pills can be mailed from pro-life states into pro-abortion states has become the most central battle for the pro-life movement since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Earlier this month, the movement scored a key victory.

On May 1, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Louisiana that pills-by-mail violated the state’s pro-life laws and issued a ruling that essentially reinstated the FDA’s pre-2021 requirement for an in-person appointment to obtain abortion pills.

However, on May 4, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an administrative stay pausing the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in response to a petition for emergency relief from two major pharmaceutical companies that produce the abortion pill, temporarily maintaining the status quo until May 11.

The Supreme Court has since granted another extension for several days, keeping access to abortion pills by mail open as litigation continues.

These stays prompted a heartfelt and disturbing editorial in The Hill by Shanyce Thomas on May 11 titled, “Near-death abortion drug experience highlights safety concerns.”

“As soon as I read the breaking news, memories flooded back to me of the hospital room where I nearly died at age 19,” Thomas wrote. “No number of slogans or activists could help me in that moment. What I remember is the blood, the pain and the terrifying realization that when everything went wrong, I was completely on my own.”

“Mailing dangerous abortion drugs with no in-person examination, no meaningful safeguards and no regard for state law was never about women’s health,” she continued. “It was about politics.”

Thomas writes that when she was 19, she took abortion pills, believing the abortion industry’s assurances that it was “simple and safe” to do so. “What happened instead nearly cost me my life,” she recalled.

“This part is critical: My experience didn’t happen through the mail,” Thomas wrote. “It didn’t happen through an app or an online chat. I had an actual ultrasound for which I was physically present. There was at least some level of medical oversight. Yet even with that, everything went terribly wrong.”

After taking the second round of abortion pills, she began bleeding heavily and “passing clots” with unbearable pain. She went back to the clinic, where she was told everything was fine. The next morning, she was worse. Her father took her to the hospital, where doctors discovered that parts of her baby were still inside her and she needed emergency surgery. She went into septic shock.

“I don’t remember much of what happened next,” Thomas wrote. “I only know what doctors told me afterward. I spent about a month and a half in a coma as they worked to save my life. I was placed on an ECMO machine. I needed multiple blood transfusions. Doctors inserted a stent in my neck to access my veins. My parents stayed by my bedside the entire time, unsure whether I would survive.”

Thomas continued:

When I finally woke up, recovery was long and difficult. Nurses came to my home daily to manage a wound vacuum that helped my body heal from the inside out. Occupational therapists helped me relearn basic tasks like walking, showering and brushing my teeth.

The emotional recovery was just as real. I struggled with depression and trauma and spent time in therapy trying to process what had happened.… If I nearly died despite seeing a provider in person, it is important to ask how much more risk women face when black-box drugs are ordered online and taken at home without any in-person screening.

A convicted criminal turned rapper told friends at a gender reveal party for his unborn baby that if the child is not a boy, they will have an abortion.

Daniel Hernandez, who goes by the stage name Tekashi 6ix9ine, told his friends during a livestream at his unborn baby’s gender reveal, “If it’s not a boy, it’s abortion”.

Later in the livestream, when his girlfriend, Aliday Alter, says she thinks the unborn baby is a girl, the rapper reiterated that the baby would be aborted if it were a girl, stating that his girlfriend was okay with that as she is “open-minded”.

The comments were made just two weeks after Alter shared a photo of herself celebrating her pregnancy with the caption, “My world is about to change”.

Hernandez is a convicted felon who, in 2015, pleaded guilty to a felony count of use of a child in a sexual performance. In a cooperation agreement relating to another legal case, Hernandez admitted to carrying out years of domestic abuse; he was also arrested on domestic abuse charges in the Dominican Republic.

It later transpired at the gender reveal party that Alter was pregnant with a baby boy, meaning that no unborn child had to lose their life simply because of their sex on this occasion.

Evidence has emerged suggesting approximately 400 sex-selective abortions of baby girls happened in Britain between 2017 and 2021, despite the practice being illegal.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), which in the last financial year performed over 110,000 abortions in the UK, claims on its website that sex-selective abortions are not illegal, sparking wide condemnation. 

On its website, BPAS claims “The law is silent on the [sex-selective abortion] matter. Reason of fetal sex is not a specified ground for abortion within the Abortion Act, but nor is it specifically prohibited”.