Less than two hundred years later, the remaining English people can see the legacy of Mill’s social philosophy.

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The abortion statistics for 2023 in Great Britain, a country where women can go to state hospitals to have the procedure up to the sixth month of pregnancy, have been released belatedly. (It is usually read as 24 weeks, so we need to do the math to get a shock.) There were 299,614 abortions in a single year, almost 300,000.

English speakers are the kings of statistics, and they have a lot of graphs and tables that detail this social calamity well. First of all, we see that they recorded the “ethnicity” of 92% of former pregnant women, and that of that percentage, 74% were white. The number of former pregnant women who repeated the practice increased to 42%, and more than half of the patients in their 30s had already had another abortion. The age group in which abortion increased the most was 35 years or older, accounting for 51,595 abortions.

As for the reasons, there is a somewhat confusing list of seven “grounds” for abortion coded with letters of the alphabet. There is no list of rapes; a raped woman would fall under grounds that include “emotional injury” caused by the continuation of the pregnancy. Nor is there the simple will of the mother, which certainly exists in a country where one can abort in this way. Thus, the logical conclusion is that the notion of subjective harm encompasses both women who have been raped and those who would be upset for not being able to go to parties, or who would fear not being able to give their child the standard of living deemed necessary. It is likely that rape falls under G, “to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman”, given the permanent nature of mental harm.

To make our lives easier, 98% of abortions were based solely on ground C, described as follows: “the pregnancy has not exceeded its 24th week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.” It’s a slippery way of saying that the pregnant woman would simply be happier if the child were not born, and not that abortion makes her free from some serious and permanent injury (which is how a raped woman might see the issue). As for the remaining 2%, ground E accounts for 1%, and consists of “substantial risk that, if the child were born, it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.” In other words, eugenics.

Thus, we can say that indigenous British women, those who do not descend from the wave of immigration from the third world, use abortion as a contraceptive method, and they do so at a time in their lives when they should already have their professional lives defined. It’s a profile that common sense could predict, and for that very reason it was denied by pro-abortion propaganda, according to which abortion is an extremely difficult choice for every woman, so it would never become a simple contraceptive method, and needs to be legalized because young women need abortion to be able to study and become CEOs. In reality, it’s easier for a woman to have an abortion because she’s already a CEO.

Moral issues aside, a Telegraph article pointed out what matters. After arguing that the UK’s economic problems stem from a demographic deficit that cannot be solved with immigration (especially since immigrants also have few children), columnist Miriam Cates asks: “How has Britain become the abortion capital of Europe? Both pro-choice and pro-life campaigners often frame their arguments around individual rights. Should a woman have the right to end her pregnancy? Should a baby in the womb have the right to life? But abortion is no longer simply a matter for the individual; when a third of Britain’s potential citizens are being lost each year, it has become an issue of national concern.”

In fact, it is evident that birth rate is an important collective issue. Modern heads of state know this very well, so much so that Henry Kissinger created NSSM-200, advising the US to promote birth rate reduction in potential rival powers, even before they became powers (such as Brazil, Colombia, India, Egypt). In England, the homeland of Malthusianism, no effort was needed: the local elites took it upon themselves to promote abortion.

England is the homeland of Malthus. Even before the Anglican clergyman was born and developed his nefarious theory regarding demography, England had an atypical history in which population reduction actually led to the enrichment of the population. (I am referring to the fact that the plague gave more space to pasture and thus enriched the nobles who produced wool in the Middle Ages, a fact discussed in this previous article.) It was in the 19th century, however, that John Stuart Mill coined the type of approach described by Miriam Cates: transforming a social issue into terms of individual freedom.

In chapter 5 of On Liberty, Mill gives two maxims for applying his principles, and they are: “first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only measures by which society can justifiably express its dislike or disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishment, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.”

In the first of these principles, we have the prevailing liberal morality, according to which it is very wrong to “meddle in other people’s lives,” and bizarre figures are conceived, such as that of the “virtuous pedophile” (one who feels sexual attraction to children, but supposedly does not go so far as to abuse them). The second of these principles, less important, serves to reinforce liberal morality when it considers itself the bearer of truth. For example, it is bad for society that the poor bring children into the world, so the state should be able to impose financial burdens on them, forcing them to pay for compulsory education. (And education should be compulsory because a liberal, who is fundamentally a technocrat, believes that this is in the interest of society.) These things on child raising are also in chapter 5 of On Liberty.

However, there is a situation in which these two principles can clash, and that is that of trade Mill admits that “trade is a social act” and, as such, must be subject to social regulation. He emphasizes that “society admits no right, either legal or moral, in the disappointed competitors, to immunity from this kind of suffering”, as he is a defender of free trade, in which society wins by buying cheap things (geopolitical issues do not exist). Thus, the situation in which the two principles can clash is when the merchant makes money from something contrary to the interest of society, such as a gambling house or a brothel. Commenting on the prohibition of opium imports and restrictions on the sale of poison, Mill says: “These interferences are objectionable, not as infringements on the liberty of the producer or seller, but on that of the buyer.” The work is from 1859, but it already presents the basic argument for the legalization of drugs, abortion, and everything that is antisocial: it is a matter of individual freedom, and it is wrong to interfere with the lives of others.

In the same chapter, Mill also considers that it is good for the poor to have fewer children so that the working class does not multiply and, thus, the law of supply and demand guarantees workers a better wage. A position that reconciles liberalism and Malthusianism, doctrines that combine so well that they have amalgamated into social Darwinism.

Less than two hundred years later, the remaining English people can see the legacy of Mill’s social philosophy.