What happened to England? From being the place of great pop bands, witty comedies, and the  elegant royal family, it has become ground zero for national disintegration. In just the past month, this decline has become terminal with their legalization of full-term abortions and likely legalization of euthanasia. Apparently, England’s leadership has bought the lie that its vulnerable populations must be wiped out in order to preserve the freedom and comfort of everyone else.

Naturally, the majority of British lawmakers have argued that these measures promise progress and prosperity. Women will now have more time to abort their children, and everyone will finally have a say in how and when they die. What could go wrong?

Of course, we’ve seen this movie before. By allowing abortions up to the point of birth, the UK has effectively legalized infanticide. After all, any abortion in the final trimester necessarily involves delivering the baby and killing him or her right after. This was memorably detailed by Virginia’s former governor Ralph Northam: “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

So what is the legal difference between what Northam describes and a mother leaving her newborn in a ditch to die from exposure, just as people did in the pagan past? According to England’s new law, not much.

Nevertheless, defenders of the law have argued this is simply removing the threat of prosecution against pregnant women who abort their babies, while doctors who facilitate abortions are still bound to observe the prohibition against abortions past 24 weeks. But it’s easy to see how this incentivizes women to seek out dangerous, unsupervised abortions. This ensures a growing market for back-alley abortions, along with more instances of women bleeding out or poisoning themselves with extra doses of mifepristone. So much for safe, legal, and rare.

On a moral and physical level, this expansion of abortion is nothing short of grotesque. Moreover, its ratification virtually guarantees the successful passage of England’s new bill legalizing assisted suicide. If infants at any stage of pregnancy are disposable because they pose a burden to others, then so are the elderly and infirm.

Sure, the bill’s advocates will invoke the euphemisms of “dignity,” “freedom,” and “choice,” but the overriding sentiment fueling them is profound resignation. They have come to see little value in dependent human life and want to let them go.

This is why the insistence that such a law will only apply to those who already have a terminal illness rings so hollow. As if on cue, one MP notes, “This bill is not about choosing death, it’s about choosing how to face it when death is already at the door.” Yet these terms are utterly subjective. What qualifies as death? What makes a death especially imminent? What exactly does it mean to choose how to face death?

Perhaps at the beginning, most Brits will agree that such a provision only applies to those faced with an incurable cancer that causes immense pain to a person. Yet in a short while, doctors and their patients will consider suicide for other situations: the person surviving on life support for too long, the older person who will likely never recover from their chronic illness, the person who feels overwhelming pain and doesn’t want to recover, or someone who is just too depressed to go on living.

In truth, there is no logical difference between “choosing death” and “choosing how to face it when death is already at the door.” Just as legalizing full-term abortions only in the case of mothers essentially equates to legalizing infanticide, legalizing assisted suicide for terminally ill essentially equates to legalizing voluntary suicide for any reason.

Sadly, the logical consequences (not to be confused with a logical slippery slope) do not end there. Once abortion and euthanasia become legal for maximizing human happiness and freedom, they may very well become mandatory in certain cases. After all, who would argue that women with inferior genes or parents who lack the means of providing for their children should be allowed to have babies? Similarly, if a man finds himself too poor and incompetent to support himself, contribute to the common good, and sufficiently enjoy life, he should be eliminated for his own sake as well as that of his community.

Before people dismiss this as dystopian alarmism, they should remember that all of these things have already happened and continue to happen. A century ago, many American elites supported the idea of sterilizing those unfit for society. One of those people went on to found the monolithic abortion mill Planned Parenthood, which taxpayers continue to fund by the hundreds of millions. Even though America pulled back from this policy, fascist and communist societies immediately followed suit in made the 20th century the deadliest period in human history.

As for assisted suicide, Canada presents a clear illustration of how it quickly expands far beyond its original intentions. Not only are the terminally ill euthanized, but also the elderly, the depressed, and even the homeless. Canada’s program, MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) is now the 5th leading cause of death for Canadians. Once it is determined that a person’s medical treatment costs more than assisted suicide, that person will automatically be pressured to commit suicide. Choice and dignity have little to do with any of it.

For now, the only thing that holds back a government from this final course of action is a Christian conscience. But what happens when a society is led by secularists and non-Christians, as in England? They may very well decide that the country cannot support more children, or that AI and other new technology has removed the need for more human beings, or that children who show genetic deficiencies do not deserve to be born. Any limiting principle will be long gone.

As such, no one should view England’s new laws as anything but a descent into a whole culture of death and despair. They have lost their faith, their national pride, and now their general desire to live. They will wither away along with the rest of the developed world, becoming poorer, older, and sadder. As Americans pray for a miracle that may yet reverse the course of the British, they should at least learn from their mistakes. Any nation or state that opts for death is signaling its decline, and the people have a duty to oppose this fate at every turn.

Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He is the founding editor of The Everyman, a senior contributor to The Federalist, and has written essays for Newsweek, The American Mind, The American Conservative, Religion and Liberty, Crisis Magazine, and elsewhere. Follow him on X and Substack.