MPs say women deserve better as they seek to decriminalise 'archaic' abortion law

It is legal with an authorised provider up to 24 weeks, with very limited circumstances allowing one after this time, such as when the mother’s life is at risk or the child would be born with a severe disability.

A new amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, brought by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, stating that “no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy”, has been backed by a number of groups including royal medical colleges, charities and trade unions.

Some 50 MPs have backed it including the Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, who is the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.

Ms Champion told The Yorkshire Post: “It’s disgraceful that women and girls could still face criminal investigations for ending their pregnancy. These often-vulnerable women deserve our compassion, not criminalisation.

“We are seeing a rapid roll back of sexual and reproductive rights around the world. This means we must fight even harder to defend reproductive rights here.

“A wise place to start is reforming our archaic abortion laws.”

Healthcare provider the British Pregnancy Advisory Group (Bpas) – said the change would do away with the threat of investigation, arrest, prosecution or imprisonment currently faced by some women.

It insisted it would not change any law regarding the provision of abortion services within a healthcare setting, including the time limit, the grounds for abortion or the requirement for the approval of two doctors.

It said anyone, including a medical professional, who assisted a woman in obtaining an abortion outside the law would remain liable for prosecution.

Bpas said: “For every woman who ends up in court, at least 10 others are subjected to prolonged police investigations which can prevent them from getting the mental health support they desperately need and which have resulted in existing children being separated from women whose cases never make it to court. Women deserve better.”

Ms Antoniazzi said the current law is “unacceptable”, adding: “There is simply no world in which prosecuting a vulnerable woman who may have experienced a medical complication, miscarriage or stillbirth is the right course of action.”

She said her amendment is “tightly drawn – not changing anything about provision of abortion care, the time limit, the right to conscientious objection or any other aspects of abortion law”.

She added: “I am confident that, when Parliament has the opportunity to vote on these proposals, my colleagues will agree that never again should a woman be prosecuted for ending her own pregnancy in England and Wales.”

The issue most recently came to the fore earlier this month with the case of a woman who took medication at home during a coronavirus lockdown in 2020.

Nicola Packer, 45, was cleared by a jury last week of “unlawfully administering to herself a poison or other noxious thing” with the “intent to procure a miscarriage”.

She had taken prescribed abortion medicine when she was around 26 weeks pregnant, beyond the legal limit of 10 weeks for taking such medication at home. She told jurors she did not realise she had been pregnant for more than 10 weeks.

The case of Carla Foster, jailed in 2023 for illegally obtaining abortion tablets to end her pregnancy when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant, eventually saw her sentence reduced by the Court of Appeal and suspended, with senior judges saying that sending women to prison for abortion-related offences is “unlikely” to be a “just outcome”.

The latest attempt follows repeated calls to repeal sections of the 19th-century law – the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act – after abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland in 2019.