MPs are expected to vote on whether to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales this summer, with two Labour backbenchers to put forward amendments to government legislation to change the law.
The Labour MPs Tonia Antoniazzi and Stella Creasy are believed to be putting forward separate amendments.
For six decades, abortion in England and Wales has been largely governed by the Abortion Act 1967, which has allowed women to end their pregnancies under medical supervision up to 24 weeks, or beyond in certain circumstances, such as if the life of the mother is at risk or if the foetus has a serious abnormality.
In 2020, emergency legislation introduced during the Covid pandemic brought in telemedicine and with it the biggest shake-up in abortion provision since 1967. Instead of women seeking an abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy needing to take the first pill under medical supervision, they could receive both pills by post after a remote consultation. It was made permanent in 2022, with MPs voting 215 in favour to 188 against.
However, inducing a miscarriage remains a crime, punishable with up to life in prison, and in recent years several women have found themselves in the dock for ending their own pregnancies outside the strict legal parameters of the 1967 act.
According to freedom of information data from the Crown Prosecution Service, 13 people made a first appearance at a magistrates court charged with abortion-related offences in 2022; four people in 2019; and three in each of 2020 and 2021. The numbers include both men and women.
Separate data, from about half of Britain’s police forces, showed at least 11 people were arrested in 2023 on suspicion of child destruction or inducing a miscarriage, including a 31-year-old woman in north Wales “reported to have taken illicit substances to initiate an abortion”.
Until 2022, it is believed that only three women had been convicted of having an illegal abortion in the 150 years since the introduction of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, under which illegal abortions are most commonly prosecuted.
In the last parliament, MPs had put forward proposals to change the law under the criminal justice bill, with Creasy and a fellow Labour MP, Diana Johnson, proposing different changes to the law. However, the plans, along with the legislation, fell by the wayside with last summer’s general election.
Johnson, now a Home Office minister, can no longer table amendments to government legislation. Antoniazzi’s amendment is believed to be similar in scope to the one put forward by Johnson in the last parliament.
It is the second so-called vote of conscience in quick succession, with assisted dying legislation expected to come before the Commons before any abortion vote.
In a referendum in 2018, Ireland made abortion legal on request up to 12 weeks, and later if the foetus would be likely to die before or shortly after birth or if there was a risk of death or serious harm to a pregnant woman.
In 2019, Northern Ireland’s abortion laws were also modernised, allowed up to 12 weeks – and later under limited circumstances.
However, in the US, change has gone in the opposite direction. In June 2022, the supreme court ruled that there was no constitutional right to abortion, with the laws now decided at state level. About 22 million women of reproductive age have had access restricted, with abortion banned in more than a dozen states.
Whether either of the amendments are selected for debate and put to a vote will be a matter for the speaker. But with broad cross-party support for a change in the law, it is likely there will be a vote on the issue.
“In the last five years, around 100 women have been investigated by police for a ‘crime’ that does not even apply in two nations of the United Kingdom,” Antoniazzi told the Guardian.
“The damage this outdated law is inflicting upon women affected is immeasurable. I feel a moral imperative to act. I am leading a cross-party group of parliamentarians and have been working with the sector on the reform we desperately need to put a stop to this. I will be laying an amendment in that vein to the crime and policing bill in the coming weeks.”
Heidi Stewart, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), said: “BPAS, alongside a coalition of royal colleges, medical bodies and women’s rights groups, are calling on MPs to reform our archaic abortion law and end the prosecution of women accused of ending their own pregnancies. We fully supported the amendment tabled by Diana Johnson MP to the criminal justice bill in 2024 and we hope that this parliament will take these proposals forward as a matter of urgency.”
Creasy’s amendment seeks to write a human right to access abortion into law. “Other countries have enshrined a human right to access abortion – doing that here and writing this right into law for the first time ever could help prevent any rollback in rights and provide a future for ensuring everyone can access a safe and legal abortion if they choose to do so,” she said.
