UK
‘Peers must follow MPs and end the cruel criminalisation of women over abortion’
165 years ago women didn’t have the vote, married women couldn’t own their own property, and marital rape was legal. It’s also how long ago a law was passed that continues to define abortion as a criminal offence in England and Wales.
This law has seen women targeted, punished, imprisoned, dragged from hospital beds to police cells, publicly shamed – mothers torn from their existing children and new babies – following complications in their abortion treatment, miscarriage, stillbirth or premature labour. More than 100 women have been criminally investigated since 2020, six have faced court and one has been sent to prison for abortion offences.
That is why I laid an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill last year to remove women from the criminal law on abortion – a change that will be up for debate and vote in the House of Lords on 18th March.
READ MORE: ‘Women’s rights are under siege worldwide – Britain can lead the fight back’
Clause 208 leaves the existing legal framework untouched: it does not alter when, how or on what grounds abortion can be provided. The 24-week limit remains, as do the clinical criteria under which abortion is permitted, and any breach will still carry a maximum life penalty for healthcare professionals and anyone assisting the woman. Abusive partners using violence or poisoning to end a pregnancy will rightly continue to be criminalised as they are now.
All this change does is ensure no more vulnerable women are forced to endure the cruel, outdated reality of this law – a law which carries the harshest penalty in the world for illegal abortion.
I understand if you think otherwise – unsurprisingly, there has been an inordinate level of misinformation and scaremongering levelled at this narrow yet necessary reform.
Claims that this change is ‘abortion up to birth’ are simply divorced from reality. The insinuation seems to be that women are waiting in droves to have abortions later in term. This fundamentally misunderstands the reality of having an abortion and ignores evidence from more than 50 countries around the world where this change is already in force. The simple truth is that criminalisation of women is completely unnecessary for upholding wider abortion law.
And as a staunch advocate for tackling violence against women and girls, I find the claim that criminalisation somehow protects abused women deeply concerning. The current law puts abused women who ask for help on trial and in jail. They are unable to report violent partners who forced them into an illegal abortion because they themselves will have committed a crime. How is it right, or in her interest, that she be criminalised for being forced by an abusive partner to have an abortion outside the law? Yet that is the reality of our current system.
I have seen others say that we should address this in other ways – that we don’t need a change in the law. This could not be further from the truth. The fact is that when national police bodies are producing guidance telling frontline officers how to get around requirements for court orders to see women’s medical records, when the Director of Public Prosecutions is failing to issue guidance around the public interest in prosecution, and when the Sentencing Council is ignoring requests to get involved – there is only one way forward. And that way is Parliament.
The treatment of women under this law is indefensible, its harms are all too real. Last year, hundreds of MPs from across the House of Commons had the courage to stand up for what is right for women. It’s now time for the same resolve from our colleagues in the House of Lords.
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