Decriminalising Abortion Up to Birth Sets the UK Down a Dangerous Path

This week, British MPs voted to decriminalise abortion up to the point of birth. This marks the most drastic change to abortion law in England and Wales in almost 60 years and, if the bill it is a part of passes in its entirety, will mean that the UK has the most permissive abortion law in Europe. 

The amendment, put forward to the Crime and Policing Bill by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, means that women in England and Wales will no longer be investigated by police for terminating a pregnancy outside of the legal limit (currently 24 weeks in most circumstances) or without the approval of two doctors. However, medical professionals or anyone else who helps a woman break the rules could face prosecution. 

Decriminalising abortion has been touted as a response to popular demand, despite it never appearing once in Labour’s manifesto. The head of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists claimed that this radical change in the law “reflects the views of the public, who overwhelmingly support the right of women to access abortion care safely, confidentially, and without fear of investigation and prosecution.” This might be true broadly speaking, but it is wrong to suggest that the majority of people support this amendment in particular. Brits are overwhelmingly in favour of keeping abortion legal, but just 3% think that it should be extended up to birth—which is what Antoniazzi’s amendment effectively does. 

The other prominent argument for total decriminalisation comes from the belief that women are routinely being unfairly prosecuted for terminating their pregnancies or investigated by police for having ‘suspicious miscarriages.’ Chief of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) Heidi Stewart was triumphant that this change in the law will mean “there will be no more women investigated after enduring a miscarriage, no more women dragged from their hospital beds to the back of a police van, no more women separated from their children because of our archaic abortion law.” This also stretches the truth. Since 2022, seven women have been charged with procuring illegal abortions, although many of these were later dropped. One woman, Carla Foster, has been jailed, though her sentence was subsequently reduced and suspended. Before that, only three women had ever been convicted since 1861, when abortion was initially outlawed. 

The recent increase in convictions is largely down to the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented many in-person doctors’ visits. Instead, abortion pills were sent via post so that women could terminate their pregnancies at home. This also meant that medical professionals relied entirely on a woman’s word as to how far along she was—the pills could only be taken up to 10 weeks gestation. As such, some women miscalculated or lied about how many weeks pregnant they were. Carla Foster procured the pills by misleading staff at BPAS, attempting to end her pregnancy when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant—this was not only significantly beyond the pills-by-post cutoff, but also the legal abortion limit full-stop. By this point, Foster’s foetus would have been perfectly viable. She went into labour after taking the abortifacients, but her child was delivered stillborn. Conservative MP Dr. Caroline Johnson did table an amendment that would have required pregnant women to have an in-person consultation before being prescribed the pills, but MPs voted against this by a massive majority.

If there is one saving grace about Antoniazzi’s amendment passing, it’s that it defeated a far more radical one. Labour MP Stella Creasy also proposed to decriminalise abortion, although her plans went much further, intending to remove punishment for the medical professionals involved in late-term abortions and establishing access to abortion as a human right. Even BPAS thought this was too much, publicly opposing Creasy’s amendment in favour of Antoniazzi’s. Nonetheless, the parliament was presented with two extreme options. MPs voted for the comparatively less extreme one, without fully discussing the ramifications of either of them. 

With proper care, a baby can survive outside the womb from 24 weeks—which is why this tends to be the upper limit for abortions across Europe. It is widely assumed that, save for specific medical reasons, terminating a viable pregnancy crosses a moral line. Even for those who don’t believe that life begins at conception, at this point the foetus is no longer a ‘clump of cells’, as the saying goes, but a child waiting to come into the world. As Melanie McDonagh puts it in the Spectator, “a foetus doesn’t become human just because it’s wanted, you know.” 

The pro-choice camp regularly uses desperation as an excuse for those women who seek out late-term, illegal abortions. Cases like Foster’s are used to argue in favour of decriminalisation—the idea that “vulnerable women” are being unjustly punished for making difficult and tragic decisions. But this argument strips women of agency, infantilising them. 

Decriminalising abortion up to birth sets the UK down a dangerous path. There is a small but vocal minority—as demonstrated by the likes of Stella Creasy—who would go even further, seeking not just to decriminalise, but also legalise abortions up until the point of birth. Former Tory MP Miriam Cates noted in the Telegraph last week that we are now likely to follow in the footsteps of Victoria, Australia, where there have been rises in babies born alive after “DIY” late-term abortions, sex-selective abortions, and women being coerced into having unwanted abortions. As it stands, according to a BBC survey, 15% of women have experienced pressure to terminate a pregnancy when they didn’t want to.

The Crime and Policing Bill must still be voted on in the Commons. But, given the Labour government’s huge majority, it is expected to pass without any issue. If it does, we will be one step closer to a far crueller society—one in which the lives of the most vulnerable are not seen as worthy of protection.