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British MPs have voted to decriminalise abortion, marking the biggest step forward in reproductive rights in almost 60 years.
In an amendment to the government’s crime and policing bill, parliament voted to change the criminal laws that govern abortion in England and Wales so that women procuring their own termination outside the legal framework cannot be prosecuted.
The framework of access to an abortion – including the need for two doctors’ signatures, and the time limits at which terminations can be carried out – will remain the same and doctors who act outside the law will still face the threat of prosecution.
But women who terminate their own pregnancy outside the rules, for example after the time limit or by buying pills online, will no longer face arrest or prison. The offence of inducing a miscarriage carries a maximum sentence of life.
The amendment, put forward by the Labour backbencher Tonia Antoniazzi, passed in a free vote of MPs after growing calls for a change in the law as the number of women investigated, arrested or prosecuted has increased in recent years.
In 2022, a judge at Oxford crown court said he was “flabbergasted” that a prosecution had been brought against a then 25-year-old mother, who had been reported to police when a clinician found pills in her body believed to be abortion medication – even though her 4lb 4oz baby had survived.
The recorder, John Hardy KC, described the case as “sad and tragic” and the intended trial as a “waste of court time [that] exacerbates the absence of any public interest I can detect in pursuing this prosecution”.
In June 2023, Carla Foster was sentenced to 28 months in prison for terminating a pregnancy between 32 and 34 weeks. She had obtained pills supplied in good faith, after a remote consultation during lockdown.
A month later, her sentence was reduced to 14 months and suspended. Sitting at the court of appeal, Dame Victoria Sharp said Foster’s was “a case that calls for compassion, not punishment”.
In 2024, the CPS dropped its case against Bethany Cox, then 22, from Teesside. Her barrister, Nicholas Lumley KC, said at the time that she had been interviewed by police in the “throes of grief” and had been investigated for three years.
Prosecutors offered no evidence against Cox, who was not in court when she was formally acquitted, because, Lumley said, “she has suffered so extensively over this prosecution and investigation, all the while grieving what took place”.
Most recently, just last month, Nicola Packer was cleared of taking abortion pills beyond the time limit after a trial at Isleworth crown court. She had spent almost half a decade waiting for the case to come to court, before she was finally found not guilty.
“To waste five years of my life that I’m never going to get back, I don’t know how anybody could justify that – to drag out the trauma continuously,” Packer said.
“I would not wish this on anyone,” she added. “It has been the worst four and a half years of my life.”
Among those calling for an urgent change to the law were six medical colleges, the British Medical Association, and charities including Women’s Aid and the Fawcett Society.
Speaking to reporters at the G7 summit in Canada, Keir Starmer indicated that he would have backed the amendment if he had been in parliament, saying that while it was a free vote, he was a longstanding supporter of safe and legal abortion.
“It is a conscience issue, therefore it is a free vote. And therefore in that sense, it’s in the same category as assisted dying,” Starmer said. “But my longstanding in principle position is that women have the right to a safe and legal abortion.”
The changes will not become law until the bill in its entirety passes through the House of Commons and House of Lords, and receives royal assent, but given the size of the government’s majority, it is expected to pass without issue.
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