As MPs gather to debate an e-petition calling for the decriminalisation of abortion on June 2, abortion rights campaigners explain why decriminalisation isn’t enough to protect women
After an e-petition calling for the decriminalisation of abortion received over 100,000 signatures, it’s now been brought forward for a parliamentary debate on June 2. But some abortion rights campaigners are saying that decriminalisation isn’t enough.
At present, an abortion carried out after 24 weeks or without permission from two doctors is a punishable offence in the UK, with a potential sentence of life imprisonment. In December 2024, a petition was launched by campaigners to decriminalise abortion. It received 102,855 signatures, before being brought to the UK parliament. The petition stated: “I am calling on the UK government to remove abortion from criminal law so that no pregnant person can be criminalised for procuring their own abortion.”
READ MORE: Inside the Victorian era law of 1861 that governs abortion rights in the UK
The petition also pointed out that the UK is out of step with advice released by the World Health Organisation in 2022, which advises that medically unnecessary barriers to safe abortion, such as criminalisation, should be removed.
The petition was delivered on April 28 to Downing Street, by the petition’s creator Gemma Clark. She was joined by Katie Saxon and Lucy Ward from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), a charity leading the campaign for abortion law reform, and a woman who endured a police investigation after she was suspected of having an illegal abortion, as reported by BPAS.
Katherine O’Brien, a spokesperson for BPAS, told The Mirror: “In recent years, more than 100 women are believed to have been investigated by the police.”
She continued: “These include women who have experienced a late miscarriage or a stillbirth, and women who were pressured to take abortion medication by abusive partners. Women have been arrested straight from hospital wards, their homes searched, their children taken away, all under our cruel and archaic abortion law.”
The Abortion Act was introduced in 1967 and allowed women to legally terminate a pregnancy up to 28 weeks with the certification of two doctors. In 1990, the limit was changed to 24 weeks. However, abortion law also falls under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which carries a maximum life sentence.
Elizabeth Walden, from MSI Reproductive Choices, told The Mirror why she believes the law is outdated. She said: “Gender equality and medicine have both changed enormously since then. Our abortion laws should reflect today’s common values and medical knowledge, not the opinions of men from nearly two centuries ago.”
Labour MP Stella Creasy has put forward an amendment to the current law which seeks to not only decriminalise abortion, but to put into law that access to abortion is a human right. Stella told The Mirror: “Decriminalisation isn’t enough. We need to make access to safe and legal abortion a human right as it is in Northern Ireland to protect services from politicians who are advocating restricting it.”
In 2019, Northern Ireland repealed sections 58 and 59 of the 1861 Offences Against a Person Act, which meant that abortion was no longer an offence punishable by a life sentence. It is legal to have an abortion up until 12 weeks in Northern Ireland.
Stella explained that her amendment aims “to help ensure women will be able to access a safe and legal abortion whoever is in power.” She continued: “It is the only amendment that can do that and stop not just the investigations into women having abortions but attacks on access including attempts to overturn buffer zones and telemedicine.”
“Telemedicine” refers to the use of technology to provide and support healthcare remotely. In 2020, at-home abortion pills were legalised for the first time due to restrictions enforced during the Covid pandemic. In August of 2020, this change was made permanent.
Under Stella’s amendment, she seeks to protect anyone acting “in relation to their own pregnancy”, or a registered medical professional acting with the “explicit consent” of a pregnant woman where the pregnancy has not exceeded 24 weeks, to be subjected to a custodial sentence. Equally, she seeks to provide alternative offences in the case of women who have not or are suspected to have not consented to their abortion.