Why it’s time to decriminalise abortion

Today, British MPs will have the opportunity to vote on an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, which would (partly) decriminalise abortion.

The amendment states that: ‘For the purposes of the law related to abortion, including sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy.’

This amendment, from Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, is backed by all of those involved with providing abortion in the UK. (Another amendment, from Labour’s Stella Creasy, to make abortion a ‘human right’ does not have this backing.)

As it stands, abortion is criminalised through the 164-year-old Offences Against the Person Act. This turns both the attempt to ‘procure a miscarriage’ and the provision of the means to make one happen (‘poison or other noxious things’) into crimes, punishable by imprisonment. Abortion has since been made available legally under certain conditions, thanks to the 1967 Abortion Act and, more recently, a section of the 2022 Health and Care Act, which made it legal for women to take miscarriage-inducing drugs at home.

Antoniazzi’s amendment aims to create a situation where a woman cannot be charged with a criminal offence because she induced a miscarriage when pregnant. This addresses issues stemming from the ‘abortion pill’ – a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol which makes a pregnancy miscarry, and is prescribed for use to women as part of abortion services up to 10 weeks’ gestation.

Those women who have ended up in court recently have taken these drugs when their pregnancies have been more advanced than 10 weeks (it is estimated they took pills in week 20 and over). Many more women (an estimated 100 at least) have been subject to police investigations in recent years. Indeed, only three women were convicted of an illegal abortion between 1861 and 2022. But since 2022, seven women have been charged and one woman has been jailed. It seems the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have responded to the widespread availability of the abortion pill by treating it as a potential criminal matter.

Opponents of decriminalisation describe the amendment as ‘extreme’, a sign of Britain’s descent into immorality. As would be expected, many who oppose abortion do so for religious reasons, from campaign groups, such as the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, to former MP Miriam Cates.

Yet, disconcertingly, opposition to decriminalisation is also coming from those who have campaigned and struggled for women’s rights. This includes philosopher and writer Kathleen Stock and journalist Janice Turner, who calls decriminalisation a ‘glib, careless and amoral plan’.

Stock, Turner and other so-called TERFs have done invaluable work defending women’s rights in the face of gender ideology, often at great personal cost. So why are they so opposed to the extension of women’s reproductive rights?

It seems they perceive the effort to decriminalise abortion as part of a broader US-style culture-war effort to devalue mothering and motherhood. Some even argue that it will pave the way for ‘up to birth’ abortions, and ultimately ‘full-term abortions’ – at 40 weeks, says Turner. They seem to think those supporting decriminalisation are culture warriors determined to see more and more women having abortions.

Indeed, in response to a post on X, Cates claimed that ‘pro-abortion MPs… want abortion up to birth’. Tory MP James Cleverly agreed, claiming that the amendment ‘would take the UK to the global extreme of abortion laws’. Cleverly continued: ‘Taking abortion pills on the morning of their due date, or the morning of a planned cesarean section, would become legal.’

This argument seems to suggest that some women actually want to have an abortion up to birth. That inducing a miscarriage as late as possible is some sort of political goal.

Those of us who support decriminalising abortion see it in a very different light. The few women who end their pregnancies at any stage, including later in gestation, do so for deeply personal reasons. They are not making a political statement. What women need is the freedom to do what they judge best. And that includes the freedom to make the very difficult decision to have an abortion – as early as possible and as late as necessary.

Late abortions are very rare, with an increasing proportion of women using abortion pills to end pregnancies at earlier and earlier stages. But late abortions do happen. Through my research into why some women have late abortions, I have discovered that the reasons range from not realising how many weeks pregnant they are, denial and indecision to really awful changes in someone’s life circumstances. We need to help these women and give them the freedom to make the decisions that are best for them. We should be supporting them, not criminalising them. The campaign to decriminalise abortion is not really about politics – it’s about human sympathy.

Under the current legal arrangements, too many women are not being helped. Instead, the police and the CPS are conducting years-long investigations, demanding private medical notes and using obstetric history as evidence against defendants in court. This effort has led to remarkably long prison sentences dished out to women, some with young children. This has to be stopped. Why visit more pain and suffering on women who have got themselves in a mess and whose lives are already difficult enough?

It is a serious misrepresentation of those campaigning for abortion-law reform to suggest we are driven by an extremist project. Women who have abortions – however late – are not participants in a culture war. They are individuals attempting to manage their own fertility – individuals taking responsibility for their own bodies. Some may not like the truth of what it’s like for women doing this, which is sometimes far from pretty. But surely it’s not too much to expect those who have defended the biological reality of womanhood to take account of what being a woman actually means.

It’s time to oppose the policing of women’s choices by those all too keen to put women in the dock.

Ellie Lee is director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent.