MPs vote to decriminalise self-managed abortion

MPs have voted to scrap criminal penalties for women in England and Wales who end their own pregnancies, following a string of controversial cases in recent years.

Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi’s amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill was backed in the Commons by 379 votes to 137, a majority of 242. The proposal would remove the threat of “investigation, arrest, prosecution or imprisonment” for any woman who acts in relation to her own pregnancy, by taking out sections of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act.

Antoniazzi, who represents Gower, said she was moved to advocate for change after seeing women investigated by police over suspected illegal abortions.

Under current law, abortion remains a criminal offence except when performed by authorised providers up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. It is permitted later only in limited circumstances, such as when the mother’s life is at risk or if the child would be born with a severe disability. It is also legal to take prescribed medication at home if less than 10 weeks pregnant.

Antoniazzi told MPs the amendment would not alter current abortion procedures.

The current 24-week limit would remain, abortions would still require the approval and signatures of two doctors, and healthcare professionals acting outside the law and abusive partners using violence or poisoning to end a pregnancy would still be criminalised, as they are now,” she said.

As is usual with issues such as abortion, MPs were granted a free vote, allowing them to vote according to personal conviction rather than party lines.

Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones said earlier this month that the government was neutral on decriminalisation and considered it a matter for Parliament.

Concluding Tuesday’s debate, she suggested ministers would help ensure the law change could be properly implemented if MPs approved it.

She told the Commons: “If it is the will of Parliament that the law should change, the government in fulfilling its duty to ensure that the legislation is legally robust and workable will work closely with my honourable friends to ensure that their amendments accurately reflect their intentions and the will of Parliament, and are coherent with the statute book.”

Although the government did not take a position, several high-profile cabinet ministers supported the amendment in the free vote.

They included energy secretary Ed Miliband, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, defence secretary John Healey, transport secretary Heidi Alexander and environment secretary Steve Reed.

Efforts to change the law to protect women from prosecution follow repeated calls to repeal sections of the 19th-century legislation, after abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland in 2019.

The measures still need to complete their legislative journey through both the Commons and the Lords before becoming law.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service welcomed the step.

Heidi Stewart, chief executive of the charity, said: “This is a landmark moment for women’s rights in this country and the most significant change to our abortion law since the 1967 Abortion Act was passed.”

“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,” she said.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said it was “horrified” by the result.

Alithea Williams of SPUC said: “If this clause becomes law, a woman who aborts her baby at any point in pregnancy, even moments before birth, would not be committing a criminal offence.

“Our already liberal abortion law allows an estimated 300,000 babies a year to be killed. Now, even the very limited protection afforded by the law is being stripped away,” she added.