In a statement on its website, BPAS said, “England and Wales have the most severe punishment for women found guilty of an “illegal” abortion in the world – up to life imprisonment. This is worse than countries and states with severe anti-abortion laws, such as Texas, Afghanistan, and South Sudan.
Doctors for Choice UK have also launched a new campaign calling for the decriminalisation of abortion in England and Wales.
“England and Wales have the harshest penalty for illegal abortions in the world – up to life imprisonment,” said Dr Sonia Adesara, an NHS GP and spokesperson for the organisation. “Doctors for Choice is committed to calling for the end of police investigations, prosecutions and threat of prison time for people who end their pregnancies.”
It also comes after the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH) published a policy statement last August that also called for the decriminalisation of abortion in England, Scotland and Wales.
Doctors and nurses are taking a stand against Britain’s abortion laws
“This week of action is a call to the public to rally behind Diana Johnson’s amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill, which seeks to end the threat of prison time for people who end their own pregnancies,” said Adesara. “We have an opportunity to change the course of history for those seeking to end their pregnancy. The amendment will be voted on towards the end of February. Now is the time to act.”
Why fighting for legal abortion matters
Access to safe, legal abortions is vital — but worryingly, around the world and here in Britain, many seem to be regressing in their views in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the States. As Chloe Laws wrote for GLAMOUR last year: “There’s a sense that the rollback of reproductive rights in the USA has emboldened anti-choice lobbyists in the UK.”
Katherine O’Brien, associate director at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), even previously explained to GLAMOUR, “The 1967 Abortion Act, and our ability to end a pregnancy, lie in the hands of politicians, and over the past 10 years we have seen a number of parliamentary bids to restrict abortion safely and legally”.
Professor Wendy Savage, president of Doctors for Choice UK, explains that there has been an increase in women being subjected to police investigation for offences relating to abortion. “It was so rare for women to be taken to court for this… and then all of a sudden we’ve got this relatively large number, when you compare it to the previous hundred years,” she says. “Something has changed.”
As The Guardian reported in November 2023, between 1861 and November 2022 only three women were convicted of having an illegal abortion. But since December 2022 (at the time of writing) one woman had been convicted and six people were awaiting trial. Recent data suggests that Britons are facing increased police scrutiny regarding abortion.