You might have seen their faces. Every few months nowadays, another woman appears in a British newspaper charged with a suspected illegal abortion. Often the woman looks pale and gaunt. Sometimes she hides behind sunglasses as she bows her head. The photographs of these women walking into court feel akin to a public shaming, where the stocks are replaced by a breaking news banner, but the judgment remains the same.If this sounds like a punishment from a different time, it’s because it is. The law that’s largely used to prosecute women for a suspected illegal abortion was written in 1861 – that’s before women had the right to vote or own property independently. While the Abortion Act in 1967 gave widespread access to abortion, it was never made fully legal on the statute books.Now that may change. After more than a century and a half, this week could see abortion decriminalised in England and Wales – and for the first time, give tens of millions of women a genuine right to choose. When the crime and policing bill returns to the Commons, a Labour backbencher, Tonia Antoniazzi, willtable an amendmentto remove women from the criminal law. It would finally get rid of the anachronistic stain on otherwise modern abortion rights: women will no longer face prosecution if they end a pregnancy after 24 weeks or without approval from two doctors.There is some uncertainty. For one, a second amendment is beingput forwardby Stella Creasy that aims to enshrine access to abortion as a human right, and pro-choice charities fear would disrupt services. Although it has less support, it could also be selected for a vote. But parliamentary debate aside, reform is highly likely to be on the way. Antoniazzi’s amendment has already received the backing of more than 130 MPs,according to the Times, and senior government figures expect it to pass with a large majority.The urge for decriminalisation has increased as the risk of arrest has. It is estimated that more than 100 women have beenprosecuted for a suspected abortionover the last decade. And the number of court cases and convictions has actually increased in the 21st century. Between 1861 and 2022, only three women in Great Britain were convicted of an illegal abortion. Since December 2022 alone,seven women have been charged. One woman has been jailed.There is no clear reason as to why. When I asked the British Pregnancy Advisory Service – the leading abortion provider – about the spike in prosecutions, it pointed to an “inherent suspicion of women in certain circumstances”, combined with an increased awareness of abortion medicine by medical professionals, who then breach their duty of confidentiality, and police. Earlier this year, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), which sets the strategic direction for policing across the UK,quietly issued guidanceon how to search women’s homes for abortion drugs as well as seize their phones to inspect menstrual cycle tracker apps.
The cases that have already made it to court – and the papers – have been deeply disturbing. Last month, Nicola Packerwas acquittedof unlawfully taking abortion pills at home after the legal time limit during the coronavirus lockdown in 2020. Arrested in hospital by uniformed officers while still recovering from surgery for a stillbirth, it took Packer more than four years to clear her name. During her trial, prosecutors picked over her “alternative” sex life and the size of her nipples.And yet this is also about the women whose names don’t make the headlines. Campaigners say women are routinely put under a police investigation that comes to nothing – the majority of them have in fact naturally given birth prematurely or had stillbirths. There have been cases of womendenied contactwith their children while police investigated a charge that was later dropped. One teenager who had a late miscarriagewas arrestedin front of her entire street.
The small number of women and girls who have had an abortion past the legal cut-off point are often deeply vulnerable, and include victims of trafficking or domestic violence. As BPAS told me: “We’re aware of cases where the woman has been investigated, or even imprisoned, and nothing has happened to her abusive partner.”
Where is the public interest in any of this? Pregnancy loss – particularly late term – is still equated with guilt and failure. To lose a pregnancy and then be called in by the police and questioned under caution, let alone taken to court, is less criminal justice and more a kind of state-sponsored humiliation. It does not feel like a coincidence that the rise in prosecutions has come as abortion rights in the UK – from decriminalisation in Northern Ireland to the permanent adoption of telemedicine after lockdown – have made gains. Progress always comes with pushback.
The rapid rise of Reform UK shows how, even in the mostliberal of societies, the threat to women and minority rights is never truly over. Nigel Farage has already floatedtougher restrictionson abortion as well as tax breaks for married couples. We need only look to the global shift to authoritarianism to see the extreme end-point of this. When police searched the car of the man suspected of killing a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota, US, on Saturday, they allegedly founda list of people with links to abortion rights.
Decriminalising abortion will, in the short term, save a handful of women from the trauma of a courtroom, and a hundred or so more from a police cell. That matters. But it will also do something else of value: it will say no woman should be forced to continue a pregnancy against her will, and that abortion is healthcare, not a criminal offence. As we finally edge close to change, it is surely time to shift the stigma – it is not women who should feel shame but the MPs and prosecutors who let this barbarism go on.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist