When it comes to questions concerning the right to life, Westminster’s attention has been fixed on Kim Leadbeater’s Bill to legalise assisted suicide. Such has been the focus, there is a danger that equally radical current proposals concerning the beginning of life are going largely unnoticed. Few commentators seem aware that we may be only weeks away from the de facto introduction of abortion up to birth in this country.
Two Labour MPs, Tonia Antoniazzi and Stella Creasy, have tabled amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill that would, in different ways, “decriminalise” abortion to full term. Antoniazzi’s amendment would remove any legal deterrent against women performing their own abortions at any gestation, while Creasy’s proposal would fully repeal the current underlying laws against abortion.
These amendments have been tabled at the Report Stage of the Bill, and may be debated as early as this month. Yesterday, a dress rehearsal took place in the form of a Westminster Hall debate on the decriminalisation of abortion, the result of a government e-petition that reached 100,000 signatures after being pushed by the abortion lobby.
The debate was notable for two separate battles that were waged. On the one hand, the question of whether “decriminalisation” — a slippery term that masks the reality of what this law change would bring — should occur; on the other hand, a very public spat between Antoniazzi and Creasy on how decriminalisation might be implemented.
For those familiar with the territory, all the predictable arguments were trotted out by the decriminalisation lobby. Plaid Cymru MP Ann Davies bemoaned the antiquated, “Victorian” law under which a small number of women have been prosecuted in recent years. The law in question is Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861. Yet this same Act includes laws against manslaughter, grievous bodily harm, strangulation and poisoning, all of which quite rightly continue to be applied today. Would Ms Davies scrap the law against murder because it dates as far back as the Ten Commandments, one wonders?
Much of the debate was dominated by the civil war among the decriminalisation side
Labour MP Sadik Al-Hassan resorted to scaremongering, suggesting women could be jailed for life for illegal abortions; perhaps he is unaware that even Carla Foster, who aborted her baby at 32-34 weeks gestation, was only initially jailed for 28 months in 2023 and had her sentence suspended on appeal, likely setting a precedent for future cases.
Stella Creasy then shamelessly cited the precedent of decriminalisation in Northern Ireland as a justification for England and Wales to follow suit. This is particularly disingenuous because when Creasy herself hijacked the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act in 2019 to impose abortion on Northern Ireland, she argued women in Northern Ireland experienced discrimination because they lacked the same access to abortion as women in the rest of the UK. Creasy then introduced an even more extreme abortion law in Northern Ireland, and now cynically claims that women in England and Wales are victims of discrimination since decriminalisation has not taken place here. As DUP MP Carla Lockhart pointed out, this is politics of “the lowest kind”.
Tony Vaughan, who led the debate, made the case for decriminalisation in the rest of the UK on the basis that there had been no significant backlash against the law change in Northern Ireland. Notwithstanding this questionable claim, Carla Lockhart reminded him that he was comparing apples and oranges — Northern Ireland lacks the “pills by post” scheme, whereby women can obtain abortion pills without an in-person consultation to accurately verify their gestational age is within the legal limit and assess any health risks.
It is this pills by post scheme that would make decriminalisation in England and Wales so irresponsible. The combination of removing any legal deterrent against women performing their own abortions after the current 24-week limit up to birth and a scheme whereby women can get hold of pills by deliberately or mistakenly misleading abortion providers about their gestational age, would not only likely lead to the ending of the lives of an increased number of viable babies but also put women at risk by reintroducing “backstreet abortions” (didn’t the abortion lobby used to oppose these?) whereby women perform their own dangerous abortions at home unsupervised, late in pregnancy.
Lockhart’s explanation of the differences in Northern Ireland fell on deaf ears as Tony Vaughan simply restated his argument about the Northern Irish precedent moments later, seemingly not wanting or not able to deviate from the lines that had been given to him.
Vaughan had inadvertently let the cat out of the bag at the outset of the debate when he admitted that “until 2022, it was believed that only three women had been convicted of having an illegal abortion in the 150 years since the 1861 Act”. Creasy claimed she could not work out why there had been an increase, albeit small, in prosecutions in recent years. Such wilful confusion is remarkable: could the blame not lie with the pills by post scheme that was brought in permanently in 2022?
Vaughan’s failure to engage with Lockhart’s point set a pattern for the debate as reasonable responses from other unionist MPs were met with political tumbleweed. Jim Shannon pointed out that decriminalisation would de facto render the abortion time limit redundant, while independent unionist MP, Alex Easton, cited polling showing that the public do want abortion law reform — but not in the extreme direction Antoniazzi and Creasy seek. Easton observed that 70 per cent of women would like to see a reduction in our current abortion time limit of 24 weeks, which is double that of the average in European Union countries.
After this, much of the debate was dominated by the civil war among the decriminalisation side, as Antoniazzi boasted that her amendment had more support. Creasy railed against the triple bogeymen of Nigel Farage (in his absence, for which she was gently rebuked by the Chair), Donald Trump and JD Vance, making the case that abortion ought to be baked into human rights law via her amendment — she argues that this would prevent future democratically elected Parliaments from being able to reverse her changes since they would risk breaching human rights laws.
Liberal Democrat Christine Jardine, a sponsor of Creasy’s amendment, namechecked Amnesty International in support of a human right to abortion but neglected to mention past rulings of the ECHR, which have failed to recognise a right to abortion. Jardine argued that abortion should not be “partially” decriminalised but “removed altogether” from the statute books, thereby not concealing the true endgame the abortion lobby seemingly desires: full decriminalisation for abortion providers and women at all gestations.
Kim Leadbeater even made time to turn up to promote her own Bill as well as decriminalisation, calling for choice and bodily autonomy at every stage of life. Sir John Hayes later reminded Creasy that such individual autonomy ought not to trump all else, including our wider duties.
Creasy’s manner was enough to exasperate moderates, with Shadow Minister for Justice Kieran Mullan, responding to the debate on behalf of the Opposition, telling Creasy he had “found her remarks during this debate to be quite insensitive to the complexities of the issues at hand.” Having too often waved the white flag on these issues, the official Conservative response was surprisingly refreshing for pro-life observers. While acknowledging that the matter had historically been a free vote — though one might ask whether abortion up to birth is a legitimate conscience issue — Mullan made it clear that most Tories were “cautious” about decriminalisation, reminding abortion fanatics that two lives are involved in an abortion and the rights of the unborn ought to be regarded also.
Such views are much closer to public sentiment than those of the extremists pushing abortion up to birth. When this issue is soon debated in the Commons chamber, perhaps the Conservatives, conscious of Reform UK’s recent willingness to speak out against our “ludicrous” 24-week time limit, will see a political, and moral, opportunity here and highlight the out of touch, dangerous and radical nature of both Antoniazzi and Creasy’s proposals.
