The Equalities Assessment on abortion decriminalisation has been published. Tim Dieppe discusses the implications.
Last year, MPs voted through an amendment to decriminalise abortion up to birth for any reason, including sex selection, for any “woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy.” This week, the government released its Equalities Impact Assessment on the removal of women from this criminal law.
The Equalities Assessment explains the law now, stating:
“This means it would never be a criminal offence for a pregnant woman to terminate her pregnancy regardless of the number of weeks of gestation, including beyond 24 weeks.”
It then goes on to claim that deception to obtain abortion pills is no longer an offence:
“It would also not be a criminal offence for a woman to intentionally deceive a registered medical practitioner about the gestation of her pregnancy in order to procure an abortion by pills via pills by post beyond the 10-week time limit.”
The 10-week limit is widely accepted
This is an extraordinary claim. Health expert Kevin Duffy has explained that the 10-week limit is there for safety reasons. These pills are not approved to be used beyond 10 weeks gestation because of the serious safety risks of using them beyond that time. Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that medical abortion at 12 weeks or more should be managed by doctors in a healthcare setting. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) endorses the WHO position on this. The three largest independent abortion providers in the UK, BPAS, MSI-RC, and NUPAS no longer provide medical abortion as an in-clinic option beyond 10 weeks gestation. This is probably because they don’t consider it to be safe even when carried out in-clinic.
Decriminalising abortion does not necessarily entail that using deception to acquire pills is no longer an offence.
System-wide open to abuse
The fact is that telemedicine abortion is wide open to abuse. Women can be coerced into making the phone call and there is no way to check for this. There are no medical checks on gestation or for any complications in the pregnancy. People can even obtain the tablets and then give them to someone else.
Christian Concern sponsored a mystery client investigation which exposed that women can obtain abortion pills using false names, false dates of birth, false GP registration data, and false gestational age. All the women who participated in the investigation subsequently received abortion pills by post.
Freedom of Information data revealed that 1 in 17 women are forced to go to hospital following serious complications after taking abortion pills. This is an unacceptably high level of complications for drugs that can be so easily obtained and taken at home.
DIY abortions originally an emergency measure
The government introduced pills-by-post or DIY abortions during the Covid lockdown as a temporary emergency measure. Christian Concern challenged this decision with a Judicial Review of the government’s decision. The legal challenge revealed that BPAS gave misleading advice to the government about the importance of an in-person clinical assessment. The case went to the Court of Appeal, but was ultimately rejected. Then in 2022, MPs voted to make DIY abortions permanent. The latest data from 2023 shows that 72% of abortions were carried out by taking both pills at home. So now pills-by-post accounts for the vast majority of abortions.
Pills-by-post abortion needs to end
The fact that the government now claims that deception to obtain abortion pills is no longer an offence shows how morally corrupt our society has become. In no circumstances should deception to obtain medical treatment be acceptable. The mother is putting her own life at serious risk, let alone the life of her child, which may well end up costing the taxpayer and affecting all those close to her.
Pills-by-post abortion is unsafe even before the 10-weeks’ gestation limit. Too many women end up having to be rushed to hospital. Dangerous pills can easily be obtained under false pretences. The law needs to revert to insisting on an in-person clinical check before any pills are provided. As more stories emerge of the horrors of taking these tablets at home, pressure will rise to put a stop to this perilous practice.