The UK’s largest abortion provider, BPAS (the British Pregnancy Advisory Service), has announced that an amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill will be tabled next week, which will seek to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales up to 28 weeks.
The amendment would allow abortion on demand for any reason, including sex-selective abortion, to be carried out with virtually no legal safeguards. It would also leave no legal restrictions on where abortions can be performed, which would allow mail-order abortions or abortion pills to be given out in schools and taken at home.
No doctor would be required to participate in an abortion procedure – healthcare assistants, nurses and pharmacists could carry out an abortion without a trained doctor present in the case of a complication.
This would leave England and Wales with one of the most extreme abortion laws in the world.
Although the purpose of the Domestic Abuse Bill offers some much needed improvements in protection and support for victims of domestic abuse, several MPs plan to hijack the bill, shifting the focus from domestic abuse and instead radically overhauling the law on abortion in England and Wales.
A change in the law would mean that abortion could be performed legally on any grounds, allowing for sex-selective abortion. Currently, the Abortion Act provides that abortion can only be performed under specific grounds. Without this legal safeguard, it would allow abortion for purely social reasons, ironically opening up the way for many more unborn babies – and likely more unborn girls – to be killed.
In order to make the changes that BPAS have been campaigning for, sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Persons Act would need to be repealed. Section 58 states:
“Every woman, being with child, who, with intent to procure her own miscarriage, shall unlawfully administer to herself any poison or other noxious thing, or shall unlawfully use any instrument or other means whatsoever with the like intent, and whosoever, with intent to procure the miscarriage of any woman, whether she be or be not with child, shall unlawfully administer to her or cause to be taken by her any poison or other noxious thing, or shall unlawfully use any instrument or other means whatsoever with the like intent, shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable … to be kept in penal servitude for life.”
Section 59 similarly lays out that:
“Whosoever shall unlawfully supply or procure any poison or other noxious thing, or any instrument or thing whatsoever, knowing that the same is intended to be unlawfully used or employed with intent to procure the miscarriage of any woman, whether she be or be not with child, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted thereof shall be liable … to be kept in penal servitude.”
If these sections are repealed (much as they were recently for Northern Ireland), it would do more than simply decriminalise abortion – it would introduce abortion on demand for any reason, up to 28 weeks, removing almost all the legal safeguards provided by the Abortion Act.
However, unlike in Northern Ireland, where the legal limit for abortion is now 24 weeks, we know that the changes to the Domestic Abuse Bill would allow abortion up to 28 weeks specifically. This is because the Infant Life Preservation Act lays out specifically that the point at which a child is considered “capable of being born alive” is 28 weeks. This is despite the NHS stating that from 24 weeks, a child is considered ‘viable’ and capable of being born alive. Similarly, there are growing instances of babies being born from 23 weeks surviving, such as Oliver-Cash Lowther-Ryan, who was born at 23 weeks in lockdown and has recently been given the go-ahead to go home with his parents.
Please write to your MP and ask them to oppose this amendment to make extreme changes to abortion legislation.
Right to Life has created an easy way to help you write to your MP. Or, you could find your own MP’s details. It always helps if you express your concerns in your own words.
There is also a briefing on the amendment, which you can highlight to your MP.
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