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The Government has acknowledged that new abortion provisions contained in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 mean a woman cannot be prosecuted for ending her own pregnancy at any gestation, including beyond 24 weeks, and would not commit an abortion offence by deliberately misleading a doctor about gestational age to obtain abortion pills.
An equalities impact assessment published by the Government on 29th September examines Sections 241 and 242 of the Act, which respectively remove criminal liability from women acting in relation to their own pregnancies and provide pardons for women previously convicted or cautioned for relevant abortion offences.
In unusually explicit language, the assessment states:
“Section 241 removes criminal liability for women acting in relation to their own pregnancies and 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 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 admission is significant because the abortion lobby have frequently stressed that the Abortion Act 1967 and its rules governing lawful abortion services remain in place. The Act and the impact assessment are clear, however, that specified criminal liability is removed from a woman herself when she acts in relation to her own pregnancy, regardless of gestation. The Government’s own assessment therefore confirms that the protection applies even where a woman deliberately ends her pregnancy beyond 24 weeks.
The assessment also exposes another striking consequence of the legislation. A woman who deliberately deceives a medical professional about how advanced her pregnancy is in order to obtain abortion pills by post beyond the ten-week limit would not, by virtue of that conduct, be guilty of the abortion offences from which Section 241 exempts her.
The Government’s figures also reveal how few prosecutions preceded the sweeping change.
Between 2017 and 2024, just 26 prosecutions were brought under Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, resulting in ten convictions. Of the 24 defendants whose sex was recorded, 17, or 71 per cent, were men, while seven, or 29 per cent, were women.
Crucially, the Government says it cannot establish how many of those seven women were themselves pregnant and acting in relation to their own pregnancies. It therefore acknowledges that while Section 241 is expected to reduce prosecutions of women, “the extent of the likely impact cannot be quantified”.
Section 242 goes further by pardoning women previously convicted or cautioned for abortion offences committed in relation to their own pregnancies and requiring, where reasonably practicable, the deletion of relevant convictions, cautions, arrests, and investigations from official records.
The Government maintains that it remains neutral on changes to abortion law and stresses that the existing Abortion Act continues to regulate abortion services.
Nevertheless, its own impact assessment now puts beyond doubt an important distinction in the new law: a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy is removed from these abortion offences at any gestation, even beyond 24 weeks, extending to women who intentionally lie to a medical professional about her baby’s gestational age in order to obtain abortion pills outside the legal pills-by-post time limit.
SPUC CEO John Deighan has commented on the assessment, saying: “We know that the Crime and Policing Act allows abortion up-to-birth. Political commentators know that the Crime and Policing Act allows abortion up-to-birth. Now we can see that even the government recognises that the Crime and Policing Act allows abortion up-to-birth.”
He continued, “The public need to be told about the brutalisation of children in the womb that is now permissible in this country, and the abortion industry need to stop gaslighting them. This was a law written under the false guise of protecting women: it does not do that. It protects abusers and destroys babies. It must be reversed, and SPUC will keep fighting to make sure that happens.”
