Abortion advocates want to take abortion out of the criminal law, that is, they want to decriminalise abortion. This is what happened in Northern Ireland when sections 58 and 59 of OAPA were repealed. The abortion lobby wants the same to happen in England and Wales.

SPUC ran a hard-hitting campaign during 2017 and 2018 opposing attempts in the House of Commons to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales. Among the reasons for opposing decriminalisation are:

• Keeping abortion within the criminal law is a powerful statement to society that abortion is a very serious matter, because it involves killing a defenceless unborn baby.
• Removing criminal sanctions would, in the words of Professor John Keown, a distinguished academic lawyer, “create an abortion free-for-all.”

Many of the dangers of decriminalisation that SPUC highlighted are the same as the dangers of the DIY abortion policy:

• No requirement for medical supervision.
• Anyone could supply the means for an abortion to anyone, for example, to abusive men wanting to coerce women into an abortion.
• Downgrading abortion to a routine “health” matter, where it is like “just one aspect of … medical care, like having appendicitis, like having a headache…” [1]

[1] Lee E, Sheldon S, Macvarish J. The 1967 Abortion Act fifty years on: Abortion, medical authority and the law revisited. Soc Sci Med. 2018 Sep;212:26-32. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.07.010. Epub 2018 Jul 7. PMID: 30005221.