Alithea Williams, blogpost

In a parliamentary debate this week, Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, made a startling claim. She said that “ hundreds of women are now being prosecuted under outdated abortion legislation”. Here’s the quote in full:

The King’s Speech offers a Criminal Justice Bill, which I welcome. It is time that we finally sorted out the inequality that means that my Walthamstow constituents have fewer human rights when it comes to choosing to have an abortion than constituents in Belfast. Sentencing guidelines will not deal with the fact that hundreds of women are now being prosecuted under outdated abortion legislation. It is time for decriminalisation, and perhaps one of the few positive things we can do in the year to come is to sort that.

Fewer human rights?

The claim that people in Walthamstow have fewer human rights than those in Belfast is based on differing abortion laws between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. In 2019, Ms Creasy herself hijacked the Northern Ireland Executive Formation Act to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland, while the Stormont Assembly was not sitting. It is true that there is now a more extreme abortion regime in Northern Ireland than in England, but there is no “right” to an abortion anywhere in the UK.

Hundreds of women?

Ms Creasy gives no backing whatsoever for this figure. In fact, it contradicts figures that she and other abortion lobbyists have given in recent months. In July, she said in a Commons debate on the Offences Against the Person Act 1861  that there had been “67 prosecutions in the UK in the last 10 years”. This figure is itself misleading, as it implies that 67 women had been prosecuted for illegal abortion. In fact, many, possibly the majority, of such prosecutions are against men who cause the death of an unborn child through attacking a pregnant woman or giving her abortifacients against her will. For example, in May last year, a man was convicted under the act of spiking his pregnant girlfriend’s drink in order to cause a miscarriage.

That very few women have been prosecuted has been confirmed by abortion activists. In August, Jonathan Lord, the medical director of MSI Reproductive Choices, when commenting on an illegal abortion trial, said “Before this only three women have ever been on trial over the past 160 years.” This figure of three women has been repeated by other activists.

To be fair to Ms Creasy, her use of “now” suggests she means there are now many more prosecutions in the last year or so. However, I cannot find any evidence for this claim either. A few weeks ago, the Guardian ran an editorial saying that a rise in prosecutions meant abortion law needed changing. But even this alarmist article did not mention hundreds of prosecutions. They said “This year, at least five women have appeared in English courts charged under section 58 of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which criminalises abortions that do not come under the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act.” I cannot find any source that speaks of even ten, let alone hundreds of women (this Times article summarises all the cases I’m aware of). If Stella Creasy knows of hundreds more cases than these five, it’s more than anyone else knows.

Time for decriminalisation?

While the claim that hundreds of women are being persecuted has no basis in any known source, five trials this year does represent an increase in women being prosecuted for illegal abortion compared to three in preceding decades. But does this mean that abortion needs to be decriminalised?

Firstly, five prosecutions is a tiny number, when where are over 200,000 legal abortions every year. It is also rather odd logic to claim that because some people break a law, the law should be repealed. Most importantly however, we need to look at why these prosecutions are happening. What has changed in the last few years is the introduction of the pills by post policy, which allows abortion providers to send abortion pills to women without an in person consultation. This has led to women being sent the pills over the legal limit, sometimes much over.

The tragic story of Carla Foster, which sparked the recent calls for decriminalisation, is a case in point. Under this policy, Ms Foster obtained abortion pills by giving false information that she was seven weeks pregnant over the phone to a BPAS operative. BPAS then sent her the pills without correctly confirming the gestation of the pregnancy, or ensuring her welfare, leading to the death of baby Lily, who was found to be between 32-34 weeks gestation. The pills by post policy resulted in an illegal and dangerous late term abortion, exposed a traumatised woman to prosecution and left a fully viable baby dead. None of this would have happened if Carla Foster had been seen and examined in person. This policy was championed by the very abortion providers and MPs who are now using the case to call for decriminalisation.

The problem is clearly not the existing abortion law, but a recent one – the policy change in 2020, which made it possible for these illegal late term abortions to occur.