Last week, Labour MPs threatened to use the Government’s Crime and Policing Bill to achieve the cherished goal of the pro-abortion lobby – full decriminalisation of abortion.
If we weren’t so used to this almost monomaniacal desire to push “abortion rights” as far as they can go, we might find the timing of this surprising. After all, there is a lot going on politically already – the Government are having to stave off a rebellion on cuts to welfare spending, all while trying to keep the peace between warring factions abroad. This is without even factoring in the political bandwidth being taken up by an assisted suicide bill, which, while not technically a Government Bill, is widely seen as having some level of official support. Is this really the time to throw another highly controversial issue into the mix?
One could also point to the fact that the last time this was tried – the amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill in the dying days of the last Government – it didn’t go down so well. Given that the move was very clearly sparked by the case of Carla Foster case, where baby Lily was killed by abortion pills at about 34 weeks gestation, it was obvious that the goal was abortion up to birth – and people were horrified. The British public was clearly not behind allowing abortion at any point for any reason, and I doubt that has changed in the last few months.
However, the key reason why this move is ill-timed is that we know that keeping abortion regulated by criminal law is more necessary than ever. In the last few weeks, Stuart Worby, who surreptitiously administered abortion pills to his pregnant partner, killing her 15-week-old baby, had his sentence extended by five years.
The abortion pills were administered via a sexual assault, and Mr Worby’s sentence on that charge was increased by eight years to 15. Crucially, he was also sentenced for “administering poison with intent to cause a miscarriage”, an offence under section 58 of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act (his sentence was increased from 12 years to 17). It is this provision that underlies the law on abortion, and it is often derided by abortion advocates as an “outdated Victorian law”.
It is cases like that of Stuart Worby that give the lie to the claim that the abortion law is a cruel means to persecute vulnerable women. The longest sentence ever given to a woman who procured her own abortion was three and a half years, and that was an extreme and shocking case of an abortion a few days before full term, with the baby’s body never found. Many prosecutions under this law are in fact against abusive men, of whom Worby is the latest example.
It is worth dwelling on the harm done to the unnamed victim. She has since been unable to conceive with a new partner, and, despite fertility treatment, has been told that she might never do so.
She said: “Although two years have passed, I carry a dead weight that will never leave, that I failed to protect my baby.
“This pain will never leave me knowing that this baby might be my only chance to have a child.
“Being pregnant was a dream for me with a man I thought I loved. I was naive, having been raised to trust people.”
While it was right that Worby was sentenced for the sexual assault, that crime alone would in no way cover the extent to which the woman has suffered. The fact that he was specifically charged with the death of the baby is surely justice, and IT recognises the loss that she has suffered. Without this provision in law, he could only be charged with harm to the mother (funnily enough, the offence of grievous bodily harm is also enshrined in the 1861 Act, but I’ve never heard calls for that to be repealed because it was passed during the reign of Queen Victoria).
Do we really want a situation where men like Worby cannot be held accountable by the law for the death of an unborn baby? Moreover, because of other changes to the abortion law that the very same activists campaigned for, such offences are now more possible than ever before. Worby was able to obtain the deadly abortion drugs by asking an accomplice, Nueza Cepeda, to lie to an abortion provider via a telemedicine consultation.
This is not the first case of another party using the pills by post policy to obtain the drugs for use on someone else. In 2022, a woman called Georgia Day was sentenced after being convicted of lying to a BPAS operative over the phone to obtain abortion drugs to give to her lover, who intended to use them on his pregnant partner.
If these MPs really want to protect vulnerable women, removing the law that holds abusers to account for causing the deaths of their babies is not the way to go. Instead, they should scrap the real abusers’ charter – the pills-by-post scheme.
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