Left to right – Wikimedia Commons: Official portrait of Stella Creasy MP, Official portrait of Tonia Antoniazzi
A split has emerged among MPs championing the expansion of abortion in Parliament, ahead of an expected debate on decriminalising abortion.
Labour MPs Tonia Antoniazzi and Stella Creasy came to blows during a Westminster Hall debate on Monday on a petition calling for the decriminalisation of abortion. As such debates cannot change the law, both MPs took the opportunity to promote their respective amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill.
New Clause 1, tabled by Tonia Antoniazzi MP, seeks to change criminal law so that “no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy” at any gestation. This means that a woman who induced her abortion at home using pills (or any other method) at any stage of pregnancy, including just before natural birth, would not commit a crime.
New Clause 20, tabled by Stella Creasy MP, is even more extreme. It completely repeals the laws that form the legal underpinning of the current abortion law, meaning that there’d be no way to bring an abusive partner who causes the death of an unborn baby to justice.
During her remarks, Ms Antoniazzi criticised Ms Creasy’s proposal, saying: “As hon. Members will be aware, my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) has tabled new clause 20 to the Crime and Policing Bill in this regard. She and I share the same interests and overarching objective—to remove women from the criminal law related to abortion—but her new clause is markedly broader in terms of the scope of change proposed to the long-standing settlement that provides for abortion services.
“This framework is complex. Hard-won battles have cemented women’s access to abortion in this country into primary legislation. Parliament has, up to now, remained resistant to changes that constitute a rollback. I have concerns about overturning that entire framework at the current time and replacing it with a mechanism that would leave power in the hands of a single Minister.
“Does the Minister agree that such powers would mark a sea change in the long-standing, underlying framework that provides for abortion in England and Wales?”
Ms Creasy insisted that “Decriminalisation must involve repeal” and urged her colleague “to reread new clause 20, because from what she said, I do not think she has read it properly”. The two MPs then had a direct confrontation on the issue:
Tonia Antoniazzi: “This is not a competition between my hon. Friend and me – we both have the same aim—but it is interesting that more than 115 MPs have signed new clause 1, and it has been endorsed by the whole industry. Everyone has signed up to it. Has my hon. Friend had conversations with them about why they have not signed up to her new clause?”
Ms Creasy: “I am sorry that my hon. Friend feels the need to ask that question. She knows full well that despite me asking repeatedly to meet her and to talk to the campaigners she has been working with, that meeting has not yet been forthcoming. I am still open to meeting people, but we need to be very clear on the record: new clause 20 has in it a lock on the activity of Ministers, deliberately so, because this is a human rights issue.”
Pro-life MPs made the case that both suggested amendments are extreme. After spelling out that the small rise of prosecutions for abortion is due to the introduction of the pills by post policy, Carla Lockhart asked:
“What is the solution? Well, it cannot be to make matters worse by decriminalising abortion. That would be highly irresponsible, creating conditions where a woman could perform her own abortion, unsupervised, without any legal deterrent, away from a clinical setting, at a stage in pregnancy when doing so would carry great risks and when her baby would be viable. We would be de facto introducing abortion up to birth and reintroducing dangerous backstreet abortions. That is not pro-women, and it renders the time limit redundant in a context where pills can be obtained without any reliable in-person gestational age check.”
Dr Kieran Mullen, the Conservative Party Shadow Minister, also criticised Ms Creasy, saying: “Generally speaking I found her remarks during this debate to be quite insensitive to the complexities of the issues at hand. She was tempted to focus more of her time on talking about Trump than on the very delicate balancing act that many people bring to debates about this morally complex issue.”
He also laid out why abortion is a matter for the criminal law. “The petitioners have asked us to consider whether abortion should be decriminalised completely, so that no woman, or potentially no individual who assists her, can be prosecuted for an abortion under any circumstances. When considering abortion, we are not just considering the wellbeing, autonomy and rights of the pregnant woman. Our society and legal system have also given consideration to the welfare of the unborn child. The phrase ‘unborn child’ is, on the face of it, a clear and simple one, but in moral and legal terms it lacks the moral clarity we feel about the moral considerations due to a child after its birth.
“Religious thought of all kinds very often ascribes moral rights of a high magnitude to an unborn child at any stage. More scientifically focused viewpoints try to give consideration to the level of development, sensitivity to pain and suffering, or the point at which an unborn child might survive outside the womb. I think it is fair to say that there is a very widely held view that a human embryo at any stage is afforded moral consideration beyond that given to any other collection of equivalent cells.
“In the case of abortion, the law is designed to recognise that. Criminal law is the manner in which we safeguard the vulnerable and uphold the sanctity of life in our system. Abortion laws, as they stand, provide a structure to ensure the rights of everyone involved, including pregnant women and unborn children, are considered with a degree of fairness and that there is accountability.”
Alithea Williams, SPUC’s Public Policy Manager, said: “Stella Creasy’s proposals are so extreme that they are opposed even by her own pro-abortion colleagues. And no wonder – she wants to exclude even abusive men from any threat of prosecution, as well as indemnifying abortion providers.
“But this shouldn’t blind us to the horror of Tonia Antoniazzi’s plan, which would legalise self-induced abortions up to birth, for any reason. As the Shadow Minister said, criminal law is the manner in which we safeguard the vulnerable and uphold the sanctity of life in our system.
“We call on MPs to vote to uphold the sanctity of life, and to safeguard the most vulnerable, our unborn brothers and sisters in the womb”.
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