The fight to repeal one of the most outdated abortion laws in the world

By Sana Noor Haq and Niamh Kennedy, CNN

London (CNN) — Hundreds of protesters lined the street outside the UK’s High Court on Saturday holding picket signs that read “Our bodies, Our right to decide,” before marching through the streets of central London demanding reformed abortion laws for women in England and Wales.

Earlier this month, a British woman who used medication to terminate a pregnancy after the UK’s legally allowed limit was sentenced to 28 months in prison under Victorian-era legislation, in a case that has sparked calls for an overhaul of reproductive justice laws in the country. The woman, who has three children, will serve 14 months in custody and the remainder on license after her release.

One year after the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade and reignited a worldwide protest movement against restricting abortion access, pro-choice advocates in the UK say little progress has been made to increase access to reproductive health services.

“It’s just ridiculous that the state, the government, keeps just involving themselves like in birthing people’s rights to choose abortion,” Nadia Hirsi, a 23-year-old actress and theater maker based in London, told CNN as she attended the protest in central London.

Jennifer Dean, a London-based blogger in their 50s, who was also at the protest, said: “Our body, our choice means as much to the trans community as it does to cisgender women … I don’t have a womb. But, you know, it should be ‘whoever has a womb should have the choice what they do with it.’”

Jenny Wickham, a 75-year-old pro-choice campaigner who has been demonstrating since the 1960s, told CNN: “The liberalization of abortion law is under threat like never before.”

Decriminalizing abortion in the UK

Abortion is currently legal in the UK up to the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. After this threshold, women found to have administered drugs to terminate a pregnancy are liable to receive a prison sentence up to a life term.

In the recent headline-making case, the mother-of-three, 44, was handed her 28-month sentence by a judge in Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court in central England under the Offences Against the Person Act, which dates back to 1861. The woman was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant at the time she took the medication, the court heard.

Barrister Charlotte Proudman called the act itself “ancient” in an interview with CNN, highlighting that it was “written at a time when women didn’t even have the right to vote” in the UK.

Proudman was one of more than 60 signatories of a letter addressed to the Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales last summer which highlighted the cases of two women who at the time faced prosecution for terminating a pregnancy.

She feels “disappointed” that little change has been enacted since the letter, saying there is real fear that “this landmark conviction may result in further convictions.”

In the past decade, 67 prosecutions have taken place in England and Wales under the same legislation, opposition lawmaker Stella Creasy told the UK parliament on June 15.

Proudman has observed a “collective outrage and anger” at the recent conviction, especially at “the fact that [the woman] could even be prosecuted for this type of crime.”

“I think, you know, people generally have been fairly shocked as well that abortion-related offenses still exist on the statute books,” she added.

Proudman said the decision of the US Supreme Court last year to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling had made her reflect on the state of abortion laws in the UK.

“I was now thinking, well hang on a minute … look at what’s happening closer to home. England, Wales, Scotland and the fact that abortion still remains a criminal offense subject to certain exceptions,” she said.

‘Draconian’ and ‘restrictive’ legislation

In 2019, lawmakers in the British parliament voted for legislation which ended the criminalization of abortion in Northern Ireland, essentially placing its laws at odds with the rest of the UK.

Charity campaigners like Katherine O’Brien of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) said they are now making what she called a “straightforward” argument for the extension of this legislation to the rest of the UK.

“When they amended the law to allow greater access to abortion care in Northern Ireland, what they did was they removed the criminalization of women for ending their own pregnancy. So, we’re effectively asking that politicians do the same,” O’Brien told CNN.

Proudman, the barrister, points to Canada as a further example, referring to its historic decision to decriminalize abortion 30 years ago.

The recent criminal conviction in Stoke-On-Trent has only highlighted how “restrictive” and “draconian” UK abortion laws are, O’Brien said.

“Even when we talk about Poland, or we talk about laws in Texas, even, you know, very anti-abortion politicians there aren’t proposing laws which see women sent to prison for life for ending their own pregnancy,” she stressed.

Women of color most at risk

Restrictive abortion care policies result in forced pregnancies that doctors say expose women of color to a maternal health crisis, exacerbated by existing economic and racial inequalities.

Dr. Annabel Sowemimo, a community sexual and reproductive health registrar, said liberalizing abortion measures allows patients to access the procedure earlier on in their pregnancy “in the comfort of their own environment.”

In August, the UK government introduced permanent access to early medical abortions at home. The legislation stipulates that women can access pills to be taken at home for gestation of up to nine weeks and six days, after a teleconsultation.

There were 214,256 abortions for women living in England and Wales in 2021, representing the highest uptake since the 1967 Abortion Act, according to the UK government website. Of those, 89% were carried out under 10 weeks.

“If abortion isn’t legal and isn’t free at the point of delivery then people tend to go on later and leave it [and] can’t access services,” Sowemimo told CNN.

“When we don’t have safe and legal routes to abortion it ends up with more dead pregnant people,” she said. “The issue is multiplied when people are marginalized.”

Black people in England are nearly four times more likely to die while giving birth than White women, according to a recent confidential inquiry into maternal deaths ​(MBRRACE-UK).

Similar figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women, due to factors including structural racism and implicit bias.

‘Ready to take action’

Charities such as BPAS which provide abortion care to women on behalf of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) maintain that the current abortion laws are making life “more difficult” for providers, clinicians and women themselves.

“For women to be learning that abortion is a crime, and how that then makes them feel when they need that care – the impact that that can have is really quite profound,” O’Brien said.

She believes that people in the UK are however seeing “the real-life impacts of the current laws” and are “really ready to take action.”

The voting record of British lawmakers provides further encouragement, according to O’Brien, referencing recent laws creating abortion buffer zones and approving the extension of provision of abortion pills by post.

Proudman hopes that action can be taken now to “put decriminalization on the political agenda for real” amid a growing consensus that “these laws don’t work.”

“They don’t work for women and girls, far from it. They don’t work when you have women behind bars who have been vulnerable and require support and compassion,” she said.

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