As the U.S. grapples with abortion limits, British lawmakers propose scrapping all legal penalties.
LONDON — England’s abortion laws could be headed for an overhaul. Brits probably won’t be taking to the streets.
As the United States continues to grapple with the divisive fallout of the 2022 Supreme Court ruling which overturned Roe v. Wade and so ended the federal right to abortion, British lawmakers are gearing up to have their own debate on the hot-button issue.
Under ancient English law it is a crime for a woman to “procure a miscarriage,” although a 1967 act of parliament allows for abortion up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy — so long as a number of conditions are met and two doctors provide a sign off.
For decades, that arrangement seemed to have broad buy-in from U.K. politicians and voters, even as their counterparts in the U.S took steps to limit abortion access.
In recent months, however, there are signs of a change in view — in favor of ending legal restrictions altogether.
The imprisonment of mother-of-three Carla Foster in June for an illegal abortion, and statistics showing that an unprecedented number of women are being investigated by police for breaching the 1967 act, triggered debate over just how abortion should be treated in the criminal justice system.
Foster was subsequently released and given a suspended sentence on appeal, but her experience has led some MPs to suggest that abortion should be treated as a medical rather than a legal matter.
‘Take the heat out of this’
Labour MP Diana Johnson, chair of the House of Commons’ home affairs committee, has now put forward a plan to change the law so no woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy could be found to have committed an offense. She’s drawn up an amendment to the government’s Criminal Justice Bill, which MPs could vote on when it returns to the House of Commons after Easter.
In January, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said it would issue guidance for doctors and other healthcare staff telling them not to report suspected illegal abortions to the police, insisting prosecutions were never in the public interest.
MPs already voted in 2019 to effectively decriminalize abortion in Northern Ireland, forcing the provision of abortion services there.
Some British MPs are simultaneously pushing for tighter restrictions. Conservative MP Caroline Ansell is separately trying to cut the upper limit for most abortions from 24 to 22 weeks through her own amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill.
Yet while there are strongly held views about the proposed changes on all sides, few believe abortion will become the cultural flashpoint it has become in the U.S. and elsewhere. Just this week, U.S. politics has been once again animated by Donald Trump’s own grappling with an issue that has dogged Republicans on the campaign trail since the fall of Roe v. Wade.
“I think it’s not quite in the psyche in the same way as it is for Americans,” Johnson says of the debate in the U.K.
“I really want to try and take the heat out of this and see this as an issue of health care rather than a criminal law matter, and I think that’s probably where the vast majority of the public are,” she adds.
Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London and an expert on culture wars, says that while abortion is a “highly emotive” issue, it is unlikely to become such a divisive issue in the U.K. as it has been in the United States.
“It’s harder here in this very secular society, with this trajectory that is quite strong in terms of increased acceptance of it,” he says.
“Most of the public opinion is quite happy with the status quo,” according to Anthony Wells, director of YouGov’s political and social opinion polling, who has studied domestic public opinion. There isn’t any clear drive to restrict abortion rights in the U.K., and the topic has largely not become politicized, he argues.
Brits appear to be more accepting of abortion than their U.S. counterparts, polling suggests.
A report by Duffy’s Policy Institute last year found 47 percent of those who took part in a world values survey believed the procedure justified — behind only Sweden, Norway and France, and well ahead of the United States where the figure was just 30 percent.
And polling by YouGov last year, in the wake of Foster’s high profile imprisonment, found that by a margin of 52 percent to 21 percent people believed women who have abortions outside of the rules should not face criminal prosecution.
Labour MP Stella Creasy, however, tells POLITICO that pro-choice MPs should take heed from the U.S. — and warns they “cannot be complacent” as activists looking to increase restrictions on abortion step up their “behind-closed-doors” organizing in the U.K.
The Observer reported this weekend that a major U.S.-based Christian lobby group — the Alliance Defending Freedom — has more than doubled its U.K. spending since 2020 and is increasing its engagement with MPs.
Creasy joined a cross-party group of MPs in putting forward her own amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill last week which protects medics from prosecution and aims to make abortion access a human right in England and Wales. It’s modeled in part on legislation introduced in Northern Ireland in 2019, and would put an explicit duty on government ministers to protect access to abortions.
“Those who oppose abortion – whether they work in the NHS, the civil service or parliament – relish every chance to eat away at access to this service by demanding regulations and new guidance in the light of any legal changes,” Creasy wrote in the Guardian Monday.
‘Extreme’
While the tenor of the debate in the U.K. has not reached that seen in the U.S., not all British MPs are supportive of the push to liberalize abortion law — and some are using the Criminal Justice Bill as a vehicle to push new restrictions on the conditions for abortion into law.
Conservative MP Miriam Cates warned the Johnson amendment if approved could fuel late-term do-it-yourself abortion and said she could vote down the entire Criminal Justice Bill — which includes wider justice reforms — if the proposal passes.
Carla Lockhart, an MP for Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, agrees and has warned the “extreme abortion amendment” would “allow babies to be aborted for any reason, throughout all nine months of pregnancy.”
She believes public opinion is more nuanced, citing 2017 ComRes polling showing just one per cent believe the upper time limit for abortion should be extended beyond 24 weeks.
But Johnson argues: “People think abortion is legal now, and they don’t really understand that it’s still underpinned by the criminal law.”
She adds: “The vast majority of the population think a woman should have access to an abortion, if she needs one.”
Ansell, an MP in the ruling Conservative Party, wants to reduce the upper limit for abortion in most cases from 24 weeks to 22 weeks, arguing that because of medical advances, more and more premature babies are surviving at younger ages.
As MPs broke up for the Easter recess, she had the support of 36 MPs.
Ex-Cabinet minister Liam Fox, a former general practice doctor, has the backing of 39 MPs for his proposed law change to bring the abortion time limit for babies with Down’s syndrome in line with those that do not have disabilities. Both clauses are likely to attract the signatures of more MPs after parliament returns.
Non-partisan
The British government has traditionally declared abortion a matter of conscience for MPs, allowing them to vote beyond party lines.
“Abortion is not an issue that front benches and governments want to deal with,” Johnson says. “They usually leave it to the backbenches to do anything on this.”
Britain’s anti-abortion groups are also less prominent than those in the U.S. — for now.
“In the states you’ve got the Christian right who have a lot of money, and are pumping a lot of resource into fighting against Roe v. Wade, and I suppose we’ve not really had that, to that extent here,” Johnson says. Creasy disagrees, and says her own amendment aims to “get ahead of” an organized “backlash” she can see coming to any attempt to liberalize the law.
Either way, moves to liberalize abortion in the U.K. are having little impact on the debate across the Atlantic, according to Sarah Elliott, spokesperson for Republicans Overseas UK, and a pro-life supporter.
She says: “The U.S. is very inwardly looking. It’s a big country, it has its own battles to fight,” she says.
But Elliott is dispirited by pushes to liberalize abortion in the U.K.
“I think it’s discouraging for those in the pro-life movement to see that countries that were once rooted in Christian values, which tend to be pro-life [are moving in this direction.] I think it is definitely frustrating to see,” she says.
This story has been updated with further reporting.
