As a woman is jailed, UK urged to reform ‘outdated’ abortion laws

Public anger rises after a judge decided to prosecute a woman who secured pills for a late-term abortion.

13 Jun 2023

Women’s rights groups, politicians and medics are calling on the British government to reform abortion laws after a woman was jailed for taking pills to end her pregnancy after the 24-week limit.

The 44-year-old mother of three was sent the medicine by post during a COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, a scheme that was introduced during the pandemic because many in-person services were closed due to social distancing measures.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/13/as-a-woman-is-jailed-uk-urged-to-reform-outdated-abortion-laws


UK – Senior Tory MP seeks abortion law rethink after mother jailed

June 13, 2023
By Jasmine Andersson & Sean Seddon, BBC News

Parliament should debate overhauling abortion rules after a woman was jailed, the chair of the Commons equalities committee has said. Caroline Nokes MP told the BBC the 1861 law used to prosecute mother-of-three Carla Foster was "out of date".

The 44-year-old was convicted of inducing an abortion outside the legal limit using pills at home. Campaigners urged reform after she received a sentence of 28 months, 14 of which will be spent in custody.

Continued:  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65886472 


UK – Elliot Benham and Sophie Harvey deny illegal abortion

Feb 16, 2023

A man and a woman have pleaded not guilty to illegally aborting a baby and concealing the birth of a child.

Elliot Benham, from Wingfield, Swindon and Sophie Harvey, from St Mary's Road, Cirencester, are also charged with illegally disposing of a baby's body.  The charges relate to alleged actions between September and December in 2018.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-64661344


UK – Pair charged with illegally aborting baby in Gloucestershire

Jan 3, 2023
By Sammy Jenkins, BBC News

A man and a woman have been charged with illegally aborting a baby and concealing the birth of a child.

Elliot Benham from Wingfield, Swindon and Sophie Harvey, from St Mary's Road, Cirencester, were also charged with illegally disposing of a baby's body.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-64155166


After Roe: Recognising the importance of reproductive rights in England and Wales

Following the US Supreme Court’s controversial reversal of Roe v Wade, aspiring barrister Jade Rae explains the importance of the Abortion Act 1967 in England and Wales

By Jade Rae
Jul 18 2022

The US Supreme Court has just overturned the decision of Roe v Wade, a landmark case regarding abortion rights from over 50 years ago, completely destroying the reproductive rights of people with uteruses in America. With at least 26 States expected to ban abortion immediately, this terrifying reversal will have disastrous effects on the physical and mental health of people expected to carry a foetus. This naturally leads one to reflect on the law surrounding abortion in England and Wales and why it is one of the most important pieces of law to date.

First, without the Abortion Act 1967, abortion still remains a criminal offence. Under section 58 of the Offences Against a Person Act 1861, any woman with child who attempts to procure a miscarriage and any person who aids a woman in an attempt to procure a miscarriage will be guilty of felony and being convicted thereof shall be liable to be kept in penal servitude for life.

Continued:  https://www.legalcheek.com/lc-journal-posts/after-roe-recognising-the-importance-of-reproductive-rights-in-england-and-wales/


Restrictive abortion laws put Nigerian women in danger

PTI | Benin
22-05-2022

The word "abortion" is used to describe two types of pregnancies that end before 20 weeks, which is now regarded as the age of viability of a pregnancy.

Spontaneous abortion occurs without an intention by the woman to stop the pregnancy, it is pregnancy loss before 20 weeks of gestational age. Induced abortion is the deliberate termination of a pregnancy because it is unwanted.

Continued: https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/2046272-restrictive-abortion-laws-put-nigerian-women-in-danger


Abortion: the story of suffering and death behind Ireland’s ban and subsequent legalization

Published: May 16, 2022
Gretchen E. Ely

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the U.S., the nation may find itself on a path similar to that trod by the Irish people from 1983 to 2018. A draft decision signed by the majority of conservative justices was leaked in May 2022, and indicates the court may do just that.

Abortion was first prohibited in Ireland through what was called the Offenses Against the Person Act of 1861. That law became part of Irish law when Ireland gained independence from the U.K. in 1922. In the early 1980s, some anti-abortion Catholic activists noticed the liberalization of abortion laws in other Western democracies and worried the same might happen in Ireland.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/abortion-the-story-of-suffering-and-death-behind-irelands-ban-and-subsequent-legalization-182812


N. Ireland – Free, safe, legal, local

Emma Campbell describes the long fight for reproductive rights in Northern Ireland

March 24, 2021
Emma Campbell

Northern Ireland has finally emerged from the shadow of a British law that wreaked untold misery on the island of Ireland. On 22 October 2019, tired but buoyed, we celebrated that people were no longer at risk of being charged with a criminal offence for accessing an abortion. After a long struggle, the women of Northern Ireland now have the best abortion law in the UK and Ireland.

Sections 58 and 59 of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act criminalised doctors and abortion seekers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with punishment up to ‘penal servitude for life’. This remained in place until the 1967 Abortion Act allowed abortion to carried out legally in certain circumstances, even if it wasn’t fully decriminalised.

Continued: https://www.redpepper.org.uk/alliance-for-change/


Abortion in Northern Ireland: at the interface between politics and law

22 March 2021
by Anurag Deb, UK Human Rights Blog

Abortion reform in Northern Ireland has had a fraught history, to say the least. Matters appeared to finally come to a head when in 2019, the UK Parliament enacted the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc.) Act 2019 (2019 Act), which created a duty on the Secretary of State to implement abortion reform by following the report of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination of Women (CtteEDAW). Nearly two years and two statutory instruments later, Stormont finds itself mired in fresh controversy as long-term abortion facilities in Northern Ireland have yet to be commissioned. So the obvious question arises: what happened?

Continued: https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2021/03/22/abortion-in-northern-ireland-at-the-interface-between-politics-and-law/


UK – Abortion should be a medical matter, not a criminal one. The law needs to change

Abortion should be a medical matter, not a criminal one. The law needs to change
Manifesto promises by Labour and the Liberal Democrats to decriminalise abortion are welcome news for women

Hilary Freeman
Sun 1 Dec 2019

There has been a predictably overwrought response to the election manifesto promises of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats to decriminalise abortion. Rightwing and Catholic commentators alike imagined hordes of heavily pregnant women at abortion clinics, demanding their fully formed foetuses be evacuated from their uteruses. Just because the law said that they now could.

I, unfortunately, know far more than I want to about what utter nonsense this emotive, anti-abortion rhetoric is. On 26 September 2012 I ended the life of my much-wanted daughter, Elodie, at 24 weeks’ gestation. It’s the hardest and most painful thing I’ve ever done. One thing I now know, with certainty, following this traumatic experience, is that no woman would choose to terminate a pregnancy that late on unless she felt there wasn’t any other option. And no doctor would countenance it, whatever the law said.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/01/uk-abortion-criminal-offence-24-week-time-limit