UK – Police told how to search a woman’s home and her phone for evidence she’s had an abortion

Abortion providers say the new guidance proves how out of touch the police are – feeling women in vulnerable situations deserve compassion over prosecutions

By Jennifer Savin
19 May 2025

As anti-abortion groups in the UK step up their tactics and women's rights are being rolled back globally, the National Police Chiefs' Council has issued guidance in the UK telling officers how to search women's phones, menstrual-tracking apps and homes following a pregnancy loss, if they're suspected of having had an illegal abortion.

Branding the guidance 'harrowing' and flagging concerns that police did not consult with abortion providers before issuing it, Katie Saxon, Chief Strategic Communications Officer at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said, "As an abortion provider, we know how the police treat women suspected of breaking abortion law. But to see it in black and white, after years of criticisms of the way an outdated law is enforced, is harrowing.

Continued: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a64814425/police-guidance-abortion-drugs/

19.05.2025

News

arresting women for abortion

bodily autonomy

Clue

Louise McCudden

MSI Reproductive Choices

National Police Chiefs’ Council

Offences Against the Person Act

Why abortion rights in the UK are getting more and more perilous

Campaigners say confused health professionals are driving the increasing prosecutions of women. Others blame the police. But ultimately, the Crown Prosecution Service has questions to answer

Zoe Williams
Mon 19 May 2025

Earlier this month, Nicola Packer was found not guilty of illegally terminating a pregnancy, after taking abortion pills beyond the legal limit of 10 weeks. She had spent more than four years living in the shadow of this prosecution, every detail of which – as reported by Phoebe Davis – is completely harrowing. In 2020, Packer was arrested before she left Chelsea and Westminster hospital, still bleeding from major surgery.

Packer is one of six women to be prosecuted for this crime in England since the end of 2022, under the Offences Against the Person Act, which had previously only been used in such cases three times since its introduction in 1861. Even that striking, inexplicable figure doesn’t begin to describe how many people have fallen victim to these prosecutions. There have been cases of women denied contact with their children while police investigated a charge that came to nothing. A teenager who had a late miscarriage was arrested in front of her entire street – her privacy, her education, her peace of mind completely destroyed.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2025/may/19/why-abortion-rights-in-the-uk-are-getting-more-and-more-perilous

UK – Police could search homes and phones after pregnancy loss

New national guidance suggests officers look for menstrual tracking apps or abortion drugs

Saturday 17 May 2025
Phoebe Davis

Police have been issued guidance on how to search women’s homes for abortion drugs and check their phones for menstrual cycle tracking apps after unexpected pregnancy loss.

New guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on “child death investigation” advises officers to search for “drugs that can terminate pregnancy” in cases involving stillbirths. The NPCC, which sets strategic direction for policing across the country UK, also suggests a woman’s digital devices could be seized to help investigators “establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy”. That could include checking a woman’s internet searches, messages to friends and family, and health apps, “such as menstrual cycle and fertility trackers”, it states.

Continued: https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/police-could-search-homes-and-seize-phones-after-sudden-pregnancy-loss

UK – Prosecuted, shamed and traumatised for mistake of taking abortion pills too late

In 2020, Nicola Packer had an abortion - then was arrested and put on trial. Now, found not guilty, she hopes she will be the last woman in history prosecuted under England’s archaic law

Friday 16 May 2025
Phoebe Davis

Nicola Packer was still bleeding from major surgery when she was arrested, escorted by two police officers out of hospital, put in the back of a van and taken to Charing Cross police station.

She saw strangers’ faces, patients and staff staring at her. “You look around to see if people are looking at you, thinking, ‘Oh my God, what has she done?”

Packer is sitting on her sofa at home in a small seaside town. The living room leads out on to a patio covered in flower pots, where she likes to spend her evenings after work.

Continued: https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/prosecuted-shamed-and-traumatised-for-mistake-of-taking-abortion-pills-too-late

USA – What Would It Mean to Defend All Abortions?

Democrats love to avoid it, and Republicans love to lie about it. But later-abortion care has never been more important.

Amy Littlefield
May 13, 2025

Ayana, 28 years old and 28 weeks pregnant, eases herself onto the procedure table at Partners in Abortion Care in College Park, Maryland. She is a Black woman with the tiny bearing and erect posture of a bird. Above her head, a flock of pink and blue butterflies decorates the ceiling. In a few minutes, a doctor will perform an injection to the fetal heart to end her pregnancy.

Ayana had spent months in turmoil over this abortion. As she chased after her two older kids while lugging her 1-year-old on family outings to the arcade and the movies, she tried to imagine hauling two car seats instead of one. While she changed her baby’s diapers, she thought about what a newborn would subtract from him. The family was already stretched thin.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/defending-all-abortions/

UK woman accused of using pills for illegal abortion during Covid lockdown

Nicola Packer, 44, was arrested at a London hospital after reporting a miscarriage in 2020, court told

Hannah Al-Othman
Thu 24 Apr 2025

A woman has gone on trial in London accused of illegally taking pills in order to induce an abortion during the second coronavirus lockdown.

Nicola Packer, 44, was arrested in November 2020 after she went to hospital having miscarried a foetus, and later reported to staff that she had taken abortion medication.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/24/uk-woman-accused-using-pills-abortion-covid-lockdown

24.04.2025

News

Abortion Act 1967

arresting women for abortion

Marie Stopes

MSI International

Nicola Packer

prosecuting women for abortion

South Korea Police Investigate YouTuber For Late-term Abortion Video

by AFP - Agence France Presse
August 12, 2024

South Korean police said Monday they were investigating a YouTuber who vlogged about undergoing a late-term abortion, sparking online outrage and calls from the country's health ministry for a murder probe.

The woman, whose identity police withheld, claimed in a video posted on Google-owned YouTube in June to have undergone an abortion in her thirty-sixth week of pregnancy, saying she had only discovered she was pregnant very late in the process.

Continued: https://www.barrons.com/news/south-korea-police-investigate-youtuber-for-late-term-abortion-video-6276ea27

12.08.2024

News

arresting women for abortion

later abortion

prosecuting women for abortion

UK – Teenager used pills for illegal abortion, court hears

May 14, 2024
Steve Knibbs & PA Media, BBC News, Gloucestershire/

A six-month pregnant teenager obtained pills to illegally abort her own baby, a court has heard. Sophie Harvey, of St Mary’s Road, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, is accused of taking the drug to end her pregnancy after learning she could not get a legal abortion.

Prosecutors allege Miss Harvey and her boyfriend Elliot Benham, both now aged 25, searched online for methods to end the pregnancy and bought drugs, which she then took.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgyypdq6gmo

14.05.2024

News

Anna Vigars

arresting women for abortion

British Pregnancy Advisory Service

Elliot Benham

prosecuting women for abortion

Republicans Want to Control Your Pregnancy, Not Just Your Abortion

Nearly 1,400 prosecutions of pregnant people occurred in the 16 years leading up to Dobbs in 2022, a new Pregnancy Justice report finds.

10/9/2023
by TALLULAH COSTA, Ms. Magazine

The war on reproductive justice wages on, and the right to a safe and healthy pregnancy hangs in the balance—according to a new report “The Rise of Pregnancy Criminalization,” by Pregnancy Justice, an organization dedicated to defending “the civil and human rights of pregnant people,” and guided by a reproductive justice framework. Analyzing data from 2006 to 2022, the report offers the first and only comprehensive study of the criminalization of people for their actions while pregnant during the Roe era.

The report shows an alarming rise in pregnancy criminalization, increasing three-fold over the past 16 years. The states where fetuses are recognized as people under criminal law, as decided by state supreme courts, are also the states with the most striking data for prosecutions of pregnancy. Just five Southern states are largely responsible for this increase in arrests: Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Mississippi.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/10/09/pregnancy-jail-prison-arrest-women/

USA – Abortion Snitching Is Already Sending People to Jail

In places where abortion is banned, women must rely even more on social and familial networks. But with greater reliance, comes greater risk.

8/19/2023
by MORGAN CARMEN

Last month, Celeste Burgess was sentenced to 90 days in prison because she took abortion pills when she was 17 years old. Celeste was charged with removing, concealing or abandoning a human body; concealing the death of another; and false reporting, after burying her miscarriage with the help of her mother, Jessica.

The story of Celeste and her mother—who helped her get the pills and will be sentenced next month—went national. Most media attention centered on the local police’s access to Facebook messages between the two, and for good reason: Companies like Meta amass intimate information—including but not limited to messages, location data, browsing patterns, phone numbers and online searches—that may be accessed easily by law enforcement. This case was seen as a harbinger of intimate privacy violations to come.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/08/19/celeste-burgess-abortion-snitching-privacy-police-illegal/