22nd March, 2025
By Lola Crossman
COUNCILLORS have pledged to support women and girls in Basingstoke and Deane after passing a motion to help residents under threat of criminalisation from abortion.
Cllr Stacy Hart, the first Women's Equality borough councillor before the party's closure in 2024, proposed a motion calling for BDBC to support residents 'under threat of criminalisation following abortion or pregnancy loss'.
The new proposals would bring English and Welsh law in line with Northern Ireland where abortion was fully decriminalised in 2020, and also countries including France and Canada.
By Mollie Malone, home news correspondent
Sunday 12 January 2025
With Video – 3:19 minutes
More than 30 organisations are urging parliament to remove the threat of criminal investigation and prosecution for women who end their own pregnancies in England and Wales.
A joint statement, signed by leading abortion care providers and institutions including the British Medical Association, Women's Aid, and the Royal College of Gynaecologists, asks politicians to relook at the law to prevent women who are suspected of ending their own pregnancy outside of the legal abortion limits, from being criminally pursued.
Statement from groups including BMA and royal colleges says current law is causing ‘trauma and cruelty’
Shanti Das, The Guardian
Sun 12 Jan 2025
Medical leaders are calling for reform of abortion laws in England and Wales after an “unprecedented” rise in women and girls being prosecuted for ending their own pregnancies.
More than 30 groups – including the British Medical Association, the Faculty of Public Health, the British Society of Abortion Care Providers and the royal colleges of GPs, nurses, psychiatrists, midwives and anaesthetists – issued a joint statement warning that the current legislation is causing “trauma and cruelty” and demanding “immediate action” to safeguard reproductive rights.
I quickly learned that the decision to terminate a pregnancy wasn’t purely a matter of 'my body, my choice’
Anonymous
Thu 28 Nov 2024
Roughly 36 hours after I first heard about the horrifying Maga taunt “your body, my choice”, I learned that I was pregnant, despite having a contraceptive coil. My relief that I lived in the UK, not the US – where abortion is rapidly becoming illegal or inaccessible at best – was profound. Yet I realised that I had no idea how to access abortion, having complacently assumed that it would always be available if I needed it. Some fraught Googling led me to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. A couple of days later, I had my first appointment and very quickly learned that it wasn’t purely “my choice”, even in Britain.
Of all the words you don’t want to hear by surprise, “transvaginal” is up there. I thought the scan to determine how pregnant I was would be the kind where a technician slathers goop on your stomach. I wasn’t told until I arrived that it would be internal, because of the assumed early gestation. A second surprise: the coil was gone, most likely sucked out by my period cup. Later that day, I had a phone consultation. The nurse told me two doctors would have to sign off on the termination and asked me to justify why my life would be negatively affected if I were forced to continue with the pregnancy. Horrified, I said I should just be able to say: I don’t want to. She was extremely kind and agreed, but said this was a legal requirement under the Abortion Act.
Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/28/abortion-rights-women-donald-trump-us-britain
Australian politicians are using the US election to fan the flames of a fire we thought had been put out. It must be extinguished
Hannah Ferguson
Thu 10 Oct 2024
Last month I sat on the toilet seat staring down at the cheapest pregnancy test I could find at the supermarket. My mind went blank. I knew before the white strip could tell me. I was pregnant.
I live in Sydney. Abortion was decriminalised in New South Wales in 2019. It is almost five years to the day that my healthcare decision hasn’t been legislated under our criminal code. As Australia takes agonisingly slow steps forward, the US regresses faster than someone can say “I have concepts of a plan”. The supreme court’s reinstatement of Georgia’s six-week abortion ban this week affirms this.
Criminalisation disproportionately affects indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian women and exacerbates inequality, says Human Rights Watch
Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá
Wed 14 Jul 2021
Gladys, an indigenous woman from rural Ecuador, went to hospital after injecting poison into her stomach to end her pregnancy. Doctors went straight to the police, and she was sentenced to two months in jail for having an abortion with consent.
Elsewhere in the South American country, a 20-year-old Afro-Ecuadorian woman went to hospital after a fall, and found out she was pregnant and miscarrying. She was swiftly arrested and spent four months awaiting trial, where she was cleared.
Dáil votes down proposal to fully decriminalise abortion
Criminalisation is necessary to protect women from forced abortions, says Minister
Nov 28, 2018
Jennifer Bray
Attempts to fully decriminalise abortion as part of new legislation have failed following a debate in the Dáil.
A number of TDs called on Minister for Health Simon Harris to support amendments to the Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Bill which would see doctors protected from criminalisation where they act in good faith, and which would drop the current 14 year jail term.
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