Abortion law reform in the UK

BMJ 2025; 389 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r1243
16 June 2025
Jonathan Lord, Nicola Packer, Tonia Antoniazzi, Janet Barter, Lesley Regan

Decriminalisation needed to protect women from persecution

Abortion is still a criminal offence in England and Wales, with access to abortion permitted under specific circumstances defined in the Abortion Act 1967. One of us (Nicola Packer) was recently acquitted after standing trial in England having been accused of an illegal abortion.1 The high profile case has highlighted deficiencies in the current legal framework, underscoring the need for decriminalisation.2

Packer was the sixth woman to have appeared in court since December 2022 charged with ending her own pregnancy, although around 100 have endured the trauma of criminal investigation in the past five years.34 In November 2020 she took abortion medication (mifepristone and misoprostol), prescribed over the phone during covid-19 lockdown. The gestation limit for most abortions in England is up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, and 10 weeks for self-administered medical abortion at home. Packer delivered the fetus at home unaware that she had been beyond 10 weeks’ gestation, with the head circumference and an examination by an obstetrician suggesting it was 22-24 weeks.

Continued: https://www.bmj.com/content/389/bmj.r1243

16.06.2025

Offences Against the Person Act

“It’s not a comfortable area to be operating in”: Police had major doubts about arresting a woman found not guilty of an illegal abortion

Nicola Packer had an investigation and trial looming over her for years, only to be found not guilty of having an illegal abortion during lockdown in 2020

By Kimberley Bond
27 May 2025

A leaked recording has suggested that the Metropolitan Police were uncomfortable arresting a woman accused of having an illegal abortion. Abortion is only legal in the UK if certain strict criteria are met.

Nicola Packer was arrested in hospital in November 2020 for “child destruction” after delivering a stillborn baby at home.

Continued: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/body/health/a64889886/nicola-parker-illegal-abortion-police-response/

27.05.2025

News

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital

Crown Prosecution Service

Jonathan Lord

Nicola Packer

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

telemedicine abortion

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 – ‘Utterly traumatised’: anger at ordeal of UK woman accused of illegal abortion

Calls for law change after ‘cruel and unnecessary investigation’ into Nicola Packer that CPS brought to trial

Hannah Al-Othman and Raphael Boyd
Thu 8 May 2025

When Nicola Packer took a pregnancy test in November 2020, as the country was in lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic, she did not even believe she was pregnant.

Aged 41 at the time, she thought it more likely that she was perimenopausal, but had been feeling under the weather and when her friend – with whom the pregnancy had been conceived – suggested she took a test, she only did so to “prove him wrong”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/may/08/anger-ordeal-woman-accused-abortion-nicola-packer

08.05.2025

Commentary

Charing Cross hospital

Jonathan Lord

MSI Reproductive Choices

Nicola Packer

prosecuting women for abortion

‘I felt like a criminal’: Record number of women facing illegal abortion investigations

One woman says she's still struggling with the impact the police investigation had on her life, even though the case has now been dropped.

By Mollie Malone, news correspondent
Monday 17 June 2024

Sarah's front room is filled with pictures of her smiling baby. He's now 18 months old. But for almost a year, she was investigated on suspicion of illegally trying to abort him.

In January 2023, Sarah (not her real name) had just delivered her baby prematurely. She called 999 but before paramedics turned up, police came knocking at her door.

"The front room was just full of police," Sarah tells Sky News. "I felt like a criminal."

Continued: https://news.sky.com/story/i-felt-like-a-criminal-record-number-of-women-facing-illegal-abortion-investigations-13153079

17.06.2024

News

at home abortion

Bpas

British Society of Abortion Care Providers

Calum Miller

Jonathan Lord

Lucie Baylis

prosecuting women for abortion

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

‘Extreme’ US anti-abortion group ramps up lobbying in Westminster

The UK branch of the Alliance Defending Freedom has increased its spending and is forging ties with key MPs

Shanti Das, Home affairs correspondent
Sat 6 Apr 2024

A rightwing Christian lobby group that wants abortion to be banned has forged ties with an adviser to the prime minister and is drawing up policy briefings for politicians.

The UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending since 2020 and been appointed a stakeholder in a parliamentary group on religious freedoms in a role that grants it direct access to MPs.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/06/extreme-us-anti-abortion-group-ramps-up-lobbying-in-westminster

UK – Health chiefs voice fears over MP’s move to cut abortion limit

Exclusive: President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said they are against any reduction in abortion time limits

Maya Oppenheim, Women’s Correspondent
March 3, 2024

Fears have been raised that proposals to reduce the abortion deadline by two weeks could inflict cruelty on vulnerable women and actually increase the number of pregnancy terminations.

The warnings come after Tory MP Caroline Ansell proposed an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill to decrease the legal limit to have an abortion from the current deadline of 24 weeks to 22 weeks – with MPs set to vote on the proposals in due course.

Continued: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/abortion-laws-cut-limit-24-weeks-b2504825.html

British police testing women for abortion drugs

Forensic reports seen by Tortoise show police requesting tests for mifepristone and misoprostol

Monday 30 October 2023
Phoebe Davis, Tortoise Media

British police are testing women for abortion drugs and requesting data from menstrual tracking apps after unexplained pregnancy losses.

Tortoise has seen forensic reports in which police have requested a mass spectrometry test, which can detect the presence of the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol in the urine, blood and placenta of women under investigation.

Other reports include requests for “data related to menstruation tracking applications” as part of the police’s investigations.

Continued: https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2023/10/30/british-police-testing-women-for-abortion-drugs/

With thanks to the newsletter from International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion…

Care not criminalisation: reform of British abortion law is long overdue

BMJ, J Med Ethics, August 2023, Vol 49 No 8
Sally Sheldon, Jonathan Lord

Megan is a young teenage patient who suffered a stillbirth at 28 weeks, leading to a year long police investigation dropped only after postmortem tests found that her pregnancy was lost due to natural causes. The stress of the investigation and her isolation from friends and support network following the seizure of her mobile and laptop compounded the trauma of the stillbirth, leaving her requiring emergency psychiatric care.

Aisha is a vulnerable patient who suffered a premature delivery, having experienced similar problems in earlier pregnancies. Things happened so quickly that Aisha delivered on her own at home, only then seeking medical care. She told hospital staff that earlier in her pregnancy she had considered an abortion. As a result, she found herself interviewed under police caution and was required to surrender her phone and tablet, limiting access to friend and family support just when most needed. Aisha was denied unsupervised access to

her baby in the intensive care unit, needing to hand over expressed breast milk to a receptionist.

Continued: https://jme.bmj.com/content/medethics/49/8/523.full.pdf

UK among most liberal countries on divorce and abortion, survey reveals

Global study shows significant shift in UK attitudes on matters such as casual sex and assisted dying

Robert Booth, Social affairs correspondent
Tue 7 Mar 2023

The UK has overtaken Canada, Germany and Australia to become one of the world’s most socially liberal nations towards divorce and abortion, the latest wave of a global study has revealed.

Significant increases in the last five years in people saying the practices are justifiable is mirrored by sharply increasing acceptance of homosexuality, casual sex and prostitution over the same period, the World Values Survey found.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/07/uk-among-most-liberal-countries-on-divorce-and-abortion-survey-reveals

07.03.2023