Leading voices call for decriminalisation of women ending their own pregnancies

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.

Continued: https://news.sky.com/story/leading-voices-call-for-the-decriminalisation-of-women-ending-their-own-pregnancies-13287119

UK – ‘Unprecedented’ rise in abortion prosecutions prompts call for law change from medical leaders

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.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/12/unprecedented-rise-in-abortion-prosecutions-prompts-call-for-law-change-from-medical-leaders

12.01.2025

News

1967 Abortion Act

Bethany Cox

British Medical Association

British Society of Abortion Care Providers

Carla Foster

criminalisation of abortion

Faculty of Public Health

Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health

Offences Against the Person Act

prosecuting women for abortion

RCOG

Royal College of General Practitioners

Royal College of Nursing

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

telemedicine abortion

Women’s Aid and Liberty

UK – Government Urged to Continue Allowing Women to Take Abortion Pills at Home

‘There is no reason for governments to delay making telemedicine for early medical abortion a permanent feature of healthcare,’ doctors say

Kate Ng
Jan 31, 2022

Women will be forced into illegal abortions if the government does not extend rules that allow abortion pills to be taken at home, doctors have warned.

Healthcare providers from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH) are concerned about plans to scrap the rules that were put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Continued: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/abortion-pills-illegal-women-pregnancy-b2003983.html?r=60619

Repealing the Global Gag Rule is good news – but it could take months to repair the damage it caused

Preventing abortion services from operating does not stop women seeking terminations – this policy's effects have been felt around the world

EDWARD MORRIS, ASHA KASLIWAL
2 February 2021

When Joe Biden signed the executive order to repeal the Global Gag Rule last week, there was an audible sigh of relief from the sexual and reproductive health community around the world.

Four years earlier, President Trump reinstated and later expanded the rule – also known as the Mexico City policy. The policy was initially introduced by President Reagan in 1984 to stop foreign organisations in receipt of United States family planning funding from providing abortion services, information, counseling, referrals or advocacy.

Continued: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/repealing-global-gag-rule-good-news-could-take-months-repair/

Malta – Science should guide all our health policies… including abortion

Science should guide all our health policies... including abortion
Our total abortion ban is no less dangerous or unhinged (or even idiotic, for that matter) than Donald Trump’s notorious recommendation to ‘drink bleach’ as an antidote to COVID-19

Raphael Vassallo
5 May 2020

I guess it had to take a major global health emergency to make us finally understand what should really have been obvious all along. Yes, Dr Fearne: our national policies should be based on scientific advice... and not on popular opinion, electoral concerns, or (still less) the demands of powerful lobby groups.

It is, in fact, thanks to the health authorities’ science-based approach that Malta has so far been spared the nightmare scenarios we have seen unfolding almost everywhere else in the world. As Fearne himself put it last Friday: “We are in today’s positive situation because from the very beginning we abided by what science was telling us, and what the numbers were suggesting.”

Continued: https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/comment/blogs/102116/science_should_guide_all_our_health_policies_including_abortion#.XrLpuMB7lPY

UK – Like Everything Else, Abortion Needs To Change After This

Like Everything Else, Abortion Needs To Change After This

Vicky Spratt
16 April 2020

Was the Health Secretary Matt Hancock gaslighting women in Britain when he allowed draft legislation permitting at-home abortions during the pandemic we’re currently living through to be published and unpublished? We will never know.

In the end, because of a cacophonous campaign from abortion experts at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and Marie Stopes, the government did a u-turn and confirmed that, for as long as this crisis rages on, women will be able to take abortion medication in the safety and comfort of their own home after a telephone consultation with a doctor (also known as telemedicine).

Continued: https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2020/04/9700087/abortion-law-change-during-coronavirus

UK – State control over women’s bodies is an unforeseen outcome of the coronavirus crisis

State control over women's bodies is an unforeseen outcome of the coronavirus crisis
A U-turn on women’s ability to access home abortions and the cancellation of IVF means they have less say over their fertility

Emma Barnett
Sun 29 Mar 2020

It’s been quite a week to have a womb in the UK.

First, pregnant women were suddenly categorised as vulnerable, and advised to stay home by the government. But then some of them were told to come back into work by their employers – including the riskiest of all, the NHS.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/29/state-control-womens-bodies-covid-19-crisis

N. Ireland – Abortion: Health bodies want laws for ‘safe and compassionate’ care

Abortion: Health bodies want laws for 'safe and compassionate' care

By Marie-Louise Connolly, BBC News NI Health Correspondent
Feb 5, 2029

Health bodies have recommended a legal framework be set up to "prioritise safe and compassionate abortion care" in NI.

They include the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), the Royal College of Midwives and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare.

The groups agree there should be no abortion restrictions up to 24 weeks.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-51379331

05.02.2020

Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare

Karen Murray

RCOG

Royal College of Midwives

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

travelling for abortion

UK – Women should be allowed to take abortion pills at home, doctors say

Women should be allowed to take abortion pills at home, doctors say
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says change could improve the accessibility of early medical abortion care for women

Sarah Young
Dec 1, 2019

Women should be allowed to take abortion pills from the comfort of their own home and without seeing a doctor face-to-face, leading doctors have said.

As part a new report titled “Better for Women”, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has called on the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to reconsider its guidelines regarding medical abortions.

Continued: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/abortion-pills-home-planned-parenthood-pregnancy-termination-a9228466.html

UK – RCOG launches “Better for Women” report

RCOG launches “Better for Women” report
UK women facing widespread barriers to essential healthcare services

RCOG News,
29 November 2019

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) is calling for better joined up services, as part of its “Better for Women” report, published today. It emphasises the need for national strategies to meet the needs of girls and women across their life course – from adolescence, to the middle years and later life.

There should also be greater focus on moving the UK away from providing a disease intervention service towards a preventative health service, says the report.

Continued; https://www.rcog.org.uk/en/news/rcog-launches-better-for-women-report/