What is the law on abortion in the UK as MPs prepare to vote on decriminalisation?
MPs are set to vote this summer on whether abortion should be decriminalised in England and Wales.
Two Labour backbenchers are reportedly putting forward proposals to change the current law around abortion, which would remove the threat of women being prosecuted for ending their own pregnances.
The Abortion Act 1967 allows women to end their pregnancies but only in specific circumstances - under medical supervision up to 24 weeks, or beyond in certain circumstances, such as if the mother's life is at risk or the foetus has a serious abnormality.
Campaigners have been calling for changes to the law, bringing legislation in English and Welsh in line with Northern Ireland where abortion was fully decriminalised in 2020, as well as other countries.
Previous plans to table amendments ran out of time before the 2024 general election but are now set to come before MPs in what will be the second so-called 'vote of conscience' this year, alongside the Assisted Dying bill.
With changes on the horizon, Yahoo News looks at the current law around abortion and what amendments would mean.
It is a criminal offence in England, Wales and Scotland for a woman to procure her own abortion.
However, the Abortion Act 1967 allows for abortions under specific circumstances, including up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, or occasionally later if the mother's life is at risk or if the foetus has a severe abnormality.
This means that the Abortion Act does not grant a right to an abortion, but makes prosecution exempt in certain circumstances.
According to campaigners, this means women who end a pregnancy outside of these parameters face criminalisation and potential prosecution.
Inducing a miscarriage can be punishable with up to life in prison.
A briefing document by a group of organisations calling for changes to the law, says: "As it stands, England and Wales has the most severe penalty for having an 'illegal' abortion in the world – a maximum sentence of life in prison."
Most illegal abortions are prosecuted under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, but until 2022 it is believed that only three women had ever been convicted.
However, an investigation by Sky News suggested that there has been a rise in the number of people being investigated, and in some cases prosecuted, over so-called "illegal" abortions in recent years.
It found that between 2023 and 2024, 29 people in England and Wales were recorded as under police investigation on suspicion of "procuring an illegal abortion" or the "intentional destruction of a viable unborn child".
According to data collected by the Guardian from the Crown Prosecution Service, 13 people made a first appearance at a magistrates court charged with abortion-related offences in 2022; four people in 2019; and three in each of 2020 and 2021.
Separate data from around half of Britain's police forces, showed at least 11 people were arrested in 2023 on suspicion of child destruction or inducing a miscarriage, including a 31-year-old woman in north Wales 'reported to have taken illicit substances to initiate an abortion'.
The briefing note around potential changes to the law cited the example of a woman sentenced to 28 months in prison for using abortion pills to end her own pregnancy in England in 2023, and said that at the time of the document's production two other women awaited similar trials.
It also cited examples including:-
Seven police officers arrived at the home of a woman who had called an ambulance when her baby was born prematurely, about 18 months ago. They searched her bins and provided no assistance while she performed mouth-to-mouth on her unconscious child, who was still attached to her placenta by umbilical cord. Mother and baby survived.
A vulnerable 17-year-old girl presented to abortion services in the early days of the pandemic. She was unable to travel to a clinic on two occasions owing to COVID restrictions so passed the legal abortion limit and was referred to children's services and antenatal care. Soon after, she delivered a stillborn baby at home. She was investigated by the police on suspicion of abortion law offences.
A woman was taken to hospital by ambulance owing to complications from early medical abortion medication that she was given after a medical consultation this year. She believed she was ten weeks pregnant, but it emerged she was actually at 19 weeks. Despite being within five weeks of the legal abortion limit when she was discharged from hospital in the early hours, she returned home to find a police cordon and officers searching her property.
Campaigners say a change in the law would remove the threat of criminal investigation and prosecution for women who end their own pregnancies in England and Wales.
It has previously been suggested that the proposed changes would have no impact on the provision of abortion care, or the laws that govern doctors, nurses and midwives.
This would mean that there would still be a 24-week time limit and in exceptional circumstances beyond, and there would be no change to the 10-week limit on telemedicine, agreed by Parliament in 2022.
Abortions would still require two doctors' signatures to be legally provided and women would still have to meet one of the grounds laid out in the Abortion Act 1967.
Louise McCudden from abortion provider MSI - one of more than 30 organisations including the British Medical Association, Women's Aid, and the Royal College of Gynaecologists that is calling for politicians to look again at the law - previously told Sky News: "We don't believe abortion should be a crime.
"It's healthcare, and it should be regulated the same as any other healthcare."
Women can have an abortion surgically, or can take two pills, known as a medical termination.
Previously women would need to take the first pill under medical supervision, but in 2020 emergency legislation meant they could receive both pills by post after a remote consultation.
What was the biggest change to abortion provision since 1967 was made permanent in 2022.
According to campaigners, nearly 50 countries do not criminalise women who seek to end their pregnancy outside the law, including Northern Ireland, France, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
They argue that even countries with strong anti-abortion laws do not criminalise women under their strict abortion laws, including the USA and Poland.
In June 2022, the US supreme court ruled that there was no constitutional right to abortion, with the laws now decided at state level, resulting in the banning of abortion in more than a dozen states.
Woman tearfully says she would not have had abortion if she knew pregnancy stage (PA)
Scots women 'still having to travel to England for abortions' (Daily Record)
What has Trump said about abortion rights in the US? (Yahoo News)
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