UK votes to decriminalise abortion after prosecutions of some women
British parliamentarians have voted to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales after concerns sparked by the prosecution of women who end a pregnancy.
The House of Commons approved an amendment to a broader bill on Tuesday that would prevent women from being criminally punished under an antiquated law.
Currently, a woman can face criminal charges for choosing to end a pregnancy after 24 weeks or without the approval of two doctors, under laws that technically still carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The amendment passed 379-137. The House of Commons will now need to pass the crime bill, which is expected, before it goes to the House of Lords, where it can be delayed but not blocked.
Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, the Labour member of Parliament who introduced one of the amendments, said the change was needed because police have investigated more than 100 women for suspected illegal abortions over the past five years, including some who suffered natural miscarriages and stillbirths.
'This piece of legislation will only take women out of the criminal justice system because they are vulnerable and they need our help,' she said. 'Just what public interest is this serving? This is not justice, it is cruelty and it has got to end.'
Changes in the law implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic allow women to receive abortion pills through the mail and terminate their own pregnancies at home within the first 10 weeks.
That has led to a handful of widely publicised cases in which women were prosecuted for illegally obtaining abortion pills and using them to end their own pregnancies after 24 weeks.
In May, Nicola Packer was acquitted after taking abortion medicine when she was around 26 weeks pregnant, beyond the legal limit of 10 weeks for taking such medication at home.
The 45-year-old told jurors during her trial, which came after a four-year police investigation, that she did not realise she had been pregnant for so long.
Carla Foster was jailed in 2023 for illegally obtaining abortion tablets to end her pregnancy when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant. The Court of Appeal eventually suspended her sentence.
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Al Jazeera
11 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
UK votes to decriminalise abortion after prosecutions of some women
British parliamentarians have voted to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales after concerns sparked by the prosecution of women who end a pregnancy. The House of Commons approved an amendment to a broader bill on Tuesday that would prevent women from being criminally punished under an antiquated law. Currently, a woman can face criminal charges for choosing to end a pregnancy after 24 weeks or without the approval of two doctors, under laws that technically still carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The amendment passed 379-137. The House of Commons will now need to pass the crime bill, which is expected, before it goes to the House of Lords, where it can be delayed but not blocked. Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, the Labour member of Parliament who introduced one of the amendments, said the change was needed because police have investigated more than 100 women for suspected illegal abortions over the past five years, including some who suffered natural miscarriages and stillbirths. 'This piece of legislation will only take women out of the criminal justice system because they are vulnerable and they need our help,' she said. 'Just what public interest is this serving? This is not justice, it is cruelty and it has got to end.' Changes in the law implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic allow women to receive abortion pills through the mail and terminate their own pregnancies at home within the first 10 weeks. That has led to a handful of widely publicised cases in which women were prosecuted for illegally obtaining abortion pills and using them to end their own pregnancies after 24 weeks. In May, Nicola Packer was acquitted after taking abortion medicine when she was around 26 weeks pregnant, beyond the legal limit of 10 weeks for taking such medication at home. The 45-year-old told jurors during her trial, which came after a four-year police investigation, that she did not realise she had been pregnant for so long. Carla Foster was jailed in 2023 for illegally obtaining abortion tablets to end her pregnancy when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant. The Court of Appeal eventually suspended her sentence.
Al Jazeera
15 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
What is the Casey report on UK grooming gangs – and why did Labour U-turn?
The British government has announced a national inquiry into organised child sexual abuse following the release of a damning report by Baroness Louise Casey that criticised decades of institutional failure to protect children from so-called 'grooming gangs'. It marks a remarkable U-turn by the Labour Party government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which had resisted months of calls for an inquiry, stating that it was focusing on recommendations already made in an earlier seven-year probe. But what exactly is the Casey Report, and what drove Labour's abrupt change of course? Commissioned earlier this year by Starmer, the Casey Report is a review of how United Kingdom institutions have tackled child sexual exploitation. The review focused on 'grooming gangs' – groups of men who targeted vulnerable girls for sexual abuse, often over extended periods of time. The report identified an institutional failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, exploitation and serious violence. Among its recommendations, the Casey Report suggested a change in the law so adults in England and Wales face mandatory rape charges if they intentionally penetrate a child under age 16. In her report, Casey concluded that too many grooming cases have been dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges because a 13- to 15-year-old is perceived to have been 'in love with' or have 'consented to' sex with the perpetrator. Her review also highlighted reluctance by the authorities to 'examine the ethnicity of the offenders', saying it was not racist to do so. In the local data that the audit examined from three police forces, they identified clear evidence of 'over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men'. However, the review also criticised the ongoing failure to collect ethnicity at a national level, with it not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, making it impossible 'to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data'. Yes. The UK's Home Secretary Yvette Cooper confirmed the government would accept all 12 recommendations in the Casey Report. This means the police will launch a new national criminal operation targeting grooming gangs, overseen by the National Crime Agency (NCA). This operation would be overseen by an independent commission with powers to compel witnesses to provide evidence. It would also go ahead with a national inquiry, with Starmer stating that he had read 'every single word' of the report and would accept Casey's recommendation for an investigation. Richard Scorer, the head of Abuse Law and Public Inquiries at Slater and Gordon, a law firm, told Al Jazeera that the sheer size of the scandal and the fact that it had affected thousands of children made it 'inevitable' that there would need to be a public inquiry about it at some point. US billionaire Elon Musk's online references to the grooming scandal that emerged a decade ago in several towns and cities in northern England had also pushed the 'issue up the political agenda', he said. In June 2022, an independent review found that the police and local council had failed to prevent sexual exploitation of young girls by gangs in Oldham, a town in Greater Manchester in England. Two years later, political leaders in Oldham Council called for the government to investigate further, but then-Home Office Minister Jess Phillips rejected the council's request, saying it should lead an investigation itself. In January this year, Musk threw his weight behind far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson and had been outspoken on the issue. He called for Robinson, a controversial political figure, then serving an 18-month jail term for contempt of court, to be freed, writing on his own social media platform X, 'Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth?' Musk also accused Starmer of failing to prosecute child rapists when he was director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013. He also took aim at Minister for Safeguarding Jess Phillips, calling her 'a rape genocide apologist'. Starmer responded at the time, without mentioning Musk by name. 'Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves,' the PM said. Experts say it's certainly a positive step. William Tantam, a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Bristol, who has worked on a previous independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, said that from a researcher's perspective, the main positive was that there would be more consistency and clarity in data. He said that another positive is that inquiry panel will have the authority to compel agencies to participate. Scorer noted that bringing in the NCA to investigate cases that haven't progressed in the past is also a very welcome outcome of the report. He said in the UK, different police forces have not always succeeded in coordinating their efforts to tackle grooming gangs, so a more centralised overview from the NCA might secure 'a better coordination of police activity'. Cooper told Parliament on Monday that more than 800 cases have now been identified for formal review, and she expects that figure to rise above 1,000 in the coming weeks. But Scorer warned that the government would need to assign an additional budget for the implementation of the changes recommended by Casey. 'If you are asking the NCA to reopen and investigate, potentially up to 1000 cases, that's going to require a huge amount of resources,' he said. 'Who's going to pay for that? That's one of the questions that the government is going to need to answer.'
Al Jazeera
21 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Who is Blaise Metreweli, first female head of Britain's MI6?
The British government on Sunday appointed Blaise Metreweli as the country's first woman to serve as chief of the UK's foreign spy service MI6. But though she will be the first woman to lead the agency, Britain – and the world – have long had women play leading roles in espionage. So who is Metreweli, what does the boss of MI6 – also known as 'C' – do, and who are some of the other female spies that have left a mark on the field? Metreweli, 47, is a career intelligence officer. Until her appointment as head of MI6, she was the director general of technology and innovation at MI6, also known as 'Q'. She joined MI6 as a case officer in 1999, and has held a range of roles since then. She has worked in Europe and the Middle East for the agency, and speaks Arabic, according to United Kingdom media. In the past, she has also worked at MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency. She studied anthropology at Cambridge University's Pembroke College. The chief is the only publicly named member of MI6 staff and reports directly to the British foreign secretary, a position currently held by David Lammy. M16 was formed in 1909 and collects overseas intelligence to understand threats to, and opportunities for, the UK and its overseas interests. The agency also works in tandem with other British intelligence services, including MI5 and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which focuses on intercepting and analysing electronic signals and also works on cybersecurity. MI6 also works on key partnerships such as the Five Eyes which comprise Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the United States. Metreweli will be MI6's 18th C. She will replace Richard Moore, who led the agency for the past five years. Reacting to Metreweli's appointment, Moore said: 'I am absolutely delighted by this historic appointment of my colleague, Blaise Metreweli to succeed me as 'C'. Blaise is a highly accomplished intelligence officer and leader, and one of our foremost thinkers on technology.' In 2021, Moore said that China was the single greatest priority for M16. Recently, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted that Russia poses a threat to Europe. While announcing a boost in defence infrastructure earlier this month, Starmer said: 'The threat we face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War.' A common misconception is that C stands for chief. The chief is actually called C because Naval Officer Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first to become chief in 1909 signed his name as C. The practice has stuck since, Moore, the outgoing C, told BBC Radio 4 in 2021. Another immortalised practice in the spy service is that C only writes in green ink, physically and digitally, because Cumming would tend to do so, according to Moore. 'Anyone getting a note in green ink knows it comes from me, and the same is true of the typescript on my computer,' Moore said in 2021. Three years before Judi Dench played the first female boss of MI6 in the James Bond film, GoldenEye, Stella Rimington became the first woman director general of the real MI5 after working in different roles in the service since 1969. In 2002, Eliza Manningham-Buller became the director general of MI5 after working for the service since 1974. Anne Keast-Butler currently leads GCHQ. She was previously the deputy director general of M15. In the US, Tulsi Gabbard currently serves as the director of national intelligence for President Donald Trump. Her predecessor under former US President Joe Biden was also a woman, Avril Haines. Gina Haspel was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2018 to 2021. In Australia, Kerri Hartland leads the foreign intelligence collection agency, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). During World War II in particular, women played an important role in espionage. Prominent spies for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) included Noor Inayat Khan, Violette Szabo and Krystyna Skarbek. Szabo, who spent time in France during her childhood and could speak French fluently, was on a mission in France when she was captured by the Nazis and executed in a concentration camp. Inayat Khan was a radio operator sent to Nazi-occupied France, where she was arrested and executed by the Gestapo, the secret police service of Nazi Germany. Skarbek, also known by her codename Christine Granville was a Polish SOE agent, carrying out missions across Nazi-occupied Europe and escaping German capture twice. During World War II, American spy Virginia Hall evaded the Gestapo, organising groups of agents, recruiting French residents for safe houses and helping escaped prisoners of war. Melita Norwood, a British citizen, was one of the longest-serving spies for the Soviet Union, serving for nearly four decades from World War II through the Cold War. She provided the Soviet Union with information about the British atomic weapons programme. British intelligence was only able to confirm she was a spy in the late 1990s, long after she had retired. She died in 2005, aged 93.
