27-05-2025
You thought abortion was legal in the UK? Your questions on our campaign to decriminlise abortion answered.
Last week, we, alongside UK abortion provider BPAS, launched a powerful new campaign, to decriminilise abortion in England and Wales.
While safe and legal abortions are available to most in the UK - roughly one in three women will have one in their lifetime - there's been a worrying rise in criminal cases being brought under a Victorian law dating back to 1861.
With support from 30+ healthcare and women's rights organisations, including The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, MSI Reproductive Choices and The Fawcett Society we are calling for abortion to be removed from this archaic legislation.
Put simply: we believe that abortion is a healthcare issue, not a criminal one, and no woman should face up to life imprisonment for ending a pregnancy.
We also want to ring-fence our rights. With powerful anti-choice groups gaining traction in the UK, we need, now more than ever, to protect our access to abortion services. Getting behind our campaign is simple, all we need you to do is email your MP, with our simple to use template, found here.
But, if you have any questions surrounding the campaign we're keen to hear them. We have taken the most common ones and answered them, with the help of experts who work directly in the field, below…
It is, but only under set conditions. The 1967 Abortion Act sets out grounds and circumstances in which women can access legal abortion care, such as each request for an abortion having to be approved by two doctors. 'Any woman who ends a pregnancy outside of the terms of the Abortion Act - for example, if she uses pills bought online - can face up to life imprisonment,' explains Katherine O'Brien from BPAS. 'This is under a law that was passed in 1861, a time when women weren't even allowed to vote.'
In the past three years, in England, six women have appeared in court charged with ending or attempting to end their own pregnancy, outside of the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act. Most recently, we saw Nicola Packer, who had been prescribed abortion medicine over the phone, in November 2020 (in the midst of the pandemic). The legal limit for taking medication, at home, to end a pregnancy is ten weeks but she was charged by police with "unlawfully administering to herself a poison or other noxious thing" with the "intent to procure a miscarriage". The prosecution argued that Nicola knew she had been pregnant for longer than that, and therefore broke the law.
Nicola was found not guilty and was cleared by a jury. But, the relentless pursuit, questioning and having to face the courts was incredibly traumatic for her. She was arrested in hospital, by uniformed police officers, the case took four-and-a-half years to reach court and, when it did, her sex life and other private details were splashed all over the papers.
'Many more women are being harmed by this cruel and outdated law,' says O'Brien. 'Abortion providers report that for every woman that ends up in court, at least ten others are subjected to prolonged police investigations. This includes women who have experienced stillbirths or gone into premature labour and are suspected of having taken medication to end their pregnancies.' We recently reported that police have been given new guidance on how to search a woman's phone, home and period tracking apps after a pregnancy loss, if an illegal abortion is suspected.
In Scotland, just like in England and Wales, abortion is legal up to 24 weeks, providing two doctors sign off on it. However, Scotland is a little different as they have some autonomy over abortion law. Our campaign is currently focusing on the law in England and Wales because this is where we are seeing the law being used to investigate and prosecute women and girls.
Decriminalisation does not mean deregulation. It means removing the specific criminal sanctions attached to abortion. It would still be regulated, like any comparable form of healthcare, it would just stop women being investigated and threatened with life imprisonment, if they were suspected, by the police or their healthcare provider, of having an illegal abortion.
Across the world, nearly 50 countries, provinces, and territories do not criminalise women who seek to end their pregnancy outside the law. These include Canada, New Zealand, and Northern Ireland.
There is no evidence that decriminalising abortion would increase the sale of pills from non-licensed or non-reputable sellers. 'This doesn't happen in any country where abortion is decriminalised,' explains Louise McCudden, Head of External Affairs at MSI. 'On the contrary, the greater the legal restrictions on abortion, the more likely it is that some people fall outside the parameters of the law and end up purchasing pills online or ending their pregnancies in other ways.'
Most people who get an abortion in the UK do so legally from a regulated, licensed provider, usually through the NHS (even if the provider is an independent charity like MSI Reproductive Choices UK or BPAS). 'Thanks to having a publicly funded health service which covers reproductive healthcare, there's a lot less room for opportunists to exploit gaps – but what we want to see is a situation where decriminalisation closes the potential for that altogether,' says McCudden.
We are not asking for the time limit to be changed. Decriminilisation does not change the time limit, or any of the other regulations that currently surround abortion. 'In countries like Canada where abortion has been decriminalised, there has been no change in the average gestation at which abortion is carried out,' says McCudden.
In the UK, in 2021, 89% of abortions took place before 10 weeks, with the overwhelming majority of the other 11% falling before 12 weeks. Only 1% take place over 20 weeks. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and other medical bodies continue to recommend abortion is provided up until 24 weeks, and beyond that only if there's an exceptional reason, like saving the pregnant person's life. 'Decriminalisation isn't about changing that, it's about saying that the time limit shouldn't be enforced by threatening women, who are often very vulnerable, with prison,' adds McCudden. 'The specific reform that we're backing from MPs right now is a very simple reform which removes the person ending their own pregnancy from criminal law without changing any other aspect of the law or provision. That means anyone providing abortion would still be subject to the same laws, including those which relate to time limits.'
'Abortion is one of the most heavily regulated areas of healthcare, despite being one of the safest and most common,' explains McCudden. 'None of this would change. The only aspect of the law that we are asking to change right now is that women themselves aren't investigated in relation to their own pregnancies. Regulations, time limits, licensing, safety, and safeguarding would remain exactly the same.'
The police would be able to investigate people who sell unlicensed or unlawful abortion pills the same way they do now.
'It is extremely rare for anyone to end a pregnancy beyond the medically recommended time limit, and that continues to be true in countries where abortion has been decriminalised, like Canada,' explains McCudden. MSI Reproductive Choices work in 36 countries across the world. '89% of abortions in England and Wales take place under 10 weeks' gestation and only 1% take place over 20 weeks.' In the very rare event that an abortion is necessary to save the life of the pregnant person or if there is a serious risk of a foetal anomaly, abortion is currently legal beyond 24 weeks gestation – this accounts for just 0.1% of all abortion procedures. 'These cases involve extremely difficult decisions, especially for people who find themselves having to decide whether to terminate a wanted pregnancy because of an unexpected health risk,' McCudden explains.
As for those who have, in very, very rare cases, ended their own pregnancy beyond the medically appropriate time limit, this is often under incredibly complex circumstances. 'People may not have the full nuance of this from media reports or even court documents,' McCudden explains. 'These can include coercion, trafficking, abuse, and sexual assault and are, unfortunately, not always documented or even recognised by parts of the criminal justice system.' Again, these cases where a woman ends their own pregnancy beyond the medically appropriate time limit, and where this isn't due to saving the life of the pregnant person or serious risk of a foetal anomaly, account for less than 0.1%.
'The idea of encouraging or discouraging an abortion is at odds with the reality of how people make decisions about their reproductive health,' says McCudden. 'If a pregnancy is wanted, why would somebody decide to have an abortion simply because the law has changed? Many factors play a part in why people need or choose an abortion, but I have never heard of a woman deciding to have an abortion purely because it's legal. The abortion rate does not rise when abortion is criminalised, and it doesn't fall when abortion access is restricted. If there's one thing we know from our global work it is that restricting abortion does not stop abortion happening – it simply makes it less safe.'
As we have seen from the spike in investigations, prosecutions and new police guidance, this ancient law is being used more and more, in cases that have a profound, lasting and damaging impact on women's lives. This spike has also come at a time when far-right politicians are gaining traction in the UK (Nigel Farage has been quoted in a statement by an American organisation that campaigns to outlaw abortion entirely.) And, while the majority of the country is pro-choice, with 90% of us supporting access to abortion, we cannot underestimate the power (and money) being gained by groups who want to see our rights reversed, like they were in America. They can use this outdated law to help gain power of our bodily autonomy. We can't let their voice, which is the minority, become louder than ours. It's time to speak up.
Catriona Innes is Commissioning Director at Cosmopolitan, you can follow her on Instagram.
Catriona Innes is Cosmopolitan UK's multiple award-winning Commissioning Editor, who has won BSME awards both for her longform investigative journalism as well as for leading the Cosmopolitan features department. Alongside commissioning and editing the features section, both online and in print, Catriona regularly writes her own hard-hitting investigations spending months researching some of the most pressing issues affecting young women today.
She has spent time undercover with specialist police forces, domestic abuse social workers and even Playboy Bunnies to create articles that take readers to the heart of the story. Catriona is also a published author, poet and volunteers with a number of organisations that directly help the homeless community of London. She's often found challenging her weak ankles in towering heels through the streets of Soho. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
