LONDON — U.K. MPs just liberalized a 164-year-old abortion law with typical British understatement. Now, to hope that Donald Trump’s America doesn’t notice.
The House of Commons voted 379-137 Tuesday night to remove criminal sanctions for women having their own abortion in England and Wales, partially unpicking a law passed in 1861.
It was a moment in history, but backers who took pains to paint it as a narrow, common-sense reform largely achieved their goal. A young, socially liberal crop of MPs supported it overwhelmingly, and more far-reaching proposed changes did not come to a vote.
While MPs were inundated with lobbying and exchanged heated debate, the reform was passed via a simple amendment to a wider bill. The volume of controversy and front pages did not reach the level of another ongoing issue of conscience, assisted dying.
The basic principle of abortion access appears largely settled; fewer than 100 MPs sat through the two-hour debate.
“I think there is something pretty inherently British about going ‘well, I might disagree, but it’s not really my business, is it?’,” argued Rachael Clarke, head of advocacy at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), a large-scale abortion provider that campaigns for abortion rights.
The U.S. is not the same.
With individual states refereeing abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade three years ago, public debate is fractious — and pro-abortion rights campaigners believe that could spill over into the U.K.
In February, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance attacked “safe zones” that prevent protests near abortion clinics in England and Wales, saying: “basic liberties of religious Britons” were under threat.
Nigel Farage, whose populist party Reform U.K. is leading opinion polls, said last month: “I am pro-choice, but I think it’s ludicrous … that we can allow abortion up to 24 weeks.”
One Labour Party staff member, granted anonymity to speak frankly, argued Tuesday’s reform could open “a bag of worms” and lead to a “spectacular own goal” for pro-abortion rights campaigners in the long term.
They added: “Many perfectly decent people question whether it is right to end a pregnancy as late as 24 weeks — far later than permitted in most Western countries — yet these MPs choose to offer early Christmas presents to Reform by laying radical amendments that will reopen the abortion debate at a particularly dangerous time.”
An abortion law in place since 1861
While abortion has been legal in Britain since 1967, it remained a crime since 1861 for a woman to “procure her own miscarriage” if certain conditions, including a maximum 24-week time limit, were not met.
That — and a loosening of restrictions on at-home abortion pills during the COVID-19 pandemic — led to high-profile cases of vulnerable women being dragged through the courts.
Nicola Packer, 45, was cleared of having an illegal abortion last month after she took abortion pills during lockdown in 2020, unaware she was already 26 weeks pregnant.
Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi told MPs Packer was “taken from her hospital bed” by police to face the “indignity” of a four-and-a-half-year legal process. “This is not justice, this is cruelty, and it has got to end,” she said.
Antoniazzi’s amendment was therefore aimed at women using at-home abortion pills, as criminal sanctions will still apply to medical professionals.
But a letter by more than 1,000 medical professionals, arranged by the anti-abortion campaign group Right to Life, argued it would make dangerous late-term abortions “possible up to birth for any reason,” including choosing the child’s sex.
Liberal Democrat MP Angus MacDonald put it more bluntly in Tuesday’s debate — asking what would happen if a woman carrying a baby at full term “decides it is an inconvenience.”
Antoniazzi was “appalled” by these suggestions. “This is not about abortion up to 40 weeks,” she told POLITICO. “It’s not about changing the Abortion Act. It’s not about selective sex. It’s just not all of those things that we are getting bombarded with in our inboxes, and it’s a misrepresentation, and it’s really, really unfair to those women that have been in the criminal system.”
A ‘song and dance’
Labour MP Stella Creasy also wanted to decriminalize abortion, but took a different approach. She proposed a more far-reaching amendment — which did not come to a vote for procedural reasons — to repeal the 1861 law entirely and establish a new framework in its place, including enshrining abortion access as a human right.
Creasy proposed to create a “lock” on ministers, reducing access to abortion services in the future, such as if Farage becomes prime minister in 2029.
She pointed to U.S. campaigners who “bitterly regret not having acted under Biden and Obama,” telling MPs: “Those who feel content that abortion is a settled matter and cannot be weaponized in our politics need to listen to the drumbeat that is already banging loudly in this country.”
But the reception she received suggests British pro-abortion rights campaigners are at pains not to make the first move in a U.S.-style culture war.
BPAS and other abortion providers circulated a briefing to MPs saying Creasy’s amendment would “rip up the Abortion Act” of 1967 and give future ministers a “blank slate” to rewrite the law, because they could undo any lock.
Pro-abortion rights campaigners who opposed Creasy’s amendment also quietly hope her warnings will not come true — that the social fabric in the U.S. and U.K. is just too different.
Clarke said: “I think people see what’s happening over there very much as a cautionary tale — [that] things they previously thought were safe and beyond any sort of rolling back.” But she added, “The anti-abortion movement in the U.S. and the U.K. is fundamentally religious by nature. I think the difference genuinely is that the degree to which your man on the street or woman on the street is religious in the U.K., and in the U.S., is very different.”
A Labour MP, granted anonymity to speak frankly, added: “Our [political] right don’t believe in divine intervention. Our religious wars were 400 years ago.” Gesturing around parliament, the MP added: “Sure, there are paintings of them all over this place, but they’re mostly behind us.”
‘Procedural ambush’
The debate was, of course, active and heated in the U.K. in its own way.
Conservative MP Caroline Johnson proposed a separate amendment — which failed by 379 votes to 117 — to mandate in-person appointments before a woman could obtain abortion pills. She argued it would stop women having traumatic late-term abortions by accident, and ensure they were not coerced.
Tuesday’s debate was scattered with outspoken MPs opposing decriminalization. One, Conservative Julia Lopez, said: “We are being asked to rewrite a profound boundary in British law that protects the unborn child with two hours of debate on a Tuesday afternoon. That is not responsible lawmaking — that is procedural ambush.”
Feelings run high, and each side fears the other’s proposals are only a first step. Indeed, this is what some campaigners want; Antoniazzi told MPs “abortion law needs wider reform,” but argued the right way is “through a future bill.”
Likewise, new Reform MP Sarah Pochin called for the 24-week time limit to be cut during Tuesday’s debate, mirroring the argument of her leader, Farage.
Pro-abortion rights campaigners are looking warily at Reform’s poll rating and public opinion. In an Ipsos poll of 1,062 Brits last month, 72 percent said abortion should be legal in all or most cases — but this dropped to 46 percent for men aged 16 to 34.
Antoniazzi, for her part, accepts that the gap between the tone of debate in the U.K. and U.S. could narrow.
“We are a far more liberal society,” she said, but “this is coming down the line. Women’s rights are being attacked, and they’re being attacked from America and Trump and Vance and all of that.”
She added: “I only want women to not be criminalized. That’s all I want — to take them out of the law with a very simple amendment. I don’t want it to be a song and dance, I don’t want to be front and center.”
That’s the British way. In future, campaigners could find they no longer have that choice.
Emilio Casalicchio contributed reporting.
The post MPs vote to decriminalize abortion, the English way. What will the US say? appeared first on Politico.
