Women who’ve had late-term miscarriages are seeing police officers, not counsellors, by their hospital beds. At the same time, the leader of the fastest growing political party has called the 24-week abortion limit ‘ludicrous’.
This is the UK in 2025, because as Labour MP Stella Creasy recently put it: ‘The Trump playbook is already here in our politics.’
But tonight, MPs made a historic move, voting to finally decriminalise abortion in England and Wales after 60 long years.
It represents a ‘monumental change to our abortion law’, says Katherine O’Brien, from the leading abortion provider BPAS. But let’s not forget why it was needed; women’s reproductive rights are under threat.
‘Increasingly, women are being investigated by police under suspicion of illegally ending their own pregnancy, and this includes women who’ve experienced miscarriages, stillbirth and access to legal care, and the impact that can have on their lives, their family, is unimaginable,’ O’Brien tells Metro.
‘This vote will mean that will come to an end, and that is a huge, huge achievement.’
A recap on the law changes
Abortion is technically illegal in England and Wales under a piece of Victorian legislation, though in practice, termination is allowed up to 24 weeks (and in a few other circumstances) provided two doctors have signed it off, meeting the criteria of the 1967 Abortion Act.
Two Labour MPs – Tonia Antoniazzi and Stella Creasy – tabled (slightly different) amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill, both of which would decriminalise abortion in law, but not alter the access framework.
In Creasy’s version, access to abortion would become a human right, with women who access abortion outside of the framework – and those who assist them – decriminalised.
Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi’s version is a little less hardline, maintaining criminalisation for doctors performing late-term or sex-selective procedures.
The latter amendment was voted for by 379 MPs, with 137 voting no.
In the past three years, six women have appeared in court in England charged with ending or attempting to end their own pregnancy outside abortion law.
Abortion provider MSI Choices is aware of 60 criminal inquiries in England and Wales since 2018, compared to almost zero before. It’s often the most vulnerable women who are affected.
‘Women who have been investigated by the police include domestic abuse survivors, potential trafficking survivors, and women who have experienced miscarriages and stillbirths,’ Louise McCudden from MSI Reproductive Choices UK tells Metro.
‘At a time when they need compassion the most, they have been stigmatised and treated like criminals.’
O’Brien has heard of harrowing tales through her work, including one recently of a woman who accessed abortion pills through a legal provider, believing she was earlier in her pregnancy than she was.
‘She then went on to have a baby, who she now cares for, but is still being investigated by the police under suspicion that she illegally tried to end her pregnancy,’ she says.
She’s spoken with another woman, Sammy, who considered termination, but decided to continue with that pregnancy.
‘When she went into premature labour at home, she called the emergency services thinking that an ambulance would arrive, but actually it was the police that arrived first to search for evidence of abortion pills.’
In January, the National Police Chiefs’ Council quietly published new guidance on investigating women who experience sudden unexpected pregnancy loss. The guidance details how women can have their devices seized to search history – plus period tracking apps – to determine whether they knew they were pregnant and how far along.
‘This is what’s going on in our country right now,’ O’Brien says. ‘These are stories that you would expect to hear from Texas or Poland, not England in 2025, and while the numbers are small, they are growing.’
A bittersweet celebration…
Though abortion providers and pro-choice campaigners have almost unanimously backed the amendment, its need is a reflection of dark times.
‘We’re certainly seeing a rise in anti-choice activity around the world. It’s being driven largely by the US,’ McCudden says.
‘We saw the reversal of Roe v Wade. We saw the re-election of Donald Trump in the White House, and before safe access zones were introduced, we saw a rise in hostile activity on the doorsteps of our clinics.’
She believes anti-abortion groups in the UK have been ‘emboldened’ by the rollback of rights in the US – a sentiment echoed by Stella Creasy, who said she tabled her bill as a pre-emptive strike against a hypothetical Reform government. Last year, Nigel Farage called the UK’s current 24-week abortion limit ‘ludicrous’.
‘I listen to my colleagues in America. I listen to their warnings,’ Creasy told The News Agents podcast. ‘What they say is, we really regret having not acted when we had the chance to protect abortion rights under Obama, because we knew if Trump got into power, even though he was saying that he wouldn’t do this and it wasn’t his agenda, he would.’
Nobody can ‘bind a future government’, Creasy added, but decriminalisation sets an important precedent.
As well as voting on decriminalisation, MPs also voted on whether to scrap telemedicine (pills by post) – a system that allows women to take abortion pills at home. The amendment, which didn’t pass, was supported by a group of cross-party MPs, including Reform’s Richard Tice.
‘Even though decriminalisation is a huge step forward, what we have seen in parliament this evening is a concerted attack,’ O’Brien says of the telemedicine amendment.
She adds that tonight’s change is ‘a really important step’, but ‘this isn’t the end.’
‘There is still so much more to do to our abortion law into the 21st Century. It’s still the case that two doctors need to sign off a woman’s abortion – there’s no other comparable procedure where two doctors need to approve your decision. Is that the framework that we believe suits women in 2025?
Like Creasy, she also has concerns about what the rise of Reform might mean.
‘This isn’t a party line issue, but we are aware that Nigel Farage himself is anti-abortion and would like to reduce the limit. That is a concern, but that’s why we have to remain vigilant, and that’s why we have to make the progress that we can now, and absolutely it can’t wait, because if we wait, we risk another government coming in that won’t allow us to make the changes that we need to see.’
‘We absolutely need to remain vigilant, because anti-abortion groups are well-funded, well-organised, and often they shout the loudest.’
