In December, Natalie Towers, a young mother from Durham, was sentenced for ending her pregnancy at 32 weeks using pills she'd bought online.
When a woman feels she has no choice but to cause her own abortion in this way, you would hope that she would be viewed with compassion, and not treated as a criminal. Unfortunately, this is not the case: she was jailed for two-and-a-half years.
This tragic rare case highlights a broader issue that affects us all: from Belfast to Brighton, pregnant women's decisions about what to do with their own bodies are policed by the criminal law. In every nation of the UK a woman can go to prison for ending her own pregnancy without the legal authorisation of doctors – from the moment a fertilised egg implants.
The 1861 Offences Against the Person Act threatens life imprisonment to any woman who ends her own pregnancy. This is the harshest punishment for self-induced abortion of any country in Europe, bar the Republic of Ireland.
The 1967 Abortion Act is often seen as a victory of the women's rights movement, but it didn't actually overwrite the 1861 Act – rather, it opened up loopholes. Now, a woman is exempt from prosecution when two doctors certify that she meets certain criteria; most commonly that her mental or physical health would suffer if she were forced to continue her pregnancy. In other words, it is perfectly lawful for a woman to be forced to continue a pregnancy if doctors judge her able to cope with the child.
Women's agency is painted entirely out of the picture. Responsibility is turned over to doctors in a way that doesn't happen with any other routine medical procedure. While the work of committed medical professionals means that most women can get the abortion they need, this is beside the point. The criminalisation of abortion makes a mockery of the equal status that women fight for in every other area of life, represents discrimination against women, and stigmatises the one in three women who will have an abortion. Women should not have to battle outdated Victorian legislation for control over their reproductive rights.
Abortion is a medical procedure that has emancipated women, enabling them to have children at the time they think is right with the person of their choosing. It is accepted as a back-up when contraception fails, or when we fail to use it as well as we might; it is an established part of family planning, and is commissioned and funded by the NHS. It therefore makes no sense that it sits within a criminal framework. It runs entirely counter to all principles of bodily autonomy and patient-centred care to deny a woman the right to make her own decisions about whether to accept the physical imposition and risks posed by pregnancy and childbirth.
Our neighbours in France, Sweden and the Netherlands do not send women to prison for inducing their own miscarriages. Even Poland, where abortion is all but outlawed, does not prosecute women who cause their own abortions. The use of the criminal law to punish women in the UK serves no purpose. It is not a deterrent, as any woman who feels desperate enough to try to end her own pregnancy will find a way to do so, and it cannot be seen as an appropriate punishment for a heinous crime, given that legal abortions are approved every day.
Taking abortion out of the criminal law and regulating it like other healthcare services won't lead to unsafe care. Outside of the criminal law, abortion services are already tightly regulated, with regular inspections by the Care Quality Commission. Doctors, nurses and midwives work to strict guidelines and are bound by their professional bodies. Women do not currently turn to unqualified providers for any other form of NHS healthcare, and there is no reason why they would do so for termination services.
Taking abortion out of the criminal law would not lead to more women such as the young mother from Durham ending their pregnancies at home at 32 weeks, in the same way as keeping it there won't stop another woman in equally desperate straits from doing the same. But removing threats of prosecution and prison might make her more likely to seek help – and perhaps her story would have a different ending.
But above all, taking abortion out of the criminal law would be a statement of where we see women today – capable of making their own decisions in pregnancy as the ones who must carry the consequences of that pregnancy, whether it continues or ends. Changing this ancient law will be a symbol of just how far we have come since 1861.
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