Guest post: "Abortion must be decriminalised"

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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 Women should not have to battle outdated Victorian legislation for control over their reproductive rights.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.

Trust women to make the choice that is right for them. Please join the We Trust Women campaign today.

Thanks for sharing your experience Kitty
Thinking of you

Genuine question - how is pregnancy dated so accurately? Obviously the woman will be asked the date of her LMP, when intercourse took place etc, but what if she doesn't know? Are dating scans really accurate to within 24 hours?

I'm in favour of supporting women's right to absolute bodily autonomy, and it strikes me that the 24-week limit is both arbitrary and fallible.

I support this campaign. Criminalising women who end their pregnancies is in nobody's interest, whatever the circumstances.

I don't think it's good enough that most women can access early abortion without difficulty. The law should ensure that all women can access an abortion when they need one, as early as possible, as late as necessary.

Canada has no time limit for termination and amazingly doesn't have floods of women choosing to end their late term pregnancies for flippant reasons. Stats here - 0.63% of abortions are past 20 weeks. If Canada can trust women, why can't we?

Oliversmumsarmy Do you know how hard it is to get sterilised (unless you can afford to pay privately). I was refused 3 times.

Once when I asked for it to be done at the time of my section with the explanation of "what if something happens during the birth/soon after birth, you might another baby" - bullshit. You can't replace a baby. And never mind that pregnancy fucks with my body & I wasn't going to do it again (this being my second)

Once 2 weeks post birth when I went to my regular dr with pain in my abdomen "you are reacting to a traumatic birth, give yourself time to recover" - it wasn't traumatic, it was an elective section that went swimmingly.

And once at 6 weeks "we have a policy of not sterilising new mums"

Yet they sterilised my friend who had one more child that I did, who was younger...

I was almost 40, suffered PE in my first pregnancy, many issues within my second & I was determined to never have any more children.

Yet three medical practitioners decided they knew me better. At 40, I couldn't be trusted to know my own mind. And therefore needed "time" to think about it.

7 years on, one termination (that would have never been necessary if my drs just listened to me..) & I am resolute that I will never have another child. I did eventually get my sterilisation, but not before falling pregnant when I had no hope at all of keeping it. My drs practice acknowledged how they let me down, yet there is no change to their policy.

Ironically, a man can get sterilized while his partner is pregnant, don't you love double standards?

Kitty
You put it much better than I had in my post, thank you.
I also had a tfmr but at 16 weeks but as my DD2's diagnosis would have allowed her to survive to early infancy in pain before dying while waiting for a transplant I still had to 'ask' for my tfmr and give reasons to two doctors as to why I 'didn't want to continue the pregnancy' even though they were the same people explaining to me that she would ultimately suffer and die if born. It was such an incredibly hurtful and shaming process, I don't think any woman should legally have to justify her decision to doctors.

Great and interesting stats on Canada there Plenty

And as I suspected - but great to see how true it is - when women are trusted the outcome is good for everyone.

The old laws (and they are very old!) and the principles and criteria for "allowing" a woman to have an abortion all rest on not trusting the woman herself to make the best decisions. As the OP said this doesn't happen with any other medical care - informed patient autonomy is taken seriously and people are trusted to make decisions in their own best interests according to their own choices.

0.63% of those having an abortion choose or need to do so after 20 weeks (in Canada where there is full autonomy in law (if I understand correctly))

Thanks for sharing your experience too crumbly
I think your post shows so clearly why no woman should have to justify her decision, and why the whole framework is wrong.
It isn't enough to say that in practice it's good enough.
It clearly isn't.

People are disingenuous re Canada. There is no law against abortion at any point but the Canadian medical association defines abortion as 'termination of a foetus up to 30 weeks'. Physicians are not allowed to terminate foetuses of over 24 week gestation except for reasons very similar to those in uk law.

So, legally, I guess you could self abort a late term foetus but you won't get a doctor to do it (normal exceptions applying). So the Canafian stats on late term abortion tell us nothing about what legalising (in the sense meant in this thread) late term abortion would look like.

Sorry, should read 20 weeks, not 30 above.

That's really interesting about Canada, thank you.

Crumbly I'm sorry you had to go through that. I was lucky in the sense that as it was so late on we saw a very skilled team at kings who looked at the soft markers and blood results and said straight out 'you're looking at T13 or T18'. I don't know why but I knew then it was T18.

I did lots of reading and research while waiting for my amnio to come back and when the results were positive I said straight away I want a termination. My dh and I agreed and there we felt we didn't need time to think, we'd done that over the 4 days it took for our results.

I had to go back to kings and while they had to explain the procedure I didn't need to go through the process of asking for the termination (my local hospitals screening mw booked it all for me) or speaking to 2 doctors, there were 4 who were qualified in the room during our conversation and 2 just signed.

I realise I had a very good and lucky experience with the nhs. I cannot imagine how additionally distressing it would have been to have to request and speak to 2 separate doctors about it.

Oliversmum, I am really curious about how you view the timing. Further to my post above, I'm genuinely curious what you consider to be a "wrong" choice of timing.

I fell accidentally pregnant when my DC was 2. I terminated for two reasons. The first was having suffered HG during my pregnancy and knowing instinctively that, with no family on the doorstep, a f/t job and a partner who did shift work, I would not be able to cope with a HG pregnancy and a 2yo. It would have been not just awful for me, but very unfair on and difficult for my existing child.

The second reason was that I worked in a sector that had required me to spend a long time, and quite a bit of money, qualifying for. That sector was suffering significantly during the recession. I was lucky to even still have a job - and with that, I knew I would never be granted p/t hours, nor would I be able to find a similar job offering p/t hours. We wouldn't be able to afford two lots of childcare, so one of us would have to give up work. That would mean that we would only have one salary coming in, a level of finances that would have made life a permanent struggle for everyone, with constant budgeting, perhaps having to sell the car, to always be terrified of sudden expenses around the house. In the long-term, neither of us would be able to return to our career after several years break, and without the money to requalify in another sector, our family finances would never recover.

This was not timing as in "I can't be arsed right now." This was a decision made for the long-term benefits of everyone - the child we already had, and the second child we eventually hoped to have.

But I presume, from your post, that it was more selfish to have an abortion than it was to put our family in such a precarious position for a decade or two?

Kitty and crumbly
And your experience, crumbly, demonstrates very clearly that the law should be changed to allow women the choice of having an abortion up to the legal limit without having to get the permission of two doctors.

She didn't just end her pregnancy though - she murdered her own perfectly healthy baby which is frankly vile.

If the baby was 32 weeks she would have had to give birth anyway, you can't opt out of that if you have a baby of that gestation. They don't just evaporate.

I can't believe she only got 2 years

"Murdered a baby"
Another one for the anti-choice bingo!

Actually, she terminated a foetus. At 32 weeks it was illegal, but it's not the same crime as "murdering a baby".

Thumbwitches You may not know of any woman that has been refused an abortion, so let me introduce you tone...Me.

My GP point blank refused to refer me for an termination because, in his words "I was a silly girl who was old enough to know better". He then actively tried to block me moving to a new GP. This was 15 years ago in London. Fortunately I had enough money to go private, but there was no reason at all for his response except his own views about the role of women.

And for the forced birthers on this thread. It's not a baby until it's born. She didn't murder her baby, she terminated her pregnancy.

Thurlow believes in raising the legal limit for abortion to birth. How does one terminate a fully viable baby.How would a doctor kill it in the womb and does this mean that an unwanted baby of 39 weeks could be killed by its mother with the support of the law and a mother who tries to kill a 39 week baby afrer delivery could be guilty of murder.I fully believe in a wiman's right to be in control of her own body, but on what grounds could anyone kill a baby just before it is born?

gorm
TfMR happen up to term already so the process would be the same or similar.
For any termination after 24 weeks, the doctors administer an injection through the abdomen to stop the babies heart
Then they begin the induction process

Before commenting further on this, please be sensitive to the face that several posters on this thread have already said they have had late term TfMR

slug That's awful. Could you have got an abortion from BPAS or Marie Stopes on the NHS?

I think it would be a very powerful campaign if BPAS shared stats and stories of women who were denied abortions or who had difficulty getting abortions before the legal limit. I'm sure that would make a strong case for changing the law. Much stronger than the emotive story of the woman who aborted at 32 weeks.

Some amazing eloquent posters on this thread supporting the campaign.
To the posters with the anecdotes about other students terminating during uni years. I was one of them. I terminated at 19 pretty much because I was terrified. It was grim and it fucked my mental health. I have never been the same. I have two children now (planned) who I believe I don't deserve. No woman opts tk terminate lightly. Anyone who thinks it's the choice of convenience you are naive and wrong and frankly rude and patronising.
We will never progress with this issue whilst people out there still think there are superior, moral reasons for terminations. There are no wrong reasons for termination. Every baby deserves to be wanted, 100% by both its parents at the best least.

I agree with you on the focus of the campaign AnotherEmma
They won't get anywhere with this approach and example IMHO
It's way too controversial
Simpler battles to be won

But slug you weren't denied an abortion. You were denied by one doctor who did not agree the pregnancy was a danger to your health.

ispy No GP should have the right to refuse to refer a patient for an abortion before the legal limit. He didn't have to perform the abortion, he just had to refer his patient to the appropriate services. He failed to do so. That is a failure of the healthcare system. In every other situation, patients have the right to access medical care.

Why is it that I'm obliged to sacrifice my body to ensure that a foetus survives, but I'm not equally obliged to donate a kidney to that same foetus once they have been born?

Is it maybe that fathers can also donate kidneys and men's bodily autonomy is sacrosanct?

The problem with an abortion limit is that it encroaches on women's bodily autonomy, basically we are legalizing the moral choice (do not abort a baby that could survive if born) so Pro-lifer's if we need to use the law to enforce that moral choice to keep a foetus alive, why haven't we got a law making organ donation obligatory? for the record I mean while you are alive - not simply harvesting after death

Sparechange im just going to correct one of your details. The injection is administered after 20 weeks not 24. I had it at 22 weeks. It is an injection of potassium into the heart that stops it so the baby doesn't struggle for life if they survive labour. It is the kindest way (but absolutely horrific, I am still fairly traumatised by mine)