Guest Post: "If my amendment is passed, Nicola Packer will go down in history as the last woman in England and Wales to be prosecuted for an abortion"

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

73% of Mumsnet users want abortion to be decriminalised which is why it was included in the GE2024 Mumsnet Manifesto - one of twelve policy asks for the new government, based on the experiences and opinions that millions of women have shared on site.

I agree.

Like many of you I’ve been horrified by the increasing number of women who’ve been arrested by police for suspected illegal abortion.

In the last five years, more than 100 women have been investigated under the ‘Offences Against the Person Act’ 1861. Eight of these women have appeared in court. One has been jailed. Among those arrested have been women who’ve suffered natural miscarriages and stillbirths, and others who have gone into unexplained premature labour.

It’s just wrong. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money. It’s a waste of the judiciary’s time.

As the Mumsnet Manifesto said, it’s also not in the public interest to prosecute. We know that no woman ends her pregnancy out of malice – only out of desperation.

It was meeting Nicola Packer at her trial for alleged illegal abortion at Isleworth Crown Court in southwest London that strengthened my resolve to push for a change in the law. My colleague Tracy Gilbert MP and I spoke to her days before she was unanimously cleared by a jury.

Seeing Nicola in the dock, afraid and humiliated, my heart went out to her.

Nicola has been hugely traumatised by her prosecution – having maintained throughout her trial that she was unaware she was any more than 10 weeks’ pregnant. She has also spent the last four-and-a-half years waiting for her case to come to court, living in constant fear that she could go to jail.

To me it was obvious Nicola was not the suspect, but the victim. The victim of a Victorian-era law that criminalises women who end their own pregnancies.

That’s why, last month in Parliament, I tabled an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill. A move that has the backing of more than 100 MPs and 50 organisations including Mumsnet, the British Medical Association and five medical Royal Colleges.

My amendment targets the draconian ‘Offences Against the Person Act’ of 1861. This law means abortion is still a criminal offence in England and Wales except under specific circumstances. If you try to end your own pregnancy at any gestation outside the law the maximum sentence is life in prison – the most severe penalty for an illegal abortion in the world.

In 2019 my colleagues in Westminster repealed this archaic law for Northern Ireland. My amendment will simply bring legislation up to date in England and Wales – and in line with 50 other places worldwide including Ireland, Canada, France, Australia and New Zealand.

My amendment will not, however, remove any important safeguards. The Abortion Act of 1967 will be unchanged. This means you can legally access an abortion provided you meet certain criteria: you are under 24 weeks’ pregnant, you meet one of seven medical reasons, and have your abortion signed off by two doctors. My amendment will not change any law regarding the provision of abortion services within a healthcare setting or the provision of telemedicine.

Parliament is expected to vote on the amendment in early summer. If it gets passed, all cases currently going through the criminal justice system will end. And Nicola Packer will go down in history as the last woman in England and Wales to be prosecuted for an abortion.

If you agree that abortion must be decriminalised, support my amendment by contacting your MP using this link: https://www.bpas.org/our-cause/campaigns/abortion-law-reform/

Decriminalising means that there is no legal protection for a viable baby. So I think there is an important change in that respect.

Apologies for getting the terminology wrong. However the semantics can’t disguise the fact that this change means full term viable babies can be terminated without investigation or consequence.

A viable full term baby should be protected by law.
Society should support vulnerable mothers but that doesn’t mean the lives of viable babies should not be protected.

In cases where someone attacks a pregnant woman, will the death of the unborn child no longer be classed as a separate crime?

Not necessarily. I don't think it would be difficult to classify those as not being the same thing at all.

You're operating under the presumption that the current law acts as a deterrent in some way, and that if we change it, the rate of women performing extreme late term abortions on themselves will increase. I don't believe that it will.

How? Either it is a valuable life or it is not.

I’m going to write to my mp. I really don’t think a change in this law is necessary and has much more potential for harm than good.

Yes - I’ve written to my MP to express my concerns.
righttolife.org.uk/protectbothlivesuk

This link was provided earlier in the thread and I’ll post it again for anyone interested.

My concern is that terminating a viable and otherwise healthy baby at 37 weeks means that someone has to actively kill it - different to inducing an early labour. It has to be killed by injection - which is t always successful, meaning that the baby may be born alive and left to die - and that to me should be illegal, regardless of the circumstances, presumably the latter scenario is most likely in home abortions. That doesn’t mean the mother needs to go to prison, although at times it might be appropriate, but it can’t just be an ok thing to do. And who are we asking to do this if it’s taking place in a medical setting?

I absolutely disagree. It should remain open to criminal charges.

Wanted vs unwanted pregnancy.

And in the end it always circles back to Nicola Packer and people like her, who for whatever reason didn't realise how far along they were. People love to assume these women are lying because their own experiences of pregnancy are textbook, but life doesn't always go by the textbook.

Women like that should not be subjected to the trauma of a police investigation and court case. If that means a minuscule number of women get away with it, so be it. The number of abortions post 24 weeks is already a tiny % of the total, and nearly all of that is due to major medical reasons. There is no benefit to society from the police going after women in cases where things go wrong for whatever reason, and of course there is still the very real risk of women being prosecuted for having a late miscarriage. The law is a blunt instrument.

And of course cases like Nicola Packer's are already being weaponised as a wedge issue by rthe forced birth movement in the UK.

“Wanted vs unwanted pregnancy.“

As we are talking about viable healthy full term babies I think it’s more honest to say we are talking about “wanted babies vs unwanted babies” .

It seems your argument is that it is ok to terminate the life of a viable full term baby because it is unwanted by its mother.
Can you acknowledge any ethical concerns with your position?
As a pp said - Do you think health care professionals might find it traumatic to deal with healthy full term babies whose death by injection is not so pain free or speedy as they might hope?

If you don’t think those full term, healthy but unwanted babies have the right to life then at what put do you think viable babies’ lives should be protected by law?

NP’s case was unique because it could only have happened in Covid.
Women are scanned before terminations.

There is absolutely no need to change the law.

That question isn't what the law change is about. And you know it.

We know from the data that abortions of healthy viable babies at 37 weeks (or even past 24 weeks) are so rare as to be almost nonexistent. We know that if a woman at 37 weeks goes to a clinic and asks for a termination, she is not likely to get it - because no mentally well woman would do such a thing, so if she asked it would be refused. This has in fact happened a tiny handful of times in the UK.

So the whole 'this law will allow women to terminate healthy pregnancies just because at 37 weeks' is a strawman. Which is typical of the arguments used by the forced birth movement, but hey, we're used to that.

So that leaves us with women who are:

• Deeply mentally unwell - where is the benefit of putting these women through a criminal prosecution?
• Desperate and in deeply abusive or traumatic situations - where is the benefit of putting these women through a criminal prosecution?
• Not aware of how far along they are, like Nicola Packer - where is the benefit of putting these women through a criminal prosecution?

There may be a very, very, very small number of women who are just completely evil and wicked and who enjoy having a medically induced miscarriage at 37 weeks because it's so much fun. Do you think these women are well? And where is the benefit of putting these women through a criminal prosecution when they should be on a locked ward somewhere instead?

Some people on this thread clearly have a very low opinion of women and of humanity as a whole.

And because you asked so nicely: I think UK law on abortion as it stands is OK, though I would prefer the NZ model where abortion is legal and available on demand to 20 weeks, and after that it must be considered clinically necessary in a consultation between the woman and her physician, and a second doctor must agree. That covers the TFMR aspect of it.

It must always be possible to terminate because there are always situations where a devastating medical diagnosis comes very late. And I know what a late termination is; a good friend of mine went through one at 28 weeks after finding out her much wanted baby had a condition completely incompatible with life. The late diagnosis was due to NHS delays... Should she have been forced to carry to term knowing her baby was going to die within hours and be in pain? I stand for abortion rights because of women like her. If the UK ever ends up going in the same direction as the US, I'll be out there protesting, getting arrested, going to jail if need be. Women first, always, always, always.

If they’re non existent, there is no need for this law change. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Women aren't always scanned before terminations because it is still possible to get abortion medication remotely. That emergency COVID legislation was not repealed. Abortion is possible by this method up to 9 weeks and 6 days. This is a good thing, because it means women who have been trapped into pregnancy by an abusive partner have a way out.

Ideally, of course women should be able to attend a clinic, be scanned, have the full package of care. But we don't live in an ideal world - and that is why the law needs to change.

The law change is needed so that no other woman goes through the trauma Nicola Packer had to go through. I can't believe you cannot see that, so I can only assume that you are happy for more women to be subjected to that trauma - including women who have had a late natural miscarriage of justice.

BTW I also think that any clinician who breaks confidentiality in this way should be struck off.

I’m happy for women who abort their pregnancies late, and without medical necessity, to be investigated.
I believe killing a viable life form should be investigated.

I believe that women who kill their abusive partners should be investigated too.

I don’t think our criminal justice system should be based solely on the word of people who may have committed crimes.

What about the ones who turn out not to have done any killing? You're OK with them being put through hell? It has happened. If the law doesn't change, it will happen again.

I’m ok with innocent people being found to be innocent after a careful investigation, yes.

Yes - me too.

When do you grant the unborn baby personhood then? At what stage?

The law and access to abortion won’t be changed, abortion at any gestation won’t suddenly be legal and offered at your 38/40 midwife appointment. I do trust women, in 10+ years working in women’s healthcare I have never met any mother who’s aborted a term baby. I have met women who have needed a medical termination in the 2nd trimester after a fatal diagnosis or in a few cases a diagnosis of the mother meaning the pregnancy cannot continue. I am so glad those women and their healthcare providers could make those decisions together.

It's sad to see so little compassion from women towards women. It's sad to see women equating abortion to general crime.

But let's face it, this bill is going to pass - and when it does, I will raise a glass.

Yes.
The criminal justice system needs to investigate any killing.