by Bruce Newsome, TCW
ON FRIDAY, the House of Lords voted to approve the Crime and Policing Bill, including a strange and under-reported amendment, Clause 208. Clause 208 decriminalises self-administered abortions after 24 weeks of gestation (a limit that has stood since the Abortion Act of 1967). In practice, the new statute allows a woman to end her pregnancy at any time, at home, without official oversight.
Consider the strange juxtaposition: aborting an infant just before birth will be legal (or at birth, if the mother wants to lie about the timing), while killing a baby after birth remains illegal.
How could such a drastic change fly under the radar?
Clause 208 was proposed last June by Tonia Antoniazzi, a Labour MP who has often rebelled against her party. And yet, as a Labour MP, her amendment enjoys the tacit approval of the Labour government. Baroness Monckton (Conservative) tabled an amendment to remove Clause 208, but it was voted down.
Also passed: amendment 426B. It was moved by Baroness Thornton (Labour) during the House of Lords Report stage on Wednesday. The amendment inserts a new clause after Clause 208, providing for pardons and the expungement of criminal records for women (living or deceased) who were convicted, cautioned, arrested, or investigated for offences related to their own pregnancies under historical abortion laws (primarily: Offences Against the Person Act 1861; Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929). Amendment 426B directs the Secretary of State to order deletion of such records from official systems, so that they would no longer be picked up by the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Meanwhile, sensible attempts to restore oversight were defeated by the Lords. For instance, Baroness Stroud (Conservative) wanted to restore the requirement for an in-person appointment before gaining a prescription for abortion pills by post. This requirement was dropped during the Covid pandemic, temporarily, yet became normalised in practice, and now is normalised in law.
Baroness Stroud argued that in-person appointments reduce the chance of a woman being coerced at home into an abortion, aborting a foetus that she thinks is much younger or is of a less desirable sex (usually female, where such choices are made), or selling pills to a woman who has avoided health-carers entirely.
All of these things have happened already.
Read also: Whatever your view on late-term abortion, we’ve been had by Camilla Long, The Times