Crime and Policing Bill
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Baroness Meyer
Baroness Meyer (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 455 in my name seeks to preserve legal protection for unborn babies who could survive outside the womb. Clause 191 would fully decriminalise abortions by stating that a woman would commit no offence in relation to her own pregnancy. In doing so, it would disapply not only Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 but the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929. This is a serious change. Much of the attention has focused on the 1861 Act, with less attention given to the removal of the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, which protects viable unborn babies. When the 1929 Act was passed, viability was understood to be around 28 weeks. Today, it is generally around 24 weeks, but medical advances mean that some babies can survive from around 22 weeks. Our abortion law recognises viability, and this is precisely why there is a time limit.
Clause 191 would remove protections where the death of a viable baby was caused by the mother, meaning that even a full-term baby could be aborted by the mother with no legal consequences. A baby’s protection would then depend not on whether it could survive independently but on who ended its life. This cannot be right. Under the current law, a woman at 32 weeks’ pregnancy—when a baby is fully formed—who contacts an abortion service may receive support, counselling or discuss adoption, but an abortion cannot be performed. Under Clause 191, however, she could obtain pills and end her own pregnancy without breaking the law. The consequence is clear: no prosecution at any stage, for any reason, even when a baby is capable of being born alive. That would overturn the careful balance Parliament has maintained for decades.
My amendment is deliberately modest. It allows the disapplication of Sections 58 and 59 of the 1861 Act but retains the 1929 Act so that the deliberate destruction of a viable unborn child remains an offence. This is not about reopening the wider abortion debate; it is about ensuring that viable babies do not lose their legal protection rights.
There are also practical concerns. Abortion pills are easily obtained and sometimes used dangerously late in pregnancy. Removing all criminal liability removes an important safeguard and may leave coercion and abuse undiscovered. Judges already exercise compassion in the very small number of cases that come before the courts. Clause 191 goes far beyond that by removing accountability altogether. The current law strikes a balance: abortion is permitted up to 24 weeks, and beyond that, only in exceptional circumstances. Removing all limits is to cross a line. Close to birth, the difference between a foetus and a newborn may be a matter of hours, yet one would be fully protected in law, while the other could lawfully be destroyed. We do not allow infanticides of newborn babies, so why should the law treat a full-term unborn baby differently?
This proposal was not in the manifesto and has had no public consultation. Such a profound change deserves scrutiny. Public support for abortion up to full term is very limited, while support for protection after viability is strong.
I do not oppose abortion in all circumstances, but diluting the already limited protection for viable unborn babies is just a step too far. Without limits backed by meaningful legal deterrent, women may come under pressure to terminate pregnancy late in their terms, sometimes against their own wishes or consent. Clause 191 may also facilitate disability-selective abortion and sex-selective abortion, placing unborn girls at particular risk. For that reason, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, to prevent sex-selective abortions, which already exist in this country.
The noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, has tabled an amendment to remove Clause 191 altogether, and I hope it will command wide support. My amendment sits alongside it and ensures that this Committee focuses clearly on what Clause 191 really does and on the rights of viable babies. If we cannot protect children at the very beginning of life, when they are at their most vulnerable, what credibility do we have when we claim to put children first? I therefore urge the Committee to reject the clause. I beg to move.
Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)
My Lords, I oppose Clause 191 standing part of the Bill.
Our role as parliamentarians, especially in this House, is to ensure that laws that make it on to the statute book are safe. Good laws require careful thought and prior consideration regarding any unintended consequences. Clause 191 fails to meet these criteria and should not become law. It was hastily added to an unrelated Bill and concerns a proposal that was neither a government manifesto commitment, nor called for by the public, nor subject to even rudimentary scrutiny.
Let me be clear: the law change proposed by Clause 191 does not relate primarily to one’s views on abortion, on which there will be a range of perspectives in this House. The abortion debate is often presented as pitting the rights of a woman against the rights of an unborn child at varying stages of development. It is not accidental that the legal limit for abortion is 24 weeks. That marks roughly the stage at which the baby is fully viable when born. This clause not only fails even to consider that person but would endanger the mother.
Laws exist for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, they exist to deter us from doing things that would cause significant harm to ourselves or others, out of motives that may be devious or simply desperate. The current law prohibiting women from performing their own abortions after 24 weeks is one such law. The existing legal deterrent protects women. For example, if a partner seeks to pressure a woman into an abortion beyond the 24-week limit, a limit which I note is already double that common in most European countries, a woman can currently point to the criminal law as a reason for not doing so. Removing this would make it much harder for vulnerable women to resist such pressure and would be particularly troubling given the dangers of unsupervised self-induced abortions later in pregnancy.
There is a supreme irony that those who claim to support legal abortion on the basis that the alternative would be unsafe—illegal abortions—are now proposing that women can perform such illegal abortions, outside the terms of the Abortion Act, in an unsafe environment. This law change would, in effect, reintroduce back-street abortion, as women would not be able to have terminations in a clinic beyond the 24-week limit but could do so at home, on their own, without the prospect of any subsequent investigation, using pills not designed for use outside of a clinical context beyond 10 weeks. The potential consequences are terrifying.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
Does the noble Baroness accept that none of these things has happened in Northern Ireland? We changed the law and decriminalised abortion in Northern Ireland several years ago and literally none of the things that she is mentioning has happened there—nor in any of the other 50 countries where abortion is being decriminalised.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
If the noble Baroness will bear with me, we cannot have an intervention on an intervention. She must allow the response.
Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. Is she aware that, despite the extreme abortion regime that was imposed on Northern Ireland by the other place, there is no telemedicine in Northern Ireland? That is one thing we do not have.
Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)
I received a letter from a former paediatric practitioner who is deeply concerned about this proposed legislation. She points out that when babies are legally aborted for medical reasons at over 22 weeks’ gestation, they are first euthanised by lethal injection into the heart. This is recommended by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to prevent larger sentient babies from being delivered injured but still alive. She asks what will happen if Clause 191 becomes law, this form of foeticide is not performed, abortion medication is taken and the baby is born alive.
Contrary to claims of supporters of Clause 191, women are not facing lengthy prison sentences for illegal abortions. The most high-profile case in recent years, of a woman who was 32 to 34 weeks pregnant but admitted misleading the British Pregnancy Advisory Service by telling it she was seven weeks pregnant, resulted initially in a short prison sentence that was quickly suspended on appeal. Sarah Catt was convicted in 2012 for a 39-week abortion, having been described by the chief inspector who led the investigation as “cold and calculating”. The judge in the case on appeal, Mrs Justice Rafferty, said:
“Mrs Catt caused the death of a foetus at term … She planned what she did with some care. She ensured that when she delivered the infant, it was in private. Somewhere there is a body”.
Under Clause 191, it would not even be permissible for the police to have investigated such a case. When Tonia Antoniazzi, the proposer of this clause, was interviewed by the House magazine and asked about this case, she said:
“If you can be cold and callous, you need to be helped and you need to be taken out of the criminal system”.
That opens an extraordinary vista.
A tiny proportion of the hundreds of thousands of abortions a year have resulted in women facing prosecution. The solution to these cases is not to decriminalise abortion to term for women in relation to their own pregnancies but rather to restore in-person consultations before women are able to obtain abortion pills, to enable a reliable gestational age check to take place. It is for this reason that I support Amendment 460, tabled in the name of my noble friend Lady Stroud.
Maya Ellis, one of the Clause 191 supporters in the other place, said that a woman should
“not be criminalised for anything to do with or within her body”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/6/25; col. 322.]
This is the case for absolute decriminalisation of abortion in any circumstances, and that is the true intention of the proposers of this clause, but it means that up to full term the viable unborn child would have the moral status of property, just as a slave did in the American Deep South in the 18th century. No one could be criminally liable for the destruction of their own human property. I do not consider this progressive.
We are told that Clause 191 is a moderate change to the law that would not affect the 24-week time limit. However, given that most abortions now take place outside a clinical setting and without an in-person consultation, the 24-week time limit would become redundant. Women could simply tell an abortion provider that they are below the legal limit and, in all likelihood, they would be sent the pills by post.
It is for this reason that a legal deterrent underpinning the 24-week limit is more important in the current context. Clause 191 is not moderate; it is radical. Its effect is to decriminalise abortions of babies up to birth if a woman seeks to induce a termination late in pregnancy by obtaining easily acquired pills.
The Bill is an important and lengthy piece of legislation that we have been debating in Committee over two and a half months. It was not designed, and is not an appropriate forum, to bring further widening of already highly permissive abortion laws. It is astonishing that the Committee is being asked to consider such a far-reaching law with so little prior scrutiny.
Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)
My Lords, my Amendment 456 has the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Wolf and Lady Falkner, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. I am especially grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, who unfortunately cannot be here due to a prior commitment overseas.
This is a simple amendment: it would reinstate the offences that Clause 191 would otherwise decriminalise for women acting in relation to their pregnancies. The amendment also provides that criminal proceedings against any woman acting in relation to her pregnancy could not be instituted without the consent of the Attorney-General. Under the current law, a woman may avoid criminal liability if defences such as duress apply. The effect of Clause 191 would be that, regardless of circumstances, it would never be a criminal offence for a pregnant woman to do any act with the intention of procuring her own miscarriage at any stage of the pregnancy. It would, however, remain an offence for any other person to administer drugs or use instruments to cause an abortion. If Clause 191 is adopted, we would end up with a law that simultaneously denies criminal responsibility to the principal—again, regardless of individual intent or circumstances—while maintaining it for others.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for the very useful meeting that she arranged before Christmas for some of us and the proponents of Clause 191, in particular Ms Antoniazzi MP. As the proponents explained to us, what has prompted Clause 191 is a rise in completely unmeritorious investigations against women. Some of these cases are genuinely appalling. For example, we know of the case of a woman who went into spontaneous premature labour, called for help and instead of being met by medical support was met by the police. While she was still trying to resuscitate her prematurely born baby, even before the paramedics arrived, the police were in the house searching the bins. She was separated from her critically ill baby and investigated for a year for abortion offences, despite medical tests confirming she had not taken any medication.
There are other cases where women have been forced to take abortion pills by an abusive or violent partner, and they were put under criminal investigation while the partner was not. These investigations seldom result in prosecutions and the very few prosecutions hardly ever result in a conviction.
Under our amendment, the consent of the Attorney-General would be required to institute criminal proceedings, not to open an investigation, but there are reasons to believe that this procedural requirement would have a restraining impact on the investigation phase too. The Attorney-General cannot give consent retrospectively. The CPS’s guidance for offences that require AG consent makes it very clear that prosecutors should seek consent before charge.
The current policy for these offences also requires the involvement of senior officials. Before a case is submitted to the Attorney General’s Office for consent, a deputy chief crown prosecutor or deputy head of a central casework division must check that the case has been prepared to an appropriate standard. Following on from that, a lawyer at the Attorney General’s Office will review the application before placing it before the Attorney-General. That lawyer may seek further information or clarification from the relevant prosecutor and their line manager. It is also necessary to ensure that the Attorney-General is allowed sufficient time to consider the case, so that he can make his own assessment.
Finally, for all these offences, the role of the Attorney-General does not end with the consent to prosecution. The Attorney-General will have to maintain an interest in the progress of the case and be kept up to date.
The amendment cannot rule out the risk of an inappropriate or unmeritorious investigation. That risk cannot be ruled out for any offence on our statute book. The amendment seeks to balance competing legal and moral principles, while taking into account the reality of the situation.
The requirement for Attorney-General consent should discourage the police from investigating cases that will not pass muster not only with the CPS at a senior level but with the Attorney-General. The requirement would also offer an opportunity for a tightening of the policy in respect of these offences so that the risk of unmeritorious investigations and prosecutions is further reduced. The amendment does not specify a requirement for the Attorney-General to introduce guidance on the circumstances in which consent would be given, but it is to be expected that such guidance will be published and could make it clear that the bar is, indeed, high.
This is a probing amendment. There are other amendments in this group that I am interested in and inclined to support to mitigate what seems a rather radical approach in Clause 191. It would be of assistance in this debate if the Government could help us understand a bit more about what is really happening with these investigations.
To conclude, I have three brief questions for the Minister. First, what is the latest available data on these investigations, and do the data confirm an increase in criminal investigations against women since 2020? Secondly, how do the Government explain this rise in investigations? Finally, other than Clause 191—which, of course, was not part of the Bill originally—what policy steps have the Government been considering to remedy this problem?
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 461J. I thank my noble friend Lady Goudie, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, for supporting it.
The amendment seeks to add a new clause after Clause 191 that would pardon women who have had a conviction or caution for an offence abolished by Clause 191. Because of the existing 1861 legislation, abortion is classified as a violent crime. The record means that these women will permanently have to declare it as part of a DBS check, thus continuing the damage caused by this offence. It would ensure the removal of women’s details from police systems.
Like Amendment 459C, Amendment 461J seeks to right a wrong and an injustice. Of course, it is not the first time your Lordships have sought to do this, when something which has been unlawful and unjust is abolished. I am referring to the changes of the law on homosexuality and what followed.
The amendments in this very large group that seek to amend or get rid of this clause—passed as it was by a vote of 137 to 379 on a free vote in the Commons—will form the debate this afternoon. For example, Amendment 455, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, seems to profoundly misunderstand what it means, because if abortion remains criminalised after 24 weeks of gestation then, under the current law, only women who have an abortion after 24 weeks of gestation are targeted by the police, even when, in most cases, they have had a spontaneous miscarriage or a stillbirth. That amendment would make no difference to the current cruel situation, but the noble Baroness actually says she wants to get rid of the whole clause anyway.
Amendments 456 and 456A, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, would, essentially, reverse the change agreed in the Commons and mean that abortion would remain criminalised. But I am aware that some noble Lords who are very concerned about this clause also support reproductive rights for women. We have already had many meetings about this, with the royal colleges and others. I ask that, between now and the next stage, those of us who take the view that reproductive rights are important but have concerns should continue those discussions.
Unlike what the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, said in her speech on the clause standing part, this clause was not plucked out of thin air in the Commons. It is the product of years and years of trying to mitigate the criminalisation of women under cruel and awful circumstances. There have been entreaties to the DPP, discussions with the policing bodies and discussions with our legal systems, and every single one of them—I could bore the Committee by giving dates and facts—has taken the view that Parliament has to take a view on this matter. This is not something that can be mitigated by changing guidelines or rules. Indeed, Parliament took a view on this and decriminalised abortion in Northern Ireland a few years ago. As I said, this had no detrimental effect.
This clause seeks to ensure that women in England and Wales are no longer subject to year-long investigations and criminal charges—the kind of situation that the noble Lord just explained. Since 2020, around 100 women have faced police investigations. Six have gone to court; one has been sent to prison. The clause will not change the wider abortion law, or the existing time limits of the 1967 Act. It is supported by 50 organisations, including the medical royal colleges, violence against women and girls groups, every group that represents abortion providers in the UK and other women’s organisations. We should discuss our concerns about the clause and whether it does the job we want it to do, but there is support for it. Fifty countries in the world have not criminalised abortion. Why on earth should we in England and Wales?
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 456C, but I support Amendment 456, which was spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame. The purpose of tabling Amendment 456C is to see if a compromise can be achieved between those who favour Clause 191 in its present form and those who are strongly opposed to it.
Late-term abortions are, of course, already lawful if they fall within the permissive provisions of Section 1(1)(b) to (d) of the Abortion Act 1967. Those paragraphs, of course, permit late-term abortions if there is a serious risk to the health of the mother or a serious risk of abnormalities in the unborn child. But Clause 191 goes very much wider than that. It would permit a mother, without any restriction in law, to abort a child right up to the moment of birth. I find it very difficult to make an ethical or moral distinction between killing a child immediately after birth and killing a child immediately before birth. One has been born, the other has not, but I cannot discern any difference in principle.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, can the noble Viscount please assist me? I understand all the legal reasoning that he has put forward. I am not a lawyer, so I cannot challenge any of it. But I ask for his assistance on what actually happens in reality. In reality, lots of mothers lose their baby as a stillbirth. It happens at all periods of pregnancy. A lot of those losses are unexplained, and every health professional has a real concern when it happens, but for decades we have not been able to find reasons for unexplained stillbirths. If a mother, after 36 weeks of pregnancy, has unexpectedly lost her baby and she delivers a stillbirth, under this amendment, if I have interpreted it correctly, if she is reported to have interfered with that pregnancy—even if she did not—she would be made to prove that she was mentally unstable or financially handicapped. In the circumstance that she was neither of those things but had lost her baby naturally and inexplicably, how would the noble Viscount’s amendment work?
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, I agree that all investigations in this matter should be conducted with great sensitivity. I take the noble Lord’s points, but at the end of the day you have to establish a principle. May I complete my point before the noble Lord intervenes further? If there is powerful evidence that the mother has wilfully terminated the birth of a child immediately up to the moment of birth, it is right that Parliament should set out a process whereby she has to be investigated. If she falls within the defence, she will have a defence. I admit that that would not prevent an investigation, but at the end of the day you have to determine where you stand on whether or not this House is really going to guard human life.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
How will we know? The noble Viscount needs to tell us how you would know that it was not the loss of a baby through natural circumstances? Who will decide?
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
It would be part of the process of investigation. In that context, I sympathise very much with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, which would provide a further filter. There should be a prosecution only in cases where there has been a clear breach of the law. These are very sensitive matters and need to be conducted sensibly. But we have to stand on principle here.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, I have the greatest respect for the noble Viscount, but I fear there is a difference between speaking in theory and practical reality. I want to point out that I have certainly killed at least one baby at term myself; possibly two.
There is a condition called ectopic pregnancy. Very occasionally, pregnancies grow outside the womb or motor outside the womb during the course of the pregnancy. They are left outside the uterus, where they leave a huge hole in the abdomen, placing the bleeding mother at grave risk when the placenta is removed. In this situation, without any alternative, I did what I thought was a caesarean section in both cases to find that once I had opened the abdomen, the uterus was not in fact pregnant, but I was faced with a baby outside the uterus with a placenta. One baby was clearly very abnormal, with various limb abnormalities; the other baby looked completely normal. Both babies were delivered and—thank goodness, with the help of my colleagues—we were able to save both mothers’ lives. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will agree, the bleeding is a very frightening situation in the operating theatre.
If I may, I will tell the Committee the story of someone who was a patient of mine for about seven or eight years. Laura had a very rare condition—there are many rare genetic conditions—in her case, Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. This is a curious disease which tends to affect only boys but can occasionally affect any foetus. Laura had a series of pregnancies. About four of them ended in miscarriage. She desperately wanted a baby. Eventually, she conceived successfully, although she was often infertile, and finally had a baby. She gave birth to a baby rather prematurely, about four weeks before term, who had Lesch-Nyhan syndrome.
Peter was seriously abnormal. He had all sorts of neurological problems. He was unable to eat properly. He was unable to move properly. As a teenager, he had to be strapped in his wheelchair to prevent him mutilating himself. That did not stop him mutilating himself and eventually he started to bite off his lips and his tongue, so he had to have his teeth extracted, and that was not sufficient. He could not be moved around in his wheelchair, because if he was upstairs he would want to tilt himself downstairs. Peter continued to live a very long time; I do not know exactly when he died, but I think he was about 18.
We could do nothing about this lady, but we realised she had this genetic defect. For a long time, we tried to work out the mechanics of it. We eventually sourced the DNA. It was a particular mutation which occurs in very few families in this country. Mutations such as this occur in different ways in different pregnancies, not infrequently; in this case, her mutation was very difficult to deal with. After eight years of trying, she attempted to have more pregnancies because she desperately wanted to have a baby who was free of disease. The risk to her, of course, would be having another baby who might be handicapped and that, of course, would be an immense hardship for that family. That is often one of the big problems for people who try to terminate or deal with these sorts of conditions. Anyway, she had about a dozen pregnancies and eventually we put back into her uterus an embryo which we thought was normal—there was a great deal of resistance in Parliament at the time to this kind of procedure—but she had a live baby, who fortunately was well and was a boy.
That is another example, but it is also fair to say that there are many situations where you have obstetric abnormalities; for example, a baby born with very severe skeletal abnormalities. That could sometimes be unknown. A woman may not report to have her baby for whatever reason during pregnancy until screening is too late and she has not had ultrasound or any other care. That happens in poor families generally. It is inevitable in any society, however good your medical practice might be.
Sometimes, when close to term, a woman is suddenly found to have an abnormal pregnancy in her uterus, which would prevent labour being successful. A caesarean section would probably result in a dead baby but, alternatively, sometimes these babies have been what we call morcellated: you actually try to disintegrate them because it is the only way you can save the mother’s life, if she is critically ill at that stage.
This is a very serious issue and unless one fully understands that these things are possible, one has to recognise that you cannot—
Baroness O’Loan (CB)
I have the greatest respect for the noble Lord. I wonder whether he will give way; I thank him. The situations which he describes are all provided for in the Abortion Act.
Lord Winston (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness very much for her point, because I appreciate that she is giving me a brief rest during a very emotional speech in my case. I apologise for it being an emotional speech, but when you have dealt with such patients frequently for many years, you forget exactly how serious this can be.
I have seen many women requesting terminations at all stages of their pregnancies, even very early and sometimes after in vitro fertilisation to get them pregnant. That is an extraordinary issue and you would not expect it to happen, but actually it happens throughout pregnancy. The women have such serious problems which may not show up as the kind of psychological problem that has been described.
I do not believe that any woman goes through a termination of pregnancy lightly. She certainly does not want to damage herself and do her own abortion. That is an extremely rare situation. The risk here is that we are trying to make law which is just impractical, in the real sense of the word, when we have such a range of syndromes and a population in which we cannot in fact diagnose pregnancy all the time, and never will be able to in people, for example, who are very poor or otherwise live in very serious circumstances and are damaged.
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, the debate that we have just been having illustrates perfectly why the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, is so apt. His amendment would insert a requirement for the Attorney-General’s consent before criminal proceedings could be instituted in these cases, and that consent would require the Attorney-General to examine all the circumstances of the difficult cases we have been discussing in detail.
I have a few brief comments. As we have heard, Clause 191 arose from an amendment to the Bill in the other place but, astonishingly, it received less than two hours’ debate, as I understand it. It was approved without evidence sessions, yet it would be a major change to abortion law. Given that polling apparently reveals that a mere 1% of the public support abortion up to birth, and having regard to the scant debate in the other place, I am hesitant about making such a radical change to abortion law. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, is the perfect solution. It is a compromise: a balanced amendment which maintains the existing criminal offence but recognises that there may be more finely balanced cases—
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
This is not about abortion up to birth, because the Abortion Act 1967 still stands. It is really important that noble Lords try to be accurate in how they describe this. I am not disputing anything the noble Lord says, except that it is not the case that this is about abortion up to birth. This is about the 1967 Act staying in place and about not criminalising women, is it not?
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
That does not detract from the fact that Amendment 456 would create a robust filter, through which prosecutions would have to go before instituting criminal proceedings. That would need the consent of the Attorney-General and without that consent—
Lord Patel (CB)
Can we just clarify what we are talking about? I am tempted to say that those putting forward these amendments are living in a world of fiction, but I am not so rude as to suggest that. I am not suggesting even that they are misguided. I think all these amendments and their proponents are doing this with a total conviction that wrong will be done if this provision gets through, so let us just address what wrong will be done.
The wrong that will be done is that a woman may try to abort or kill her baby at a late gestation or an early gestation. The criminality would be the same because she is doing so outside the 1967 Act. That will be the case, but that is not what the problem is. The problem is that hundreds of innocent women are wrongly accused of a criminal act and sent for police investigation. One person was sent to jail, and 10 of the other 100 that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, mentioned had further investigations carried out and were then taken to court.
The Whip is trying to accelerate me, but we cannot accelerate unless I can address the issues raised.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I apologise, but can I remind Members that interventions are short and sweet? But because this is Committee, people can participate in the debate at their chosen point.
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, to conclude, I do not have long comments on this. The Attorney-General would be there in such cases to examine whether something illegal and wrong has occurred, and he could withhold his consent for a prosecution if he considered that that was not the case. He would look at the particular circumstances. He or she would act quasi-judicially and independently of government.
Amendment 456 strikes a perfect balance and should give reassurance to women who have good cause to have a late termination, while preserving the criminal offence for those cases where a late abortion cannot be justified. It therefore meets Clause 191 half way, and I urge fellow Peers to support it.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
Can I clarify something in relation to the amendment? Very often the women we are talking about are not prosecuted and do not end up in court. The problem is that the process is the punishment—as we know from other instances.
How does the noble Lord deal with the fact that the majority of the women we are talking about—it is still a small group—are having police raids when they have maybe just had a baby? There was a 19 year-old who gave birth, who did not even know she was pregnant, and there was a police raid. Her family were completely disrupted. She was completely distraught and traumatised, and that process went on for six years before she was cleared. This amendment would not solve that, would it?
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
I cannot speak to that sort of case, and I entirely agree that it sounds terrible. But the police are there to investigate; that is their job. They have to do it according to rules and codes of practice and, if the system works properly, that sort of case should not arise. At least in this amendment there would be a filter before any criminal prosecution could be instituted.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 460, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud—who very much regrets that she is unable to be here today—to which I am pleased to be a signatory. I acknowledge the support of the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who unfortunately cannot be here this afternoon, and of course the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, who will speak later.
Amendment 460 would reintroduce mandatory in-person consultations with a medical professional before abortion pills can be prescribed. It is a common-sense amendment that would protect women and ensure good practice. Amendment 460 would also offer a more satisfactory solution to the supposed problem that we are told lies behind Clause 191—the small number of prosecutions in recent years of women who have induced their own abortions beyond the statutory time limit. These prosecutions have taken place because abortion providers have been able to send abortion pills to women by post without reliably assessing their gestational age. This includes those who claimed to be under the legal limit of 24 weeks but who, in reality, were not.
Indeed, the two most high-profile cases highlighted by supporters of Clause 191 would not have been able to take place if gestational age had been properly assessed in a face-to-face consultation. Carla Foster was found guilty of an illegal abortion at 32 to 34 weeks’ gestation after admitting to deliberately misleading the UK’s largest abortion provider, BPAS, about her gestational age, telling it she was seven weeks pregnant.
Nicola Packer was charged with an illegal abortion after the UK’s second-largest abortion provider, Marie Stopes, sent her pills even though she was over the legal limit. She was acquitted after telling the court that she was unaware of how far through her pregnancy she was. It is remarkable that one of our leading abortion providers should respond to its own mistakes—sending pills to women beyond the legal limit through a scheme for which it lobbied and from which it benefits—by trying to push for even more radical laws that minimise accountability.
The solution to such cases is not to decriminalise self-administered abortions up to birth, as Clause 191 proposes, which endangers women and renders the 24-week time limit largely toothless. Such a course would be irresponsible and widely out of step with public opinion. Polling has found that only 16% of the public support the removal of offences that make it illegal for women to induce their own abortions after the legal time limit, with a clear majority supporting the current legal deterrent. For that reason, I support the stand part notice opposing Clause 191 from the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton.
The obvious better solution to all this is to restore in-person appointments before women can obtain abortion pills. Such appointments were the norm before the Covid pandemic but, in response to campaigning from the same groups behind Clause 191, the pills by post scheme was introduced when the pandemic began. Although many had significant misgivings—based on concerns that later proved prescient—about how this was rushed through without due process, and suspected that it was a thinly disguised ruse to bring in such a scheme permanently, one could perhaps at least understand the logic during a pandemic.
However, it was never the intention that pills by post abortions would be permanent, and in February 2022 the Government announced that the scheme would end after 70% of respondents to a public consultation called for its immediate end. However, amid late-night machinations in this House—not too dissimilar from the way in which Clause 191 was added to the Bill in the other place—an amendment was tacked on to the Health and Care Bill at the 11th hour, making the scheme permanent for England and Wales.
Shortly afterwards, stories started emerging of exactly the kind of incidents that many of us were so concerned about, demonstrating how pills by post endangers women and weakens the safeguards in our abortion laws. Amendment 460 offers the Committee a chance to undo a critical aspect of this law change. Under the amendment, women would still be able to take pills at home, should they wish, but not without the safeguard of a prior face-to-face consultation with a medical professional.
There are three principal reasons why restoring this safeguard—or, should I say, returning to former best practice—is essential. First, it would enable reliable gestational age checks before at-home abortions can take place. This is the primary reason why recent court cases have happened. An accurate gestational age check ought to be the bare minimum that we expect of abortion providers, which receive, on average, a reported £580 of taxpayers’ money per abortion—an increase of 42% in the five years since the pills by post scheme came in—even though their costs have been slashed by the removal of in-person appointments. In-person gestational age checks would not only prevent women wilfully misleading providers about their gestation but protect women who may mistakenly believe that they are in the early stages of pregnancy but who are actually further along.
Secondly, reinstating the in-person appointments would protect women from the significant health risks that accompany taking abortion pills beyond the legal limit. Reliable gestational age checks protect women, since at-home abortions are permitted only up to 10 weeks’ gestation because of the increased dangers to women of taking pills beyond the early weeks of pregnancy.
Indeed, the introduction of pills by post has led to a significant spike in medical complications. The Express newspaper reported a study based on FOI requests to NHS trusts that suggests that more than 10,000 women—that is one in 17 women who took pills—had to receive hospital treatment following the use of abortion pills in England between April 2020 and September 2021, which was after the pills by post scheme was introduced.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, this is an exceptionally difficult issue because of the conflicting interests, which cannot, in my view, be balanced.
The first is that under existing law, many women who have recently suffered miscarriages are subject to distressing and intrusive investigations when they have not acted unlawfully. However sensitive the investigation carried out by the police, it will inevitably be intrusive and distressing to the woman concerned. That is the first interest. On the other hand, we have to recognise that there will be women who terminate their pregnancies at a late stage for impermissible reasons, such as was mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. We have to recognise that, if Clause 191 is enacted, there may well be more such cases. These are two conflicting interests, and I am very doubtful that either of the proposed compromises is a solution to this problem—that is, the identification by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, of further defences, or the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, of a requirement for the consent of the Attorney-General.
The reason why neither of these compromises works is that they will not prevent the investigations of women who have recently suffered the loss of their child. No view can be taken on whether the defences identified by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, apply or whether it is right and proper for the Attorney-General to give his consent to a prosecution, unless the facts and circumstances of the case are known; so the investigation has to take place, and it will inevitably be distressing to the woman concerned.
Therefore, it seems to me that we simply have to make a policy choice here, and it is a choice between two evils: the evil of the investigation of many, many women in very distressing and sensitive circumstances when they have acted perfectly lawfully, or the evil of allowing the women who have acted improperly not to be prosecuted. We will each have our own view on which is the greater evil.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
There is a further consideration that the noble Lord should perhaps address, and that is the value that Parliament should place on human life.
Lord Pannick (CB)
Of course Parliament should place a value on human life, but it should also, should it not, place a value on the interests of the unfortunate women who have, in the most distressing of circumstances, lost the child they are carrying. Therefore, to talk about the value of human life does not answer the profound dilemma which Parliament faces in addressing Clause 191. There are two evils here and the question is how we best address the problem.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, is the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, suggesting that where sensitive matters are investigated, we should change the law? Let me refer to the case of a coroner investigating a death at home. I can cite an example only last Saturday of a friend of mine who died at home of natural causes, but his wife and family had an investigation and understood it was par for the course. They were very upset at the death of their father and their husband; none the less, the law is required to investigate suspicious deaths even in the most sensitive circumstances.
Lord Pannick (CB)
I take the noble Baroness’s point, and I very much sympathise with those who have been bereaved and who face such an investigation. However, there is a profound difference in what we are considering here, which is an investigation of a woman who has just lost the child she is carrying and who is being investigated with a view to the real possibility of a criminal prosecution of her. We have to recognise that a woman in those circumstances is particularly vulnerable and sensitive. We have to weigh that interest against what I accept is the real concern that there will be women who have acted improperly and unlawfully who will get away with their criminality.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
I wonder if what the noble Lord describes, with which I have a great deal of sympathy—I say this as a signatory to Amendment 456—would be ameliorated in terms of the distress of the investigation if the Attorney-General were to adopt guidance, and that guidance set out strict criteria that would at least remove or ameliorate the risk of the distress these investigations can cause. The Attorney-General can define very narrowly the circumstances in which the police would be entitled to do that, can he not?
Lord Pannick (CB)
He can, but as I have already said, the difficulty is that, however sympathetic the guidance, the circumstances of the woman concerned have to be investigated in order to identify whether her case falls within those criteria. Therefore, the damage he has done to the woman who has recently lost the child is caused, however sensitive the investigation and whatever the criteria. That is the problem.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
The noble Lord says that there is a profound difference. However, there are circumstances—maybe others are aware—where parents lose a very young child in the home to sudden infant death syndrome. In certain of those circumstances, the police have to come through the door. There is no profound difference there: unfortunately, we need to investigate sensitive things, and that is not a reason to not change the law.
Lord Pannick (CB)
I entirely understand and accept that the police will investigate many alleged possible offences in highly sensitive circumstances, but the issue that arises for Parliament, and your Lordships’ House in particular today, is whether we should adopt special criteria where the sensitivity and the distress relate to a woman who has recently lost the child that she is carrying. It is very difficult, in my view—I am obviously not an expert on this; women in the Committee will have a stronger view than I do—but I can understand the real, particular and damaging concern that arises where a woman who has carried her child for however many months loses that child and is then the subject of a criminal investigation. It is difficult to imagine anything that is more distressing to the woman concerned in those circumstances. The Committee therefore has to take a view on this. My current view—
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
The noble Lord makes a very reasonable case, but is it not really an issue of proportionality and balance? He talks about the level of distress but did not really answer the points made by my noble friends Lady Lawlor and Lady Berridge. The fact is that this has affected approximately 100 women in terms of criminal investigations, as against 1.5 million abortions since 2020. That is an important point to make in terms of informing the argument that he is making.
Lord Pannick (CB)
The Committee will take its own view on whether I have answered the questions that have been put to me. I do not think that a reference to 1.5 million abortions really takes the argument any further forward.
I recognise the difficulties of this, and each Member of the Committee will have their own view, but my current view is that the nature of the investigations, the distress that they cause and the unlikelihood that they would lead to a prosecution is the paramount consideration. I therefore see great force in Clause 191.
Baroness Hazarika (Lab)
My Lords, I want to speak to Amendment 459C, to which my name is attached. I very much support Clause 191, which I believe would modernise our society, but Amendment 459C would halt ongoing criminal investigations and prosecutions for repealed abortion offences, no matter when committed. This would tighten up Clause 191 on technical grounds. It would stop ongoing criminal investigations and prosecutions for repealed offences, no matter when they were committed; currently, Clause 191 applies only to actions after the Bill becomes law.
We are aware of multiple women who have been reported to the police by medical professionals in the months since the House of Commons voted in support of Clause 191. There was a clear signal from that vote—it passed by 397 votes to 137 votes—that Members of Parliament wanted women to stop being targeted. Existing guidance obtained from FoI requests indicates that Parliament cannot rely on police and prosecutors to make the decision to discontinue ongoing cases without a clear legislative process. This amendment would provide clarity for everyone.
I also want to lend my support to Amendment 461J, which my noble friend spoke about. This is about pardoning women with criminal records for abortion offences, in line with the Turing pardon. It also chimes with the scandal of young women who were the victims of the Pakistani grooming gangs, many of whom ended up with criminal records, which I am sure we will all agree was unforgivable.
Many of us in this House have spoken up bravely and passionately about the grooming gang scandal and talked about the plight of those young women and girls, and how vulnerable and alone they were. Well, let me tell you: many of the women who seek an abortion outside the law are often the same girls, and young women who face very similar circumstances. They are desperate. They have often been groomed, abused, violently attacked and raped, and they find themselves in very isolated situations. They do not have a loving partner or a lovely, warm family, and they do not trust the state at this point.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
I have great respect for the noble Baroness, and I was delighted to see her come to the House. However, I think it would be in keeping to withdraw a comment that could be misinterpreted as ageist and genderist.
Baroness Hazarika (Lab)
I hear the noble Baroness’s point, but I think this is really important. The outside world will look at some of the comments that have been made in this Chamber and will look at the age profile of those making them. That is okay; it is the truth. I am just looking around at who we are. We have many wonderful people with great wisdom and expertise, but we are currently talking about a group of women who are not adequately represented in this House. That is the point I was trying to make.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
Would the noble Baroness agree that we are all part of the same human race? Here in this House, we must legislate on behalf of everybody, not as if we were gender-blind about who we are as legislators but in the interests of society at large. I know the noble Baroness would agree that we must always consider the most vulnerable, and this debate is partly about who is the most vulnerable in this matter.
Baroness Hazarika (Lab)
I absolutely agree that we must think about who is the most vulnerable, but the point is that we have heard a lot of language about the rights of the unborn child. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, however, what about the rights of the living woman—often a younger woman—who has found herself in the most distressing of circumstances? As I said, she may have been raped, or part of a terrible domestic violence situation where she does not feel like she has much support, and she feels very alone. I really think this is an important point: so few women take joy from having an abortion, particularly a late-term abortion. I do not think women do it lightly, with a skip in their step, to try to go on a holiday or anything like that. It is a very visceral, emotional, physical experience. We have heard from eminent members of the medical profession about the physical toll that it takes on a woman’s body.
We must understand how vulnerable a lot of these women are. We heard an example earlier from a colleague about a woman who went into premature labour at home. Seven police officers searched her bins before the paramedics arrived. She was not allowed home for a week because her house was considered a crime scene, and she was not allowed contact with her partner. Her forensic samples eventually showed no trace of abortion drugs, but she remained under police investigation for a year. She was allowed only limited supervision with her baby, who had survived the birth despite the very traumatic circumstances.
There is another case study that I want to raise, because the human stories are very important here. Laura was at university, and she was the mother of a toddler when she pled guilty to ending her pregnancy using illegal drugs. She was also in a very abusive relationship and her partner told her not to go to a doctor under any circumstances, so she was very much left to her own devices. She ended up being sentenced to two years in prison. The abusive partner was never investigated. Let that sink in: an abused mother of a toddler is sent to jail while her abusive partner gets off scot free. This is not Kabul, by the way; this is here in the United Kingdom.
I do not know about you, but I want my rather overstretched police services to be investigating crimes such as domestic violence or other serious crimes, instead of rifling through the bins of a traumatised woman who has just given birth. I would like our rather overcrowded prisons to be housing serious offenders, not abused women who have small children. I feel that it is simply morally wrong, an utter waste of police and criminal justice time, and a waste of taxpayers’ money to go after these kinds of distressed and vulnerable women. They need psychological and medical help, not a costly investigation. I think most of us in this House are coming to a consensus that the police have been wasting their time on things such as non-crime hate incidents, so surely common sense would dictate that going after these women is misguided. The police should be catching criminals.
There has been a lot of heated debate around the question “what is a woman?” I know what a woman is, and I believe in her right to choose what is best for her reproductive health. I believe in protecting women when they need help the most, not hounding them like a criminal. That might be okay in some repressive regimes far away, but I know we are better than that.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, I am one of those old men. I am also a single man, so I have no children of my own, but I am regularly in contact with very young families through baptism. Only last Thursday, I was in hospital in an acute cardiac unit for babies, anointing a two week-old baby who had just had open-heart surgery. So I know quite a lot about babies through a very long ministry. I also offer my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Winston, for a television series that he oversaw about seeing a pregnancy from conception to delivery some years ago. That series reinforced my conviction about the sanctity of life.
The fact that we are here today in this Chamber means that we must recognise that we are on precious ground. Of course we are here to support women who have been abused and coerced. I think that the amendment proposing that we should require the Attorney-General to intervene would be rather too late if there had been a year-long investigation of a woman in between. I have been investigating this with the Lincolnshire constabulary: we need to look at how police procedure can be changed and invested in, enabling us to move away from treating these women as criminals to treating them as witnesses and victims, so that the police activity is primarily engaged in going after coercers and bad actors. I therefore agree with the noble Baroness in how that should proceed.
At the same time, noble Lords will not be surprised to hear me say that I entirely endorse the Church of England’s principle position in opposing the abortion of late-term foetuses who are viable, unless otherwise affected by the Abortion Act. I would like to see a different way of interpreting the law, which is differently enforced, which does not decriminalise or take away investigation, precisely for the protection of women and the preservation of unborn life.
To do that, we need to look urgently at how we allow investigations to take place and how we seek to support a woman, often a woman going through acute distress and bereavement. I quite understand the point about unexplained deaths, and we need to make sure that women are protected. But I signed a letter with 200 other clergy, back when Clause 191 first came out, expressing our dismay at the way in which this decriminalisation could so easily lead inadvertently, even if it is only a small number of babies, to the termination of the lives of viable children into the future. That, I am afraid, I could never support.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
I am just wondering if the Committee would allow me to speak at my extreme age. I have put my name to the amendment of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and I do not propose to repeat anything he has said. But there are two aspects I will speak about, particularly those raised by the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Pannick.
First, in what they are both saying, we are looking at women who are not guilty of any offence. We are being asked to pass a law to protect offenders for the sake of people who are not offenders. Speaking as a former lawyer, I find that an extraordinary proposal. I absolutely understand what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is saying, about the difficulty of balancing. But he is talking about the innocent. We are being asked to pass a law that would actually protect the guilty for the sake of the innocent. It is the first time anyone has pointed this out, and I find it rather extraordinary. We are being asked to look at women who have suffered a stillbirth or an abortion not at their request but because it has happened at a very late stage, who are now being investigated by the police. I gather the whole thing has gathered momentum after pills were being sent by post. Prior to that, the police did not investigate a lot of cases, but because of the pills being sent by post, the police are now investigating to a greater extent.
Particularly in relation to those who are suffering domestic abuse—this relates to the amendment the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and I have put forward—it looks to me as though we are being asked to change the law because the police are taking a year to investigate, treating women extremely badly in the process. But surely, we should be looking at the guidance to the police. I am very relieved to hear the right reverend Prelate is going to get Lincolnshire Police to have a look at this. We should find out why the police are not looking at potential abusers or investigating the partner as well as the woman. We are being told again and again that the partners are not being investigated but the woman is being investigated. It is taking a year or longer—in some appalling cases, six years. But that is the failure of the police. We know they are overstretched, but it is an appalling failure, particularly if they do not investigate.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
Would the noble and learned Baroness, with her outstanding history in the law, recognise that women and men are not treated equally in the criminal justice system, nor in police investigations; that it is the case that women, when they are convicted of an offence, are often sent to prison for offences for which men are not sent to prison; that women are sent to prison for longer than men for the same offences; that there are many women in prison for things that men would not be put in prison for; and that exactly the same is the case in investigations? We have to ask the question: why did it take six years, why are the police not—
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
We have to ask the question of why there are these inequities. Other noble Lords have made longer interventions; I do not know why I am being barracked in this way.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
Order—that was an intervention.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
I have not quite finished.
I understand exactly what the noble Baroness is saying. I was not a criminal judge; I do not think I ever sent a woman to prison, so I am not qualified to speak on those issues. All I am really asking the Committee to reflect on is that we are principally being asked to change the law to support those who are not guilty of offences, and because the police are not behaving as they should.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I have two questions for the noble and learned Baroness. Why does the noble and learned Baroness think 50 countries have found this not to be a problem? Abortion is decriminalised in virtually every country that has had abortion legislation since the 1967 Act. So, I am wondering why the noble and learned Baroness thinks that is a problem. My second question is: why does the noble and learned Baroness think that adding further complications, which the amendment of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, would, would make this any better?
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
You cannot have two interventions.
I do not know the answer to the first question. I have not looked at what goes on in other jurisdictions; I do not know how well it works or whether it works. Secondly, it seems to me that there should be a lot of changes to the way this is all dealt with. If the police investigated the man as well as the woman, one would hope they would not pursue their investigations.
Lord Katz (Lab)
My Lords, it is Committee. Everyone can have a turn, as long as they stick to the speaking limits, so perhaps we could just take it around the Committee.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
I would just be grateful, and I will be brief, to get a clarification—
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
Before the Government Whip sits down, could he please remind the Committee that interventions have to be brief and cannot go on into speeches? Can he also remind the Committee that those who have put their names to these amendments should be heard prior to those who have not?
Lord Katz (Lab)
First, there are no points of order in our self-regulating House. Secondly, the noble Baroness makes the point about interventions very ably. Thirdly, as I said, there is time for everyone in Committee to both move their amendments and speak to other amendments, so I suggest we just take it in a reasonable order. I will leave it to the Committee to decide who speaks next.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I will be brief—I would just be grateful for a clarification. I strongly believe in women’s rights, including reproductive rights, and I do not want women in distress subjected to criminal investigation, if at all avoidable. But I am struggling to understand why Clause 191 is considered not to amend the Abortion Act, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, among others, asserts. I noted that the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, said it would be “toothless” if Clause 191 is agreed.
If I have understood it properly, people other than the pregnant woman concerned would still be committing a criminal offence if they gave any kind of assistance. That is why it is considered that the Abortion Act 1967 is not in fact amended. The noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, referred to repealed abortion offences, so we seem to be relying on the fact that only the woman herself would be regarded as decriminalised. I am not generally happy about decriminalisation, such as in relation to drugs. I prefer dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s and having legalisation—or not.
Have I understood that correctly? Maybe it is only when we come to the Minister that I will get full clarification as to whether or not we are amending the Abortion Act 1967, which I broadly support, even though it is a compromise. I have never supported the simple but simplistic “a woman’s right to choose”, because there are other considerations. I support the Abortion Act as a compromise on a difficult subject, as I think many people do, but I seek clarification that the Abortion Act is not being amended and that we would simply decriminalise the woman concerned while supposedly leaving the rest of the Abortion Act as it is.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
What our amendment does is disapply the Abortion Act so far as the mother and late-term abortions are concerned.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
Then I am not terribly attracted by the amendment of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. I am rather more attracted by that of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, although I have heard the criticisms of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, about that.
Lord Pannick (CB)
Can I assist the noble Baroness? Clause 191 is perfectly clear in that no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy. It simply does not affect the criminal offences that are committed by any person, whether a doctor or otherwise, who assists a woman. There are precedents for that distinction in the Suicide Act 1961. The act of suicide is lawful, but it is unlawful to assist.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
I do grasp that point, although I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for assisting me. In a broader sense, can it be relied on that Clause 191 would not have a wash effect over the Abortion Act 1967, which has been subjected to various attempts at amendment but has largely held the course since 1967? I understand all the very good reasons for it, but how we can be sure that this decriminalisation of the woman concerned would not ultimately lead to an amendment of the Abortion Act 1967.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Verdirame has explained, my noble friend Lady Wolf cannot be here today, so I will pick up some of her points in this intervention as she is not here to make them herself. If we want to change the law, many say that Clause 191 will improve the situation for women’s bodily autonomy. I am all for that, but only after a considered debate, which we had in the past when we amended the Abortion Act 1967 to bring it into conformity with changing medical science and social attitudes. It is not as though we are stuck in aspic. This Bill is not the place to do so, as the breadth of amendments that this clause has attracted demonstrates.
I will concentrate mainly on the Covid-era regulations which permitted the obtaining of pills by post at any point of gestation, whereas previously, later stages required face-to-face consultation between the pregnant woman and doctors under the Abortion Act. This may have been necessary during lockdown, and it is a failure on the part of the then Government not to have contemplated a review after lockdown ended. As things stand, Clause 191 will facilitate changes where decriminalisation of late-stage and full-term abortions may well create additional dangers to women’s health, as pointed out at Second Reading by numerous noble Lords. It will also open the door to coerce women to seek late-term abortions against their own wishes. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is not in her seat, but I think that is the point that she was trying to get to in her intervention.
If there is no sanction in law, what reason can one give a controlling partner who insists that it is perfectly permissible in law? Decriminalisation suggests that there is nothing to prevent the woman from aborting late-term through the convenience of pills by post, virtually no questions asked. So you have the perverse effect that, alongside the certainty of greater autonomy for women, we may well see the risk of coercive control and deception. I am sure that is not what the movers of this amendment in the other place sought.
My noble friend Lady Wolf made the point that while home-based abortions have become common, they normally use two drugs in the form of pills: mifepristone, which blocks progesterone, needed in pregnancy, but does not kill the foetus; and misoprostol, which basically causes cramping, bleeding and the emptying of the uterus. If taken early in pregnancy, the result is the same as an early miscarriage, in effect, and in England and Wales it is allowable for abortions up to 10 weeks of gestation.
The pills are advertised as simple to use and as creating early miscarriages with bleeding and perhaps some bits of tissue. So the descriptions are reassuring and encouraging. However, the reality may be very different and life-threatening to the woman, who, whatever her reasons for wishing to terminate the pregnancy, may not appreciate the complications. Pills by post do not require further safeguards than those put into place by the 1967 Act other than a phone or virtual call, which is the least satisfactory method of ascertaining stress, emotional distress or, indeed, coercive pressure.
I want to share with the Committee some examples of emotional pressure. Noble Lords may be aware of the case of Stuart Worby in December 2024. I am grateful to the prosecuting counsel, Edmund Vickers KC of Red Lion Chambers, for giving me some background information to this case. I should add, before I say anything further, that the victim is subject to lifelong anonymity.
In December 2024 the judge summed up the details of the case. A central aspect was that the victim married the defendant after the commencement of the pregnancy. He wished to terminate the pregnancy, but she wished to keep her baby, with or without him. He set about securing the termination without her knowledge and used a female friend to obtain abortive drugs from an online private clinic. The judge pointed out that he must have known that this was dangerous for his wife, as he knew she was many weeks past the time limit to use the drugs safely.
When Mr Worby received the drugs, he first added mifepristone to food and drink. The next day he told the victim that he wanted to try something sexually new in bed, which involved blindfolding her and tying her up. The real purpose was to insert the second type of medication, misoprostol, into her vagina. Shortly after he had done that, she became unwell, and the next day she suffered a miscarriage, losing the baby that she so badly yearned for. The judge’s remarks explained that the offence of administering poison to bring about a miscarriage was made more serious by Mr Worby’s prolonged research and planning over many weeks, by his involving others, by bringing about a miscarriage, and by the devastating effect it had on his then wife’s dream of having a child.
This sorry tale attempts to demonstrate that it is not only, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, the woman who may wish to terminate her pregnancy or the unborn child. There is a further factor here: the partner, the husband or other members of the family who may seek coercion.
Lord Pannick (CB)
I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. That is a shocking story, but nothing in Clause 191 would affect the criminal liability of the man who behaved in such a disgraceful manner.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
I find that very interesting. I am sure it will be a welcome debate among lawyers. I will look into that and take it into consideration when I come back with a renewed amendment on Report.
Lord Pannick (CB)
I am sorry, but this is simply not a controversial issue. Clause 191 says that
“no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy”.
It simply does not affect the criminal liability of anyone else.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
My Lords, we are coming back to the terminally ill debate that we had on Friday. Women may well be—although not in this particular case—coerced by partners to take pills when they would not otherwise have wished to do so. Perhaps noble Lords who have tabled amendments to do with face-to-face consultations have that in their minds, as a face-to-face consultation would require deeper insights on the part of medical professionals—pills by post do not.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
I would like to proceed a little further and then I will give way to the noble Baroness.
If we wish to change abortion law, we are perfectly entitled to do so as a society, but this clause raises significant questions that I hope the Minister will be able to answer, even though—I accept this—the Government said on Second Reading that they remain neutral on the clause and that they anticipated a free vote. As the clause seeks to repeal Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, can the Minister explain how charges could be brought in a case such as Mr Worby’s and others? This was a poisoning and an attempt to procure a miscarriage without the woman’s consent—and it happened without repealing those offences.
As the Government have not carried out a consultation on this proposed change, how will providers of pills by post be regulated further to ensure that late-term pregnancies still carry protections under the Abortion Act and other criminal law? Will the Government commit to carrying out an overall review of the extent of the problem with police investigations of these women and to opening discussions with the relevant authorities to ascertain how better to focus police interventions? That is the objective of our Amendment 456.
On all sides of the Committee, we recognise the distress caused to women by unfounded police intrusiveness. There must be other measures that could address how that can be done with care. Upholding the rights of women in terms of their bodily autonomy, as well as society’s obligations to provide the appropriate medical care for them at this vulnerable point of pregnancy, exists on the one hand. On the other, we have obligations to the rights of the unborn child.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
I will say one more sentence before I sit down, and I will be happy for both noble Baronesses to intervene then.
We have obligations to the rights of the unborn child, as that is what very late-term abortions are about in terms of viability. These things engage our ethics and responsibilities in law. I suggest that the Minister seeks to engage with those of us tabling amendments to guide us on how we in this Committee can do both responsibly.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
If you are being coerced into ending a pregnancy outside the law, and if you report that to the police, you yourself will be investigated for a criminal offence. That would be the case even though it is clear—as we know from that court case—that the man is the person who has coerced you into doing that. Can the noble Baroness say how this can be right? If a woman goes to the police in those circumstances—why would she?—she would be investigated for a criminal offence. That is what the law says now.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
In the Worby case, the woman discovered what had happened to her, went to the police and was not investigated.
Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)
My Lords, please excuse my enthusiasm but the Committee can see that, every time I blinked, somebody else jumped in.
I will speak in support of my Amendment 461B, which is focused on protecting underage girls. Before I do that, I will pose a few questions to the Minister on the back of the debate we have had today. First, an assertion has been made that this is happening all over the place and that many women are being prosecuted. Can the Minister give us access to the figures that she is working on to answer that question?
Secondly, is there any proof that the police are targeting women? That assertion has been made a number of times.
Also, what work are the Government doing to improve the nature of police investigations? The right reverend Prelate made that point very well. Surely, any woman in this situation should be treated as a victim until there is some very strong evidence that she is anything but a victim. What are we doing to help the police perform their duties better?
I will respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika. The notion that you can represent only people that you are of is one that we should fight very hard. I come from a very poor community and have spent my life representing people who have no relation to the way I look, where I come from and who I am. That is something we should fight very hard. I am a man and a father of two. When we talk about pregnant people, there is at least some idea that a man is 50% of how that situation arose, so I think I have some stake in the debate.
Finally, there is no debate on this side about what a woman is. If somebody is pregnant, in my world they are most certainly a woman. I cannot envisage any situation where somebody other than a woman would be pregnant. I am happy to take direction from the noble Baroness if she has such things.
My Amendment 461B is focused particularly on protecting young girls. To address this gap, my amendment would introduce a mandatory safeguarding investigation whenever an abortion is performed on a girl under the age of 16. This measure is in the best interest of vulnerable women and does not impede lawful medical care. It would simply ensure that when a child undergoes an abortion, relevant authorities are alerted and must promptly investigate the circumstances. Specifically, the investigation would seek to determine whether the pregnancy resulted from a criminal offence, such as rape or sexual offences under the Sexual Offences Act; whether the girl was subjected to coercion, exploitation or abuse; and whether any person involved, such as the abuser, may be liable for prosecution under existing laws.
One thing I know from my many decades of community work and dealing with vulnerable people in vulnerable situations is that an investigation-free zone is ripe for abuse. If you are an abuser, what you need is privacy. Clause 191 would provide privacy for many abusers, and that needs to be looked at very seriously.
The idea that there is a surge of young women who are being investigated needs to be taken into account, because this clause stands or falls on the idea that there are a lot of young women who are under a lot of pressure because of the things that are being suggested.
Clause 191 will bring about the most radical change to abortion laws in a generation, and it was done on the back of very little scrutiny and debate in the other place. I believe it falls to us in this Chamber to give it our full, undivided attention.
The other question I pose to the Minister is: what level of support is there for this publicly? We have heard that many of the professional bodies support the Bill, but do the public support it? Are they in the same place? Have they been consulted on what this would mean? I do not mean, “Do they support abortion?”; I mean, “Do they support the effect that this Bill would have?”
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I thank the noble Lord for giving way because I can save the Minister here. A study in 2023 by the National Centre for Social Research found that the majority of people did not want to see women criminalised in the kind of circumstances that we are talking about.
Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness, but, of course, the wrong question was asked. Let us be very clear, I personally do not want to see anybody criminalised, and I doubt that people want to see women who have gone through a very distressing situation be criminalised. But they would probably want to see a law, as identified by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, across the way, that dealt with the balance much better. Currently, that was the wrong question to answer.
I tabled the amendment because I am very worried about the real-world consequences for young women in vulnerable situations where, when they are being coerced, their abusers would know that no investigation is even possible. No matter where you stand on the question of abortion, surely noble Lords can see that the most vulnerable young women should be protected by us in law.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, talked about women who had suffered from rape gangs. They are exactly the kind of women I think would have benefited from some kind of investigation. As it stands, Clause 191 will prevent that happening.
Baroness O’Loan (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 461 and in support of the Clause 191 stand part notice from the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton. I have put my name to that stand part notice, too.
As other noble Lords have observed, Clause 191 was passed in the other place following a very brief and truncated debate, entirely incommensurate with the gravity of its impact. In moving the amendment, the Member for Gower noted that it was about ensuring only that
“vulnerable women … have the right help and support”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/6/25; col. 306.]
I am sure that we all support the provision of appropriate and timely support for a woman considering an abortion. However, it drastically understates the effect of Clause 191, regardless of the intent of its mover.
We must confront the radical legal reality that this clause removes all deterrence against a woman performing her own abortion up to the very moment of birth. How does that ensure that women have the right help and support? The clause will decriminalise actions by a woman at any stage of her pregnancy, including actions which are criminal at present under the Offences against the Person Act and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act.
In 1929, they knew that a child who has been in the womb for 28 weeks was capable of being born alive. Now, we know of children who are born alive at 22 weeks and live. In 2020 and 2021, 261 babies were born alive at 22 and 23 weeks, before the abortion limit, who survived to be discharged from hospital. Why is abortion so distressing? As the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, said, it is because, by 23 weeks, the unborn baby has all its organs, muscles, limbs, bones and sex organs, it may hear, and it makes facial expressions, responds to loud noises, is getting into a pattern of sleeping and waking, practices breathing and it definitely feels pain. After that, they just keep growing.
Proponents of Clause 191 have been at pain to say that the Abortion Act is not changed and that the time limits remain the same, but that is not the reality of the clause. Clause 191 may not repeal the Abortion Act but it renders its protections largely symbolic in practice. At present, the Act operates as a tightly drawn exception to criminal offences that otherwise prohibit ending a pregnancy. Its force comes from the fact that abortion outside its conditions is unlawful. Once associated consequences are removed, the framework ceases to be a deterrent or a boundary for conduct and becomes, in effect, merely a regulatory code for providers, albeit with criminal consequences for clinicians who are left untouched for now. It is a profound shift. Time limits, certification requirements and clinical safeguards would no longer operate as meaningful legal limits on a woman’s actions.
Clause 191 is not an outworking of modernised enforcement; it is a hollowing out of the underlying settlement, which nullifies the protective structure built into the 1967 Act, particularly its recognition that abortion law is not a matter of personal autonomy but one of safety, safeguarding and the status of the viable unborn child. Both lives matter. The issue is not whether the Abortion Act still exists on the statute book; it is whether it still performs the function that Parliament intended. Clause 191 leaves the text intact while removing the mechanism that makes its limits real. I strongly urge noble Lords to support the removal of Clause 191 from the Bill.
Baroness O’Loan (CB)
I wish to finish my sentence.
The woman may be unable to deliver it. It may get stuck in the birth canal. If it survives the attempt to terminate its life, it may be born alive, as babies still are. What then? What of the mother? When one gives birth, one is monitored by doctors to ensure no crises occur, if possible. Those crises can include haemorrhage, damage to the womb and bladder, and, in the worst cases, death.
If the Bill is passed and a mother chooses to terminate her baby other than as provided for in the Abortion Act, she will not be prosecuted. She may have been coerced into it, as we have heard at length, for a variety of reasons, but, despite being decriminalised, she may die or face life-changing injuries.
Baroness Hazarika (Lab)
The noble Baroness paints a very vivid picture of how traumatic it is for a woman to go through this once late-term. I am sure all of us would agree that nobody would do this lightly. Does that not reinforce why it is so important that the woman should not be in a position where she thought she could be investigated by the police at this point and why she should go and seek medical advice, safe in the knowledge that she was not potentially going to end up in prison?
Baroness O’Loan (CB)
There are situations in which the woman in that case, under the Abortion Act, can seek help. I would expect that she would, but there are situations in which she may not. I simply ask the Government how they expect it to happen. Doctors administer these drugs. Doctors look after us in childbirth. We do not do it ourselves.
I move to Amendment 461. A considerable danger associated with Clause 191 is the activities of abusers and exploiters. The shield, which would be reimposed if telemedicine were stopped, is a requirement for all women considering abortion. It is not possible on the telephone to ensure a woman’s privacy and that she is not being coerced, or to verify that the person seeking the medication is the person who will actually take it, particularly in cases involving domestic abuse, child abuse and trafficking. It is important that the medication is not taken by a woman whose pregnancy exceeds 10 weeks. The NHS reported in July 2025 that, since 2020, 54,000 women have been admitted to hospital in England for complications from birth pills. Last year alone, there were 12,000.
In removing the criminal status of abortion, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, says, we perversely incentivise abusers to pressure vulnerable women into dangerous, isolated and self-administered late-term abortions. My Amendment 461 is a safeguard against that, which I hope noble Lords will be minded to support. It would create a provision analogous to that found in Section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961—a special offence of encouraging or assisting an abortion which is unlawful under the terms of the Abortion Act.
The amendment would not chill medical advice or online information. It requires intent, which is a distinct threshold. Ordinary clinical counselling or neutral provision of information would not meet the test. The amendment does not engage with or change what is lawful under the Abortion Act. It concerns only unlawful terminations and intentional encouragement or assistance. If an abortion is lawful, the offence does not arise. Perhaps most importantly, its desired effect is safeguarding vulnerable women.
Under the current wording of Clause 191, there is a risk, if self-administering an abortion is no longer a crime, that the woman can be pressurised. By legislating expressly where safeguarding is paramount and creating a clear specific offence, we would send a strong protective signal for women. My amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult and to talk to clinicians, et cetera. It is a measured, reasonable and necessary response. I urge noble Lords to support it.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I rise with a certain level of trepidation and fear to convey a contribution during this debate, as I am not a mother. I have never enjoyed motherhood; therefore, I do not have the experiences of many women right across this Chamber. But I rise to support Amendment 460, to which I am pleased to be a signatory and to which the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, has already spoken, and the clause stand part notice on Clause 191 from the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton.
I support Amendment 460 because the health risks of obtaining abortion pills without adequate prior in-person checks are now well documented. I feel that if they are to be available—if that is the way you support—you need an ultrasound and a full investigation.
I simply add one further example to those which have already been cited. The Irish Medical Journal published an article in March 2024 explaining how a woman in Ireland nearly died from an ectopic pregnancy after taking abortion pills. The article reported that the case
“could have been prevented by an ultrasound”.
If women once again had mandatory in-person scans, it would protect them, allowing ectopic pregnancies and other possible health risks to be picked up more reliably.
However, as has been noted, the woman is not our only consideration. I agree that there is a need to protect the woman but also the unborn child. By allowing Clause 191 to stand, we would remove the legal safeguards that exist to protect an unborn baby after the point of viability, when a baby could survive outside the womb. I contend that this is a radical and unpopular proposal. Indeed, this is an issue that should unite those of us who are pro-life and those of us who are pro-choice. In an article for the Times entitled “I’ve always been pro-choice but this is too far”, the well-known pro-choice commentator Janice Turner wrote
“I find it discomforting that a woman could abort a full-term baby and face no sanctions”.
She is not alone. Polling in 2024 found that only 1% of women support abortion up to birth, while just 16% of the public support removing a legal deterrent after the 24-week limit. In fact, 70% of women would like to see a reduction in our abortion time limits, not permitting women to induce their own abortions up to birth, as would de facto become the case under Clause 191.
As a Northern Irish Peer, I echo the earlier comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, regarding Northern Ireland. I was concerned to hear suggestions in the other place, during the truncated Report debate on this clause, that there are considerations about whether to introduce pills by post in Northern Ireland. I am deeply worried about this possibility. If supporters of Clause 191 really wish to bring England and Wales into line with Northern Ireland, as they claim, I make a simple suggestion that they ought to support Amendment 460 and reintroduce the in-person appointments that we rightly continue to have in Northern Ireland.
I finish by quoting the Times leading article, published two days after Clause 191 passed in the other place:
“Even the most ardent advocate of a woman’s right to choose must see that this change risks a host of unintended consequences. While women considering ultra-late termination must”—
I support them in this—“be regarded” and supported
“with the greatest understanding and sympathy”,
as well as with compassion and humanity,
“the possibility of a viable child being killed shortly before its birth is not a prospect to be treated lightly”.
I know there are different views on that issue right across the Chamber, but I hold my view, and I respect the views of others who take a different viewpoint. There has been no great public clamour, I believe, for this change. I very much hope that Clause 191 will not remain part of the Bill, and I also support Amendment 460 to which I am a signatory.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 459 and in support of other amendments that have been tabled in this group, in particular the clause stand part notice in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, and Amendment 460 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud.
Clause 191, were it to become law, would open a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences. Although these consequences may be unintended, they are not unforeseen. After all, many of us warned about exactly what would happen if the pills by post scheme was introduced. Indeed, the only reason we are having this debate is because, tragically, those warnings proved to be accurate, and the supporters of pills by post now wish to decriminalise late-term, self-induced abortions as a result of and, dare I say, to conceal the results of this reckless scheme for which they lobbied.
Those consequences were foreseeable, and if Clause 191 makes it on to the statute book we can foresee what its consequences would be too. Although women ending the lives of their unborn children after the 24-week limit may be spared prosecution under the clause, I fear they will not be spared the grave resulting dangers to their physical health and the lasting trauma that would accompany such abortions. It is for this reason, and many of the others that have already been set out, that I wholeheartedly support Clause 191 not standing part of the Bill, and Amendment 460, which would reinstate in-person consultations with a medical professional before abortion pills can be obtained, should be approved.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
My Lords, I ask the noble Baroness how criminalisation of the mother would provide any protection against abortions on sex-selective grounds. That is the argument she is making, it appears to me. How would criminalisation stop this?
Baroness Eaton (Con)
The criminalisation is known by both the partner and the mother, and it gives the woman a reason to say that this is a dangerous process that easily could lead to one or both of them being accused of an illegal act.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
The noble Baroness has had one intervention, and only one is allowed.
Lord Katz (Lab)
To be clear, the noble Baroness can take as many or as few interventions as she wishes.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
Well, that is not the information that was given earlier, but there we are. I think I have answered the question.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
No, I have already had one, and I am happy with it, thank you.
This is not scaremongering. We need only to look at other countries to foresee what the consequences of decriminalisation would be. Sex-selective abortion has been a significant problem in Canada since abortion was decriminalised. An article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal has outlined that:
“Easy access to abortion and advances in prenatal sex determination have combined to make Canada a haven for parents who would terminate female fetuses in favour of having sons”.
Evidence of sex-selective abortions has also been found in Victoria, Australia, since decriminalisation—so much so that one doctor was investigated by the medical board of Victoria for failing to refer a woman for a sex-selective abortion. Australian broadcaster SBS reported that there are higher numbers of boys than girls being born in some ethnic communities in Australia since decriminalisation.
If we go down the path proposed by Clause 191, we could expect the same to happen here, risking profound social and demographic problems. Estimates suggest there are more than 140 million missing women and girls across the globe, in most part resulting from sex-selective abortion and postnatal sex-selection infanticide.
Sex-selective abortion in China, arising in part because of the country’s one-child policy, created enormous demographic challenge in the country, with media reports describing how millions of men have struggled find a wife in the country.
Lord Winston (Lab)
Does the noble Baroness accept that sex selection has to be done under the auspices of the regulatory authority, the HFEA, and that it is illegal in this country and has remained illegal? It would be very difficult for clinics to use that technology without the support of the HFEA.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
I remind the noble Lord that there is already an issue in this country: BPAS suggests online that it is not illegal to have sex-selective abortions, so there is some dispute about that information.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, I have my name to Amendment 461—
Baroness Eaton (Con)
I have not finished. That was an intervention. Sorry; I have nearly finished.
Lord Katz (Lab)
I ask the noble Baroness to conclude her remarks: it is well over her 10 minutes.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
Yes, sorry, it is. I will just read the last paragraph. It is the interventions that have taken time.
Some of these examples may sound fanciful or seem extreme, but the worst consequences of a policy rarely announce themselves plainly at first sight; otherwise, we would always pass perfect laws, and we do not. We would be foolish not to learn from evidence in other jurisdictions. I contend that it would be far wiser to reject Clause 191 altogether. Doing so would protect women—both baby girls in the womb and the mothers who carry them.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 461J, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, spoke so eloquently. It addresses the pardoning of women who have already been criminalised. When Clause 191 becomes law, I look forward to this amendment being part of it because, as your Lordships all know, having a criminal record precludes you from some jobs and from getting visas to some countries. It is a very serious thing, and this small amendment is well worth while.
The overwhelming support from the professional bodies must weigh heavily on your Lordships, even those who are doubtful about Clause 191. I am grateful to those in the Committee who have experience in this field. It struck me that if the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and the Royal College of General Practitioners are all behind, who are we to raise many of these issues? That is not to say we should not debate the important points. However, where those involved in delivering healthcare for women are so overwhelmingly supportive, this seems to me to be the right course.
The noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, asked about surveys. Well, I have one from YouGov that cites 70% of the public as saying that women should not face criminal prosecutions for having abortions outside the set rules.
The noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, made the comment: what is the role of this House? Well, the role of this House, which I am glad to say it is undertaking very well this evening, is, as we know, not to overturn the will of the Commons, where the vote was 379 to 137.
There are many amendments in this first group that seem innocuous. We debated some of them a while ago—for example, the requirement to keep statistics—in the Bill by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. But they are not innocuous; they are really just a back door into undermining the very idea of Clause 191.
My last point is about an issue addressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln. I have understood that decriminalisation does not encourage more, or later, abortion. In the countries that have practised it, such as Canada and New Zealand, it has not been the case that it has encouraged more or later abortion. Other noble Lords have eloquently made the point that abortion is not something that you, as a woman, just choose lightly. I have not had an abortion myself; I have had only a miscarriage, and I happily have two children besides, but that was enough to tell me that you would not lightly go and choose this. Getting rid of Clause 191 is an essential part of moving us into the 21st century and away from the very Victorian attitude that has prevailed until now.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, before I discuss the substance of the amendments in this group, including my Amendment 461F, I want to make a brief observation. In my experience, both in the other place and as a Member of your Lordships’ House for a little over three years, the issues we are considering today in this group of amendments and the two that follow have become increasingly difficult to discuss openly. By that, I mean that we seldom consider the merits of the arguments put forward in good faith and instead fall back on principled objections. I regret that abortion has become such a binary and closed-off debate in this country. One’s views on the subject are put into a box: compassionate or unfeeling; morally progressive or morally regressive; forward-looking or Victorian. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that this serves nobody well, whether in this place in facilitating constructive and reasoned debate, and thereby serving the watching public well or, perhaps more importantly, in promoting the safety and well-being of women and unborn children.
There are, I would hope, things that we can agree on. Statistics released by the Department of Health and Social Care on 15 January show the highest number of abortions ever recorded in England and Wales, with 278,740 taking place in 2023—a 10% increase on the previous year. When added to figures from Scotland and Northern Ireland, this amounts to nearly 300,000 abortions across the UK in 2023. Nearly one in three of all pregnancies ended in abortion in 2023.
Baroness Hazarika (Lab)
I think we can all agree on the fact that there are a certain number of people in this Committee who have never been pregnant and never had to go through this. That does not mean that everybody else does not get to have an opinion on it, but there will be a lot of young women looking at this debate because the consequences of this debate will be very profound. That was the point I was making.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I have never committed murder or been a hangman, but I can take a view on capital punishment from a moral view. To disaggregate people and their right or obligation to comment on the debate is not helpful. I caveat that by saying I have an awful lot of respect for how eloquently the noble Baroness put her case.
As I said at Second Reading, this will harm women, increase the number of late-term abortions and dehumanise children in the womb in a way I find chilling. But that has not been reflected on in the way that this has come to form part of the Bill.
During the debate on Report in the other place, which lasted a little over two hours in total, three new clauses were debated: proposed new Clause 1, which is now Clause 191; proposed new Clause 20, which proposed an even more extreme form of decriminalisation than that which we are considering today; and proposed new Clause 106, which I am delighted to see tabled again as Amendment 460 in the name of my noble friend Lady Stroud, which, needless to say, I strongly support.
In fact, saying that there were two hours of debate on such a significant proposal is perhaps overly generous. Sandwiched between the remarks of the three Members moving the proposed new clauses and the responses of the Front Benches, just 46 minutes were given over to speeches from Back-Bench MPs. The point is that there has been a scandalous lack of consideration of this change in our law and its impact.
I accept that some aspects of abortion law are an issue of conscience, but that is not a “get out of jail free” card for failure to undertake any form of due diligence, particularly on proposals that many of us regard as potentially dangerous. There is no impact assessment, there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny and there has been no consultation of any kind. I hope that the Minister, in responding to this group, addresses those issues.
I strongly support the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, in her proposal to remove Clause 191 from the Bill and will do so again on Report. However, the danger of Clause 191 is compounded by the continuation of the pandemic hangover policy of pills by post, which provides for easy access to abortion pills without sufficient checks. I am afraid I simply cannot understand the view that holds that Clause 191 is pro-women. In combination with the ongoing availability of pills by post, it instead seems to me to offer the worst of both worlds. It opens the gates for overly expeditious access to less-than-safe care.
As the Member for Reigate in the other place has said:
“Being pro-choice should not mean supporting fewer checks and worse care for women seeking an abortion. Indeed, this is an issue where both sides of the abortion debate ought to eschew tribalism and unite in support of common-sense measures that safeguard women”.
I hope that we can rise above tribalism on this issue and find some common ground.
There are amendments in this group which I strongly support, including Amendments 455 and 459, but I will move on to my own Amendment 461F. While I would pick out other excellent amendments from this group, in the interests of time I will speak to my amendment particularly. My amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish guidance on the investigation of offences relating to abortion and infanticide within 12 months of the commencement of Clause 191. The amendment is concerned with providing clarity and clear protocols to distinguish between what would be a decriminalised self-induced abortion and a criminal act of infanticide or child destruction.
My amendment is also designed to reassure proponents of Clause 191, including some who advise concern about possible intimidation or distress caused to a woman who may have experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth. I recognise those concerns. Women facing miscarriage, stillbirth or medical crisis deserve care, dignity and compassion and nothing in my amendment would change that. However, I point to the other way around and suggest that the absence of clear guidance is what can produce overreach and inconsistency. When professionals are left uncertain about the law and about thresholds, practice understandably becomes variable. Some cases may be mishandled—
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I am puzzled by something that the noble Lord has said and perhaps he would like to clarify. I am not quite sure how jailing women is pro-women.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
If the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, will forgive me, I did not quite hear the last part of her question.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
The noble Lord has talked about being pro-women and I would like him to explain to the Committee why jailing women is pro-women.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
The simple point is that if Clause 191 is incorporated into the Bill, we will have a situation where many more women are under threat of coercion and many more women will face complications. Even the incomplete and substandard figures produced by the Department of Health on abortion in 2023 show that, at over 20 weeks’ gestation, 60.3% of women per 100,000 experienced complications arising from abortion in all clinical settings. That phenomenon will continue and will get worse. I hope that that is sufficient for the noble Baroness.
My amendment is directed towards striking an appropriate balance by providing legal certainty that would prevent overzealous investigation, weighed against the need to protect children. By defining clear thresholds for investigation, we protect vulnerable women while maintaining a shield for infants born alive. Clause 191 fundamentally changes our legal landscape and it is appropriate and reasonable to require updated public consultative guidance so that police and prosecutors understand what remains investigable, what standards apply and how to act lawfully and consistently.
In conclusion, if Parliament insists on decriminalising the woman’s role in procuring her own abortion, it has a profound moral duty to ensure that the law can still protect the infant the moment it leaves the womb. Amendment 461F is a measured attempt to ensure this and arguably the bare minimum in terms of responsible lawmaking. I urge noble Lords to support my amendment and others in this group, which seek to protect women and the most vulnerable lives among us. I urge Ministers to consider my Amendment 461F carefully as the Bill moves to Report.
Baroness Gerada (CB)
My Lords, until recently I was head of the Royal College of GPs. Our college is fully in favour of decriminalisation of abortion. As Professor Hawthorne said:
“No woman should face prosecution under antiquated laws that were created before women were even allowed to vote. This change in the law is a vital piece of protection for the reproductive and health rights of women”.
I would like to pick up a few issues. I have been fortunate enough to work in the NHS, in a legal state in terms of abortion, which has been absolutely fabulous, because I have seen many young women and girls and older women coming and needing terminations of pregnancy and I have guided them through it. I want to talk about a few things—for a start, telemedicine and “medicines by post” and the assumption that this is somehow a bad thing. I would like to turn it all round and say that this is a patient-centric initiative. Imagine having to travel far and to have to go past your abusive husband or abusive partner to say where you have been all day. This is humane and patient-centric and about 50% of women choose this option.
It does not mean that they do not get a proper assessment. Many people are assuming yet again that it is a sort of tick box. It is an hour-long consultation with pre- and post-termination counselling and at any point the woman can be seen face to face. I have also been hearing an assumption that it is an unsafe procedure. I think that I heard—I may have misheard—that one in 17 women end up having complications from having had a medical termination. That is not the figures from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. It says that, under 10 weeks, one in 1,000 women have heavy bleeds and at, over 20 weeks, four in 1,000 do. Those women are in hospital. Clearly it is very different. It is nothing like one in 17. You also have to compare that—we have the comparator—with women who miscarry at home without having an abortion, who probably end up in hospital, as I did twice as a young woman when I had miscarriages. I also want to pick up the issue that somehow telemedicine is a process without any legal requirements. Of course it has legal requirements. It is currently, and will continue to be, regulated under the abortion law. What we are doing is decriminalising it.
I then want to talk about foeticide or foetal sex selection. Foetal sex can be determined as early as 10 weeks and many women choose, for one reason or another, to know the sex of their child. Both my daughters-in-law—I was going say my sons but, of course, for the purpose of this, boys cannot become pregnant—chose to determine the sex of their child, just as many people do. It is perfectly legal to determine the sex of your child—at the 20-week scan, anyway, you can choose to determine the sex. Women can then choose to have a legal termination if they so wish, though I am struck by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, saying that there are legal implications. This is conflating the issue of decriminalisation and sex selection. I personally am against sex selection, but it is not part of this argument about decriminalisation.
I would also just like to address the under-16s and compulsory safeguarding assessments under what I assume would be a multi-agency assessment, including the police and social workers. As the law stands, women under 16 can obtain an abortion and obtain sexual health advice and contraception without safeguarding implications—clearly noble Lords all know about Gillick competence and Fraser guidelines. This would be a retrograde step. These young girls would not come to see us. They would probably end up like one patient who I saw very late in pregnancy. She presented with a rash on her abdomen, which is the rash with stretch marks; she was 32-weeks pregnant. She was so terrified—and this was before the law changed—of admitting that she had had unprotected sex and had not had her period. Compulsory safeguarding is a retrograde step and has nothing to do with this decriminalisation, which I fully support.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I mainly want to defend Clause 191 remaining in the Bill, but with some reservations. Before that, I want to acknowledge public interest in this issue and a popular worry that it is all about legalising abortion up to birth. That is what is being discussed. Worse than that, people believe that somehow this legal change was rushed through the other place almost by the back door. Legalising abortion up to birth is not what is contained in Clause 191, but I have sympathy with the public’s confusion over that and criticism about how the clause was added to the Bill in the other place.
The noble Lord, Lord Carter, spoke about some of this and everybody else has now mentioned just how little time was spent discussing this in the other place. More important, most people did not know it was coming. Most members of the public were not expecting such a big change in the law. Wherever you stand on this, abortion might be a settled entitlement for women—most people accept that abortion exists in society—but it is still a morally charged, difficult discussion. For some, conscience is involved. There are contestations, certainly about when life begins.
We cannot deny it: if anything talks to going beyond 24 weeks—and, as we have heard today, even 24 weeks is contentious or becoming so; it should not be, but it is—the public are perfectly right to be a bit furious and feel that somehow the democratically accountable system has been snubbed. I say that because this debate needs more discussion and depth. I am glad to hear that we are getting some of it here, but we certainly did not get it when the clause was brought into the Bill in the House of Commons. That has led to a big backlash, which, as it happens, is not necessarily the best atmosphere in which to conduct a rational, reasoned debate.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
I want to speak to the three amendments which I have tabled in this group. I urge noble Lords to show the normal courtesies that we extend when a Peer is speaking to an amendment that he or she has tabled.
I will start with my Amendments 456B, 461H and 461K. Amendment 456B is the third amendment in this group. As matters stand, the law allows for abortions only under certain clearly defined conditions after 24 weeks. Amendment 456B aims to ensure that women follow these conditions after 24 weeks. I suppose it is the most important of my three amendments, which is why I am speaking to it first, bearing in mind the problems and consequences to which other noble Lords have already pointed.
Clause 191 leaves abortion over 24 weeks as unlawful, but in practice it also leaves open the possibility for a woman to have such an abortion without consequences. My Amendment 456B would help to ensure that present-day legislation is observed by stipulating that criminal culpability is removed from the woman only if the abortion takes place before 24 weeks. As the law stands at present, there is a big difference between before and after 24 weeks. The law is clear that before 24 weeks there is a procedure and regulations to be complied with, and it is a relatively straightforward procedure. In practice, abortions before 24 weeks are allowed to go ahead once the paperwork has been done. By contrast, after 24 weeks abortions are allowed to go ahead only under a defined, limited process and subject to stringent conditions, such as that the mother’s life would be endangered or that the child would be born with serious defects.
These matters have been raised as if they do not exist. These stipulations have been raised in the Chamber as if they were not already part of the law. When a woman procures an abortion outside the legal procedure before 24 weeks, she almost certainly would have had the abortion lawfully. The fault is one of failing to go through the proper procedures. However, for abortions performed outside the law after 24 weeks, the position is completely different. These are abortions which may not have been permitted under the law had the woman sought permission. To put it bluntly, in these cases, the woman kills her own baby when she has not been legally permitted to do so and might have been denied the permission. Remember that, in cases post 24 weeks, the babies concerned may well be viable.
The new clause removes criminal culpability from women for abortions at any time. It is hard to see how a reasonable distinction can be made between a baby who is ready to be born and one who has just been. I was very impressed by the speeches of my noble friend Lord Hailsham and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, on these points.
I will conclude on this one, which will be the longest. It has been pointed out that the next stage in these matters is to decriminalise infanticide. What do we think of a society which kills babies a day before being born—indeed, as they are ready to exit the womb? Although the act remains a crime, the law excuses the main perpetrator. This would leave us with an act that remains a crime but the law excusing the main perpetrator of any blame. Is this the sort of society we want to create?
I move on to my Amendments 461K and 461H.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
While the noble Baroness finds her notes, I will say that I think Amendment 461K is a really interesting one. How are the Government going to make sure that providers of a variety of abortions actually operate within the law and make those checks? This is something I will be discussing regarding my amendment shortly as the debate continues.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, but I will go on to Amendment 461H on in-person consultations. We have already heard from the proposers of Amendment 460, which would require that this consultation be in person. My amendment would require this, but it would also add that the gestational age of the baby should be ascertained by a medical scan or other equivalent means. Usually this means an ultrasound scan, which can be given at seven weeks onwards. First-trimester scans are generally safe, non-invasive and commonly used to confirm pregnancy, identify the due date of the baby and—
Lord Patel (CB)
May I just, for information, correct that? First-trimester ultrasound scans are carried out with a vaginal probe, so they are invasive.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
I thank the Lord for that. But I think one of the American learned societies of obstetricians, gynaecologists and other kinds of medicine that indicates—as do other sites—that there is technology that is successful from seven weeks on, and certainly from nine or 10 weeks. There are differences. These differences are the subject of debate among medical professionals. I can see the noble Lord shaking his head.
Lord Winston (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. Just as a matter of information, I must tell the noble Baroness that in a clinic I have run for over 40 years which does ultrasound on every patient with a high degree of expertise, these measurements are not that accurate; they really are not. There is a real risk that you get the wrong stage of the foetus completely—at least a month out, if not more.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, and I respect his expertise, but I think there is a debate about how successful scans are and from what stage. We can debate that on another occasion, but there is evidence that scans can be used successfully. I will not take any more interventions, because my time is running out and I have one more amendment to go through after this.
There is evidence that first-trimester scans are generally safe, non-invasive and commonly used to confirm pregnancy, identifying due date et cetera. At the moment, the requirement is that the medical practitioner believes in good faith that the pregnancy will not exceed 10 weeks when the medicine or the first dose of a course is administered. I contend that the condition stretches the idea of belief and good faith unreasonably widely, so the medical practitioner simply accepts what they are told, perhaps by the pregnant woman who may be speaking in perfectly good faith—we have seen tragic cases of this—but is mistaken, or else that it is only after the gestational age of the baby has been reliably ascertained that the medical practitioner is in a position to believe in good faith that the pregnancy meets the conditions stated. My amendment would not change the Act.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
I will certainly bring my remarks to a conclusion. I will just briefly introduce my last amendment to Clause 191 if I may because of those interventions and, I have to confess, my loss of notes. Amendment 461K, my last amendment, proposes to—
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
I will make an intervention in general about this rather lengthy debate. I draw your Lordships’ attention to paragraph 4.46 on page 63 of the Companion, entitled “Reading of Speeches”. I will read it out very clearly so that everybody can understand what it says:
“The House has resolved that the reading of speeches is ‘alien to the custom of this House, and injurious to the traditional conduct of its debates.’ It is acknowledged, however, that on some occasions, for example ministerial statements”—
or statements from Front Bench speakers—
“it is necessary to read from a prepared text. In practice, some speakers may wish to have ‘extended notes’ from which to speak, but it is not in the interests of good debate that they should follow them closely”.
I also point out that the advisory time limits are made to include interventions. If there are interventions, that does not mean that you go over time. The reason that ministerial statements at the end of a debate are given 20 minutes is that that allows for interventions.
Lord Farmer (Con)
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Russell, the Companion says that we should not read speeches, but there is an argument that that is classist and sexist. Many women are not used to speaking ad lib—
Lord Farmer (Con)
Well, they are not. Many of us have not been parliamentarians for long, and we have not been at the right schools that have debating societies. If we want to say something important for the good of the common—
Lord Katz (Lab)
Order. We need to return to the debate. I suggest that the noble Baroness concludes her remarks imminently so that we can carry on with the debate.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, my Amendment 461K agrees that the people who support this clause say that they are not trying to legalise abortions that would otherwise be illegal. If that were to happen, it would be extremely important to ensure that proper mechanisms exist for prosecuting the party culpable—that is to say, the abortion provider—so that they are not above the law or beyond the reach of the law. We should not forget that, for the most part, it is non-medical clinics that provide around 80% of abortions, with taxpayers funding the bill. Like all service providers—
Lord Katz (Lab)
The noble Baroness has had a lot of the Committee’s indulgence. We will take that as her finishing.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
My Lords, I think the noble Baroness was in danger of no longer wishing to be heard. That is where the Committee was moving. When the Whips tell us to conclude, we really should conclude.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
My Lords, some of us have been sitting through this debate right from the very beginning. Others have come in late and then made certain speeches. I notice that the noble Lord had to read what he had to say as well. Therefore, I will just say to him very gently, and as graciously as I can, that this is a very vital issue. There are those of us who believe that it is important to say what we have to say carefully and clearly, and we are therefore seeking to put a point on the record.
People are watching this. I must be honest, having sat here for so long, one can be very confused in our debates. On Friday, we were debating allowing and encouraging sick and elderly people to end their lives as quickly as possible, but now we are debating something that does not allow healthy babies to even live their lives, so people outside are confused about where we stand. Therefore, there is a matter that we need to deal with on this issue.
I say this as a father; my wife and I have five children, and we lost one child. I therefore resent anyone saying that I do not know what this is. As a father of five children who has brought them up through all those years, I certainly know, even to this day, what it is to bring up children. Women who are pregnant, whether it is an intended pregnancy or not, deserve compassion, support and honesty from us in this place as we debate these matters—as do children who are capable of being born alive. My concern is that Clause 191 unsettles a delicate legal balance—one that many of us already feel is too casual—on the rights of the unborn child, without the security that such a change demands.
In the other place, two hours and 15 minutes were found for a Backbench Business Committee debate to consider government support for the fishing industry. Debate on the forthcoming business lasted one hour and 17 minutes. These are important matters. I do not cite those figures to denigrate either the topics that were debated or the business managers in the other place. I am pointing out that I find it remarkable that the entire debate on this issue in the other House, which concerned not only Clause 191 but the more extreme decriminalisation proposal—as well as a sensible, reasoned amendment to reinstate in-person consultation before prescribing abortion pills—lasted just two hours.
In fact, it is even worse: some 46 minutes were available for speeches from the Back Benches. That is how long the other place took to come to a conclusion on decriminalisation concerning this issue. This is not responsible lawmaking on a matter that carries profound consequences for the status of the unborn and the safety of women. That is why I strongly support the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, in opposing Clause 191, and associate myself entirely with those who have spoken on that issue in support of her.
This is not simply a matter of differing worldviews or perspectives on the subject of abortion. Legal opinion, including that of Stephen Rose KC, confirms that Clause 191 would permit a woman to perform her own abortion at home for any reason, right up to the moment of birth, with no legal deterrent. We have heard another legal opinion, but, as we know, lawyers make their money by disagreeing with one another.
I am clear that science tells us that life begins at conception, but I also accept that this is not currently reflected in our law. However, whether one agrees or disagrees with the law as it stands, it is at least clear. In removing women from the existing criminal framework, as Clause 191 does, we upend our current settlement. As the gestation of a pregnancy advances, the state’s interest increases. This is not arbitrary: it recognises the view that with increasing viability must come increasing protection for the unborn. This is an explicit recognition not only that are two lives involved in any pregnancy but that they both require protection.
This is also a matter of safety. On complications, a government review published in November 2023 found that medical abortions after 20 weeks, even in clinical settings, have a complication rate more than 160 times higher than that of abortions under 10 weeks. The Government’s own commentary on the publication of abortion statistics for England and Wales in 2023 acknowledges that data on complications does not present a true picture. It says that,
“where … medication is administered at home, complications may be less likely to be recorded”.
Without an in-person check, women can obtain pills, perhaps mistakenly or through pressure, far beyond the 10-week limit for pills-by-post abortions. As it is, this seems a recipe for a disaster, but, with the deterrent effect of the current law removed by Clause 191, I fail to see how this problem will not be exacerbated and how more women will not be placed in precisely these higher-risk situations.
This is why Amendment 460 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, ably supported and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, matters. By restoring in-person consultation before pills are prescribed, the amendment simply returns us to a best practice model with regard to women’s safety and the protection for viable unborn babies. It provides a crucial opportunity to assess gestation accurately, to screen for potential harm and to identify coercion or abuse. This is not a restrictive or regressive measure but a pro-safety one which, according to the poll of 2,103 adults by Whitestone Insight shortly before Clause 191 passed in the Commons, is supported by two-thirds of women, with only 4% in favour of the status quo.
Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Con)
My Lords, I am speaking late in the debate and others have made many points. I just want to speak to the amendments in my name in this group and say a few brief words about the stand part notice from the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, to which I am a signatory. I also support the amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Bailey and Lord Jackson, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Stroud, Lady Eaton and Lady Lawlor.
I consider myself very fortunate to have never had an abortion, and I wonder how many of us in your Lordships’ House have actually had one. I want to make it clear that I do not oppose abortion altogether. No woman would choose an abortion lightly, and I fully recognise the points that have been raised about the distress of police investigations for women at that time in their lives. But we owe it to ourselves and to the women affected to be honest about the reality of what we are discussing.
In 2022, 260 abortions in England and Wales took place at or beyond 24 weeks’ gestation. These abortions must be performed in NHS hospitals. The woman is awake—she goes through actual labour, including painful contractions; she will deliver a fully formed infant via a vaginal delivery. We may wonder whether every woman going through this is fortunate enough to be in a bereavement suite with specialist care, or will she be in the next room to someone delivering a healthy baby? At 24 weeks, a baby is 12 inches long, weighing about 1.5 pounds, with a fully formed face. The NHS website tells us that at 32 weeks, an unborn baby is perfectly formed and just needs to put on weight. Once delivered, we wonder what happens to the infant. They are classified as clinical waste to be incinerated; at earlier gestations, women are advised that they can take the remains home, bury them in the garden, flush them down the toilet or place them in household rubbish.
There is no extensive research on the long-term emotional impact on women of late-term abortions, but natural human empathy tells us that this must carry significant emotional impact and distress. My heart goes out to those who are in this position because of foetal abnormalities, but I ask your Lordships whether extending this experience to any point in pregnancy, including up to full term, is truly in the interests of women and girls, many of whom are victims of reproductive coercion, domestic abuse, child rape, trafficking or modern slavery, when we have so little understanding of the long-term effects.
In fact, there is complete silence around late-term abortions. It is a taboo subject associated with complex feelings. There is hardly any information about what it actually involves or how it will impact women and their bodies. Removing any legal deterrent, as this clause does, means that we put more women in a world of scary and unsafe unknowns, and we leave our public services to pick up the pieces without any plan. These are almost certainly not women with significant resources, resilient mental health or strong support systems. We are leaving the most vulnerable at greater risk of exploitation.
I come at this, respectfully, from a totally different perspective from that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, and others, because we know that abuse often takes the form of reproductive coercion, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, explained in the case of Stuart Worby, and we know that this is a pattern for grooming gang victims as well. I fully accept that this is not the design or intent of the policy, but it very much is the unintended consequence. How many of us can genuinely say that we always pass perfect laws without unintended consequences? It is not the case. This situation could happen via the pills by post scheme, or by coercion or other reasons.
Those who support this clause present it as a feminist fight for women’s rights, and accuse those of us on the other side of the debate of ignoring the suffering of women. They tell us this radical law change is necessary because dozens of women are facing life in prison under a Victorian law. But almost every part of this claim is questionable. The law in question, the Offences against the Person Act 1861, may be old, but it is still the basis of our laws today against GBH and manslaughter, and nobody would suggest that they are obsolete. The idea that women are facing life in prison is also fanciful. The one high-profile conviction in recent years under the Offences against the Person Act resulted in a short prison sentence that was suspended on appeal. As for the numbers, the groups who are campaigning for this tell us that six women have been prosecuted over the past three years. Given that there are now almost 300,000 abortions a year, it is hard to see why this justifies such a significant change. Of course, it is regrettable if there are women who have been wrongly investigated, but that is a police matter. We do not disapply other laws simply because people are sometimes wrongly investigated. It is critical that we make the distinction between babies who would and would not be viable outside the womb; that is why we have the 24-week limit.
The Member in another place who tabled Clause 191, Tonia Antoniazzi, is on record as saying in an interview that she was comfortable with women being able to abort at 37 weeks without committing an offence. Are people really comfortable with passing a law that means a woman could abort at full term for any reason without committing an offence, as would be the effect of this clause?
Many have spoken about the dangers of telemedicine, so I will not expand on that, but we discussed that in the assisted dying debate. Under that Bill, two doctors would at least have to make sure that the person applying for an assisted death was actually terminally ill by examining relevant records. But the pills by post scheme permits women to obtain abortion pills with no reliable way of ascertaining whether they are under the limit before which it is legal and safe to take pills or even pregnant at all.
I turn briefly to my Amendments 459B and 461G. While I sincerely hope that this Committee will support the stand part notice from the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, in case it does not, I have tabled Amendment 459B to introduce a sunset clause requiring the Secretary of State to renew the legislation after each of the first three years. The related Amendment 502A is to make the regulations in proposed new subsection (3) subject to the affirmative procedure. In so doing, it encourages awareness and scrutiny of the provision and provides an opportunity to reverse the effects of Clause 191, should the consequences be as I fear.
I have also tabled Amendment 461G, which would require an annual report concerning abortion drugs that have been obtained illegally, maybe online, which I worry will become more likely under Clause 191. Of course, this need not relate solely to women considering an abortion themselves—it might relate to third parties or traffickers who obtain pills illegally to coerce an abortion or cover up abuse. It establishes ongoing transparency and oversight concerning what I fear will increasingly become a matter of public health and a safeguarding concern.
I should mention that I was unable to table any amendments to require the Government to collect numbers of pills by post that are issued or to require that this is captured on women’s medical records because those issues are not in the scope of the Bill. I would be grateful, therefore, if the Minister would look at those issues because I think they are very important.
There is a genuine worry that with the numbers of abortions rising and young women turning to that option more frequently, the future consequences for their reproductive health are simply unknown. We have many noble Lords in this House who practise medicine, yet we could see women coming to them and not disclosing that they have taken pills by post in the past. The cases that have led to the clamour for decriminalisation up to birth have resulted from pills by post and the inability to ensure that safeguards are maintained. Taking these pills outside the 10-week gestational limit is a dangerous course of action. The Department for Health and Social Care consultation found that the risks of this would include an ongoing viable pregnancy, reduced efficacy of abortions and death. I hope the House will consider my amendments as additional safeguards for women and girls, and I commend them to the House.
Lord Katz (Lab)
My Lords, I am afraid it is clear that there are still a number of Back-Benchers who wish to speak on these amendments as well as the Front-Benchers, so I now propose to adjourn the debate on Amendment 455, move to dinner break business and then resume the debate on the Bill. I advise your Lordships’ House that notice has been taken of those who are here for the debate on Amendment 455, so when we resume, we will be able to continue the debate in an orderly fashion.