Decriminalising Abortion

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for his powerful introduction to this very timeous petition debate. This is a conscience issue, and my Liberal Democrat colleagues may have very different views, but I find it ironic that it is a conscience issue as to whether women should have a choice over their own reproductive healthcare.

The petition calls on the UK Government to:

“remove abortion from criminal law so that no pregnant person can be criminalised for procuring their own abortion. The UK is out of step with World Health Organization who in 2022 recommended that barriers to abortion such as criminalisation, or approval of others or institutions should be removed. Amnesty International state that abortion is a human rights issue.”

I wonder how many people watching the debate, or at home this evening, are surprised that we still need to have this debate. They might be astonished that women in this country can be criminalised for having an abortion, because they believe that in 1967 the Abortion Act made abortion legal. Actually, what it did was to make it legal in certain circumstances, and more than half a century later we are still debating when and how it is appropriate and when women can have the choice. As the hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) said, so much has changed in the intervening years and so much about our society, laws and the political situation in which we live today is different from when that law was passed in 1967.

I believe that everyone, regardless of their gender identity, has a right to make independent decisions about their reproductive health without interference from the state or the law. Access to reproductive healthcare is a human right, as has been confirmed by the Supreme Court in relation to Northern Ireland.

Why are we debating this issue today? Because in this country we are seeing a rise in the number of prosecutions of women who have had abortions. We have heard about the tactics. In her powerful speech, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) spoke about the stories of women like Sammy and Sophie, who are going through trauma because they made a decision. That is wholly unacceptable to me.

I find it unfortunate that at times today we have argued about how we decriminalise abortion and remove it from the statute books. Surely, the thing to do is to remove it altogether, not partially remove it or decriminalise it—to remove it altogether. The way we do that is by making it a human right, as it is in other countries. I also take issue with those who say that it is not a human right for women who have to go through an abortion when that goes against what their choice would be in other circumstances, often because they have been raped or because they have been told that it is a medical necessity. They deserve the protection of going through that in private and the right to do so. It should be a completely private personal choice and decision.

The hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill spoke about the right of women to decide not to have an abortion. That is as important to me as the right to have an abortion. I have often said in this place that I do not know what I would do in that situation. I have never had to make that choice. But I do not have the right to make that choice for any other woman; she has the right to make that choice based on her faith, her beliefs or her medical or personal situation and without any interference from me or anybody else.

The fact that we are still debating this question is a failure: a failure of our system to recognise the rights of every individual to their own healthcare decisions. The only way that we can effectively protect people from being criminalised is to make abortion a human right in the way that we did in Northern Ireland. I was part of that campaign, along with the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy). It is right that women in every part of the United Kingdom should have the same protection, choice and rights.