English women could face life imprisonment for using medication abortion
Parliament considering decriminalizing abortion after several women punished for taking mifepristone and misoprostol
In England, its Parliament is currently considering whether to reform its laws in light of some of the complications that have arisen as a result of the proliferation of medication abortion.
Though women can obtain reproductive care easily in the country, they still have to go through hurdles that Americans don’t have to. The law there dates back to 1861 when a ban prevented abortions altogether. In 1967, that law was liberalized, and it permitted abortions in certain situations.
Between 1861 and 2018, there were only three prosecutions of women, though there were more for back-alley providers. But after 2018, there have been six. That has to do with women taking mifepristone and misoprostol. Some activists in the country have pushed for the decriminalization of medication abortion. Jonathan Lord, co-chair of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) abortion taskforce, is one of them.
“They're in a very vulnerable state,” Lord said. “And the police usually just come in and say, ‘If you don't hand over your phone, then we'll probably arrest you.’”
Police have performed drug tests on women suspected of using mifepristone and misoprostol. They also look into the suspect’s browser history for evidence.
The 1861 law is known as the Offenses Against the Persons Act, and it calls for life imprisonment for some people who perform abortions illegally. Another law passed in 1923 is the Infant Life Preservation Act. That prevents abortions past the point of viability.
One of the more interesting cases I’ve researched extensively was the 1938 prosecution of Dr. Aleck Bourne, an OB/GYN who performed an abortion on a 14-year-old rape victim. I wrote a screenplay based on that incident that has been a finalist in several competitions. I’m currently looking to sell the option.
It arose from the brutal sexual assault of Nellie Hales, who lived in London with her parents, Horace, and her mother, who was also named Nellie. Three royal guardsmen at the Horse Guards in London lured her into a stall where they raped her repeatedly. Afterward, her mother took her to a Catholic hospital where a doctor told them that he wouldn’t perform an abortion because the baby could be a future prime minister. English law called for adoption in situations where rape led to pregnancy.
(Dr. Aleck Bourne walks out of Old Bailey in 1938 following his trial for performing an abortion on a 14-year-old rape victim)
Later, the mother wrote a letter to Joan Malleson, who worked at St. Mary’s Hospital and was a member of the Abortion Law Reform Association. In turn, she contacted Bourne, who agreed to perform an abortion. When I spoke to Bourne’s grandson, he told me that his grandfather had wanted to take the abortion business away from midwives. The association wanted a sympathetic test case. It went before a jury at Old Bailey, the most famous courthouse in the world. The jury acquitted him on the same day it deliberated.
That galvanized the abortion rights movement all over the world. And it’s what eventually led to the 1967 liberalization in England. The 1967 reforms led to English law permitting abortions when a continued pregnancy will cause significant harm to a woman’s well-being. It also can’t be past the 24th week.
But the story doesn’t stop there. After the country became more tolerant of reproductive rights, there was a strong antiabortion movement that emerged.
The opposition is still faith-based, but they try to mask it because of the general public opinion that government and religion should be strictly separated. In Anti-Abortion Activism in the UK, Dr. Pam Lowe and Dr. Sarah Jane-Page studied how the antiabortion movement there operated and based its belief system.
I also spoke with Lowe about what’s happening and got a little history. She said most of the money that comes from antiabortion causes in that country and elsewhere comes from European sources. Still, American groups also have influenced things through their financial support.
“You don't see whole church communities being active against abortion, right,” Lowe said. “You get a few people in a number of churches who are against abortion, but there's no church movement against abortion.”
The country’s historic faith is the Church of England, which has existed since 1534, when King Henry VIII broke with the Vatican and declared himself the head of England’s churches. Within the Protestant faith, there was initial support for abortion rights in the 1960s. In the Catholic population that remains in England, there is still general support among the laity for abortion rights.
Regardless of the religion, most public servants avoid imbuing their politics with faith-based beliefs. Neither party in its Parliament has taken a position on abortion, and their positions are a matter of personal conscience.
“Religion is very much seen as a private thing rather than a public thing,” Lowe said. “So there's a cultural distrust.”
The anti-abortion movement instead couches its rhetoric as saying abortion harms the mental and physical well-being of the mother.
Lowe explained how the law has been enforced today. Many women, as in America, have decided to get abortion medications online. That makes them subject to criminal prosecution. Mostly, they get two years in prison as punishment, but the maximum sentence is life. Parliament has decided to consider its abortion laws in light of this reality.
“That's an unnecessary burden,” Lowe said. “So decriminalization would stop women being sent to prison, which is clearly a good thing, and also means that it would reduce the cost to having an abortion because you won’t need all of this other stuff.”