Leading expert explains challenges in the United Kingdom over abortion access

Because of unclear laws, women who take abortion medications may face life imprisonment.

The United Kingdom has had as many challenges to abortion access and women’s rights as America has in the last few years. Much of it has to do with the unclear manner in which its abortion laws are written. 

Over the last two centuries, several laws have been passed regarding the procedure that often overlaps. Some parts of each law have been changed, but some remain on the books. The situation is exacerbated by the country's sprawling nature, including England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, each dealing with the issue differently. 

“It's a very complicated and convoluted legal framework, and I think that's what people find so confusing about it,” said John Reynolds-Wright, NES/CSO Clinical Lecturer in Sexual and Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh. 

Telehealth treatment changed the nature of healthcare there as it did here. Just as with abortions in the United States, many people rely on that form of counseling to get the care they need. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it became the primary manner in which abortions took place as lawmakers in Parliament loosened the restrictions on how easily mifepristone and misoprostol could be accessed through digital means and self-treatment. 

Unsurprisingly, that brought with it some complications because women weren’t counseled, and many didn’t realize how far along in their pregnancy they were. With the law written the way it was, they couldn’t take abortion medications past 24 weeks without violating the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861, which remained on the books even after the abortion laws changed in 1967 as part of an international wave of activism. That law calls for life imprisonment for people who perform an abortion, which in the case of self-treatment would be the woman herself. 

Reynolds-Wright said that the law's context has many aspects that are totally irrelevant to today's circumstances. That is why many people have pushed Parliament to reform the law. 

“We've deleted other bits of it that don't make sense anymore or have been superseded by other laws,” Reynolds-Wright said. “So it is something that can be changed and can be malleable and flexible going forward. So, it's not a foundational law upon which all other law stands. It has the potential to be changed and altered.” 

In the country, there have been six prosecutions of women who took abortion medication. Abortion clinics there communicated with activist leaders and told them that they had been contacted more than 100 times as police investigated. One Englishwoman was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison for criminal abortion. She had her sentence commuted, but she served time, which is the more critical point.

“There are reports of those people being hauled out of their houses in the middle of their nights, the police going in and raiding and going through, seizing all of their digital equipment and that kind of thing,” Reynolds-Wright said. “And people being taken away and led in handcuffs away from their house, and they're in front of their children, in front of their neighbors. So the reports of those cases that have gone to court have been very, very shocking.” 

American feminists, including Merle Hoffman and me, have been interested in helping build a movement in the country. We have traveled there and corresponded with leaders about what has happened and what should occur going forward. In September, I attended a protest outside Parliament about this issue. I’ve remained in touch with a woman who took abortion pills later in pregnancy and will face prosecution in April. I will report more on this situation as it develops.