England And Wales Just Made History On Reproductive Rights

England and Wales have voted to decriminalise abortion in the most significant change to reproductive rights in the two countries in decades, with the House of Commons passing an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill by 379 votes to 137, removing the threat of criminal investigation, arrest, prosecution, or imprisonment for any woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy. The change repeals the enforcement of a Victorian-era law that had remained on the books alongside the 1967 Abortion Act and had been increasingly applied against vulnerable women: police investigated more than 100 women for suspected illegal abortions in the five years prior to the vote, including women who had experienced natural miscarriages and stillbirths. Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, who introduced the amendment, told the House of Commons that the law was not justice but cruelty, and asked what possible public interest could be served by prosecuting women who were grieving and vulnerable. The bill now moves toward royal assent, with the reform expected to become law in the coming months.

When the bill reached the House of Lords, peers voted not only to retain the decriminalisation clause after anti-abortion peers attempted to overturn it, but went further by adopting an amendment from Baroness Thornton to pardon women who already have police records or have been subjected to investigations and prosecutions for ending their own pregnancies, a provision advocates described as a historic acknowledgment that real harm was done under a law that should never have been applied the way it was. Reproductive rights advocates noted that the vote comes at a moment when laws in other countries are moving in the opposite direction, and that the decisive margin of Parliament's support sends an unambiguous message about where the UK stands. Louise McCudden of MSI Reproductive Choices said that once the reform is signed into law, no one will face invasive criminal investigations into their medical history and personal life following an unexplained pregnancy loss. Campaigners who have worked on this issue for years described the Lords' decision to add pardons as the moment the legislation went from historic to genuinely just.

Source:https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a71163004/england-wales-decriminalise-abortion/