Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath and Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest

Report stage
Wednesday 18th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 424 seeks to remove Clause 208. As my noble friend Lord Hailsham said, this clause passed the Commons without any evidence, scrutiny, public consultation or impact assessment, although it is momentous. It is a radical proposal with implications for the mental and physical health of the woman and lethal consequences for the viable unborn child. Clause 208 would allow mothers to self-administer the abortion of their unborn child for any reason, at any stage of pregnancy right up to full term. This is not just its consequential effect; it is its intended effect. The clause states:

“For the purposes of the law related to abortion … no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy”.


The unborn child, in many cases more developed than those successfully looked after in premature baby units, would have no legal protection. As my honourable friend Julia Lopez said in the other place:

“This is not pro or anti life. It is not extremist to want protections for viable babies, and it is not anti-women to say that coercion or dangerous self-medication should not be outside the reach of the law”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/06/25; col. 330.]


This in part was a reference to the fact that a woman may be coerced into having an illegal abortion at home. The law as it stands—

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

Is the noble Baroness aware that, if Clause 208 became law, abortion law would continue to apply to doctors and healthcare professionals and they would still be subject to time limits and all other aspects of the current abortion law?

[Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)]

Dr Alison Wright, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, has written to Peers protesting that women may continue to face police investigations and criminal charges solely for ending their own pregnancy unless this clause is supported. She, speaking on behalf of the college, makes no distinction whatever between the abortion of a viable child at full term and a first-trimester termination. Indeed, the infant who without the intervention of lethal drugs would be fully a living person at that stage, if born, is completely unmentioned. It is as if this is unmentionable. Dr Wright describes the women concerned as being at the most vulnerable times in their lives. That may be true, but the most vulnerable and defenceless person here is the unborn viable child. Obviously, it is deeply distressing, as we have heard, for the mother to be questioned by the police in the aftermath of an illegal abortion. This should be done with compassion and sensitivity, but the police cannot act as if nothing has happened.

Clause 208 also endangers women by removing the current legal deterrent against administering an abortion away from a clinical setting right up to birth. Women may be incentivised to perform their own life-threatening abortion late in pregnancy. This is particularly the case given how easily women can obtain abortion pills through the pills by post scheme, beyond the legal limit and without a reliable gestational age check. These pills are not meant to be used after the 10th week of pregnancy for a very good reason. I encourage noble Lords to support Amendment 425 from the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, which would reinstate mandatory in-person medical consultations and abolish the pills by post scheme, which was started during Covid lockdowns and should have been rescinded after the pandemic, as was originally intended.

More than 1,000 medical professionals have written to us opposing Clause 208, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, former president of the British Medical Association, for her support for my amendment. One letter I received pointed out that—