Decriminalising Abortion

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tony Vaughan]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I come back to what I said to the right hon. Member for Gainsborough: whatever the position at the time of the law’s coming into force, I am not aware of there being a movement or democratic support for changing the law back to what it was before. When we talk about whether laws meet the current standards and societal norms, that is the most important thing.

Let me turn to how the law is applied in England and Wales. Until 2022, it was believed that only three women had been convicted of having an illegal abortion in the 150 years since the 1861 Act, under which most illegal abortions are prosecuted, but there has been a recent increase in the prosecutions of women for procuring miscarriage under the Act. The Crown Prosecution Service reports that in the period January 2019 to March 2023, six people were charged with child destruction and 11 were charged with procuring miscarriage under section 58 of the 1861 Act.

One of those people was Nicola Packer, who took home abortion medication following a teleconsultation, believing that she was less than 10 weeks pregnant. She was in fact 26 weeks pregnant, and was accused of having an illegal abortion. On 7 November 2020, she was in hospital. The next day—

[Martin Vickers (in the Chair)]

Order. May I clarify whether this is a live case?

[Tony Vaughan]

My understanding is that the case has been disposed of. Ms Packer was found not guilty of those charges last month, I believe.

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[Tony Vaughan]

I agree with my hon. Friend. As our hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow and I have said, these are human rights issues, and courts have highlighted incompatibilities where that has been the case. It is important that those principles guide our approach. I am in favour of the regulation of abortion, but I am also in favour of decriminalising it, so that abortion can once and for all be treated by the law as a matter of healthcare, not criminality, and individual rights to bodily autonomy can be exercised without fear of prosecution at one of the most physically and mentally vulnerable points in any woman’s life. I look forward to hearing the contributions of other Members and the Government.

[Martin Vickers (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they must bob if they want to catch my eye.

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[Ms Creasy]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for giving that personal testimony. What she touches on is what we have seen in the debate in this country for several years now: the expectation that women should give a reason why they want to have an abortion or seek that kind of medical care. That is why the Trump playbook being brought into British politics—as we now see it is—is so dangerous in this context. When the leader of Reform, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage)—I note that he is not here to defend his views—talks about the “ludicrous” nature of our laws and calls for a reduction in the time limit, he is not thinking of all those people who get that horrific diagnosis. He is sending a bat signal to his colleagues and fellow travellers in America: that under his watch it would be open season in this country—

[Martin Vickers (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that if she refers to another Member, she should have given that Member advance warning.

[Ms Creasy]

I do apologise, Mr Vickers. I just thought that, given his recent pronouncement and the interest that he has shown in this matter, the hon. Member for Clacton would be here.

Let me talk, then, about the vice-president of the United States—I hope you will understand, Mr Vickers, that I could not have asked him to be here today. He is one of those fellow travellers who believes that there are votes to be gained by using women’s bodies as a battlefield; that is what the debate about abortion in America has become. We are seeing American ideas—the concept of abortion until birth and the idea that women should be expected to explain themselves—being brought into our debates. I know that many of us will fight tooth and nail against those narratives and for equality, so I ask colleagues across the House: when people come for our abortion rights or propose further restrictions or “safeguards” for abortion, do we want the power of a human rights commissioner to back us up in those fights? This is our chance to have that: new clause 20 learns from a body of law and of practice in Northern Ireland about how we protect abortion properly. We do not just decriminalise it; the new clause would properly protect abortion.

I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower, and I urge her to reread new clause 20, because from what she said, I do not think she has read it properly. Rather than concentrating power in the hands of Ministers —precisely because of the risk that comes from any future Government that may seek to use secondary legislation powers—the new clause would actively restrict them. It has a triple lock and states, first, that regulations can be made only to uphold that human rights approach and, secondly, that they cannot be used to reduce access to abortion, or to amend section 1 of the 1967 Act—which new clause 20 keeps in play as a list for regulation rather than prosecution, so it does not touch the time limits either. The new clause then states that any attempt to undermine that human rights lock can be done only with the support of the entire Parliament.

Any new Member of Parliament here today has probably had the pleasure of sitting on a Delegated Legislation Committee in the last year and wondered quite what they are doing in a small Committee Room. The answer is that they are making law, but doing so in a Committee where the balance of power has been determined by the Whips and where the Government get to decide who sits on that Committee. Those are secondary legislation powers. It is entirely conceivable that new clause 1, if passed, would give those secondary legislation powers—they are in the policing Bill—to a future Government without any restriction.