House of Lords Supports Decriminalisation of Abortion
Peers in the House of Lords have endorsed plans to decriminalise abortion, following a vote in favour by MPs last summer.
Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi initiated the effort to end police investigations into abortion under a 164-year-old Victorian law last year, introducing an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill.
This initiative came after a BBC investigation revealed an unprecedented number of women facing criminal investigations, with over 100 prosecutions under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act in recent years.
The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, was among those opposing the MPs' decision, but the majority of peers voted in favour of decriminalisation.
Conservative peer Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest proposed an amendment in the Lords aiming to overturn the Commons' support for the Antoniazzi amendment. She criticised the amendment for being "added to the Bill after less than an hour of debate by MPs, and without the necessary scrutiny required for an issue of such seriousness".
Baroness Monckton urged peers to remove Antoniazzi's "radical proposal" from the draft legislation, arguing that decriminalisation represented "an extreme social change for which there is no public pressure or demand, and could have tragic consequences for women".
She received backing from the Archbishop, who expressed concerns that the change risked "eroding safeguards".
Regarding the Commons decision, the Archbishop stated:
"Though its intention may not be to change the 24 week abortion limit, it undoubtedly risks eroding the safeguards and enforcement of those legal limits and inadvertently undermining the value of human life."
Emphasising the value of all life, she agreed that a matter of such "legal, moral and practical complexity" should not be addressed through a "hastily added" amendment to another bill.
Conservative Baroness Lawlor criticised the amendment as "a bad clause" that could result in "tiny lives being ended in the most cruel and painful way" by mothers who would then be "haunted forever".
Conversely, Labour peers including Baroness Neate supported the changes to improve abortion access for vulnerable individuals, noting that "it's common for domestic abuse to begin with pregnancy".
"Creating clinically unnecessary barriers to abortion helps abusers, not survivors,"
she said.
Baroness Monckton's amendment was rejected by 185 votes to 148.
Rejection of Mandatory In-Person Consultation Amendment
Peers also dismissed a proposal to require pregnant women to have an in-person consultation before being lawfully prescribed medication for terminating a pregnancy at home.
Conservative peer Baroness Stroud introduced the amendment, arguing that an in-person appointment "would ensure medical professionals can accurately assess a woman's gestational age, any health risks and the risk of coercion before abortion pills are prescribed".
Under current law, it is legal for women to take prescribed medication at home if they are less than 10 weeks pregnant.
The Government amended regulations during the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020 to allow women to have medical abortions at home following a phone or video consultation.
This change was made permanent in 2022, permitting women to take abortion pills at home up to nine weeks and six days gestation.
The House of Lords rejected the amendment to reinstate compulsory in-person consultations by 191 votes to 119.
Campaigners Present at the House of Lords Debate
Both pro-choice and pro-life campaigners brought banners and placards to the House of Lords as peers arrived for the debate.
Speaking to the BBC, pro-life campaigner Sarah said:
"We need to protect the unborn child in the womb and we also need to protect women from abortion because abortion harms women as well as their children. I believe that every child, from the moment of conception, is valuable in the eyes of God and I don't believe that there are any situations that really allow abortion, because we're not the ones that give life and we're not the ones that should take it away either. I've struggled to conceive - I've been married 15 years - so it's very difficult to see so many lives lost by abortion when I would have gladly taken any one of them into my family."
Pro-choice campaigner Louise McCudden told the BBC she found it "unacceptable" that women in England and Wales remain subject to a Victorian law enacted before women had the right to vote.
McCudden, who works for abortion provider MSI Reproductive Choices UK, stated:
"We know from providing reproductive healthcare across six continents that criminalisation harms women and makes abortion less safe. The House of Lords now has a historic opportunity to end the threat of prosecution once and for all, pardon women who have been previously convicted, and drop ongoing investigations. At a time when we are seeing rollbacks in reproductive rights around the world, most notably in the US, it's encouraging that our parliament is standing up for women."
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